Ken Epp

[Anti-terrorism Act, October 18th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to add to what is becoming a rather lengthy debate. A lot of things have been said by different members of the various parties in the House on this bill. It is a bill which of course is very important.

I will briefly underline a few things which I think are very important and necessary for us to combat terrorism in the country. I also want to add a bit of a personal perspective to this whole debate.

I would first like to say that the government has taken a necessary step in the right direction. I commend it for that. I listened with interest on numerous occasions to the Prime Minister and other ministers who said that this was an issue far beyond politics and that we should put political considerations aside. I agree with that.

In passing, though, I find it strange that when members of the finance committee, and I will not mention which party it was because I want to be non-partisan, put forward a motion to get this thing underway, the government used very strange tactics to prevent that motion from being put. Then it used strange tactics again for that motion not to be carried and, again, used strange tactics for it to come forward.

I would venture to say, and will do so as kindly as I can, that there was a lot of politics in the way that was handled in our committee. I really regret that. I believe that was a moral failure on the part of the government at the time. This is a time when, more than ever in the history of this parliament, parliamentarians ought to be able to act on behalf of their constituents and on behalf of all Canadians.

It is really quite interesting, and I will put it that way, that the government voted against our motion the second day parliament sat after the atrocities of September 11, but some two or three weeks later came forward with legislation that largely included those things for which we had asked.

What I want to do today is have the members on the government side actually respond to the conjecture in my speech as to why they voted against it at that time since it was very urgent, but I am not sure if they will. However, at the same time I would like to commend the government for taking action, fairly expeditiously, to move legislation forward.

I would also like to thank the government for including in this legislation the right to create and publish a list of known criminal activity with respect to terrorism. I wish the legislation in Bill C-36 were a little stronger requiring the government to publicize these names instead of just giving them the right to make a list. I feel that is a little weak but certainly a step in the right direction.

I remember when the finance committee was studying this Bill S-16, which originated in the Senate. It proposed to remove charitable organization status, and hence the right to issue tax receipts for charitable donations, from any charity which directly or indirectly raised funds for terrorist organizations. That would indirectly mean that collectively the taxpayers of this country would then be funding terrorism.

A motion was brought forth regarding this proposal in committee. I spoke against that motion for the very simple reason that I was opposed to only removing the charitable organization status from any charitable organization found to be funding terrorism. It was too soft.

I am pleased to see that fundraising for terrorism, directly or indirectly, is an illegal act under Bill C-36, which is what I proposed in the committee. This is a very good measure. Probably this has been mentioned in some of the debates when I was off the committee, but I have not heard that one in the House before. I wanted to emphasize that. With the passing of the bill, that type of fundraising would be banned.

Echoing some of the concerns that have been expressed with respect to the human rights and freedom that we have come to enjoy, I also emphasize that we need to be very diligent and not indict organizations that are unwittingly drawn into the trap.

For example, one can argue that benevolent organizations which collect money to provide food for those who are starving reduce the costs of the governments in foreign countries where they work. Indirectly then, they could provide that government with more money for the production of arms and tools of terrorism. That is stretching it. I hope we are very judicial in how we apply that law to charitable organizations. However, where there is a clear and direct link, they will face criminal action, and rightly so.

I also congratulate the government for finally affirming what it should have done a long time ago, and that is that it will ratify the international convention on the suppression of the financing of terrorism. That should have been done automatically and immediately when it was presented here. The government dragged its heels on that.

Finally, on the plus side, the legislation provides that it would be a crime to participate in any terrorist training or inciting terrorism. Again, that is moving in the right direction. It is incredible that it was not done years ago. It should have always been on the law books of Canada.

I remember many years ago when it was against the law to counsel someone to commit suicide. How come we did not have anything that said it was against the law to counsel an act of terrorism?

There are a couple of things that I think the government should have done.

First, there should be a prompt extradition of foreign nationals who are charged with acts of terrorism. That is not in this bill. I think I know the reason for this. I am only guessing, though, because I do not have any Liberal friends close enough to me who actually told me why they voted against this. I think most of them did so because it was a Liberal whipped vote. You may recall the day that you were the whip, Mr. Speaker, and perhaps the Liberals through their whip would give such an instruction.

In any case, I think this is probably the nub of the reason for why the Liberals voted against it. Our motion on September 18 recommended that any foreign national charged with an act of terrorism should be extradited forthwith, even if that foreign national faced, in his designated country, a possible death penalty.

The Liberals cannot bring themselves to recognize that under certain circumstances there is not a penalty severe enough. I would put into that category the individuals who knowingly helped to train and motivated the people who hijacked those airplanes on September 11, and who caused so much havoc, pain, death and damage. Those individuals are clearly guilty. If we were to find some of those individuals in Canada, who aided and abetted that action, and if there were another country somewhere that said to extradite them because they were their nationals, not Canadians, that they belonged in their country, not Canada, and that in their country they would face the death penalty, then I would say, off they go.The bill fails to provide for that.

I greatly regret that my time has elapsed because I have several more points to make. I am looking forward to the bill going to committee. I hope the amendments we make will be given due consideration by the government.

[Privilege, October 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am distressed because I fly all the time and I now hear that I have a legal obligation to report these things. What is the penalty? What is the document? Can we somehow get that information?

[National Defence, October 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it is unconscionable to send our troops into combat situations without adequate equipment. A case in point is the helicopter fiasco.

Talk of replacing the Sea Kings began in 1975. Now, in 2001, our dedicated members of the armed forces are still using these increasingly unreliable 40 year old machines. At best we can expect the new ones only four years from now.

It cost about $500 million to cancel the contracts when the Liberals were elected in 1993. It took $50 million to upgrade them at that time. The Sea King maintenance for the last 10 years is at least $750 million. In other words, the total cost is greater than it would have been to just take the EH-101s in 1993.

As a member of parliament representing a large contingent of our armed forces, I am outraged that our faithful and dedicated armed forces personnel have been so let down. Shame on the Liberals for this total mismanagement.

[The Economy, October 5th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the Americans and some Canadian leaders are taking extraordinary steps to conquer an extraordinary attack on our security and economy. Instead of just echoing the litany of half measures the finance minister has taken in the past, will he please tell Canadians what extraordinary measures he is taking or planning to take to counter the anticipated downturn in the economy and employment?

[Strathcona Christian Academy, October 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, two grade six students from Strathcona Christian Academy in my riding have penned a prayer. They gave it to me and asked me to ask members of parliament to pray this prayer with them:

Dear Father, please be with America, and all the grieving Americans who lost friends and loved ones. We pray that those who are in charge will make wise decisions. Also, be with the younger children, because they don't really understand what is going on right now in the world, and for those children who lost parents and grandparents. Thank you that it was not worse than it already is. In your Name we pray, Amen.

I would like to thank Alexis Foster and Sarah McConnell for the inspiration they have given to us through this prayer.

[All-Numeric Dates Act, October 2nd, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I would like to begin my speech by expressing my extreme jealousy to the member for Peterborough. I believe it was at least four years ago that I first entered a bill to do exactly this.

Even though I have some mathematical credentials, and I know something about statistics, the odds have been totally against me and in this random draw for private members' business, I have never been drawn, not once. So mathematically, I am just behind the eight ball, so I express my jealousy. However, I congratulate him for having the good luck of being chosen to have his bill debated. It is unfortunate that it is not votable and that we could bring this thing to a conclusion and actually do it.

I certainly speak in favour of the bill. It is not quite as good as mine, but it certainly is going in the right direction. I will explain that in a few seconds.

I was involved with computers from about the time they were invented. As a matter of fact, when I first started teaching at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, believe it or not, we were still teaching our students how to use a slide rule. After a while, along came mechanical calculators, then later on electronic calculators. I was involved in those first years when we got those big, behemoth computers that occupied a whole room and had less memory than my little pocket machine.

I did some programming and was involved in designing programs for our students. As well, I taught programming. Again, here was a missed opportunity. I wrote a program for word processing, including a mail merge before Bill Gates was even born, and now he is a multi-billionaire. I did not realize that I had come onto something that was really very useful. I could have been financially independent if I had gone to work on it and recognized the value of it.

I wrote that program to help me in my administrative work. At that time I was the head of the mathematics department at NAIT.

I have used this standard year/month/day for approximately 40 years. When I first wrote computer programs and if I had data that required sorting, I discovered almost immediately that if the date was given in the order of year/month/day and was sorted numerically, it produced a correct chronological sorting of the data. If that information was put in any other order, then it could produce January, February, March and so on, regardless of what year they were in. If the month was put first, it sorted by month instead of by year. Obviously when sorting data we want the year to be the primary sort element and then the month and the day. It is totally logical.

As my colleague from Peterborough has already pointed out, in all other areas we do go from the large unit to the small. That is totally logical and is the way it is always done.

I would like to say a little about my bill which will probably never be debated or voted on, and I am very discouraged about that. However, my bill took quite a different approach than the bill of the member for Peterborough. He is asking that the Minister of Industry take such measures as are necessary to promote the use of the national standard. That is a very fine bill. I can support that.

My bill, Bill C-281, is in the draw right now but it has never chosen. Its purpose is to change the Canada Evidence Act. It basically says that where there is a date in a document and if it is expressed using numerals only, then if there is a dispute this is the interpretation that should be put on it.

I am not coercing or forcing people to change, as long as the documents they give are 100% clear. In other words, they may use 3/4/5 which means April 3, 2005. If there is a statement somewhere else in their document that states the dates as being given in that order, then there cannot be an ambiguity. It would be clear.

On the other hand, if they had given a date which said their pension would start on such and such a date, and if that date was before they were born, one could argue also that that was not really ambiguous.

However, there are many instances of ambiguity and since we have gone into the year 2001, as the hon. member pointed out, the combinations are now myriad. I saw one the other day that used numerals and the abbreviation of a word. I do not remember the exact date, but it was along this line: it said 02 October 01. Now the word October clearly indicates the month, but I do not know if that is the October 1, 2002 or the October 2, 2001, which happens to be today. It is ambiguous.

It only makes sense for us to have a unique relationship with numerals. There should be a unique meaning when we use a symbol.

For example, we go to a service station to fill up a vehicle with gasoline. Let us say it comes to $30.62. We do not walk in and say we do not know if we should pay $30.62 or $62.30. There is no ambiguity because we clearly understand that the number of the digits before the decimal point indicate the number of dollars and the digits after the decimal point indicate the number of cents. Yet, when it comes to dates, we do not have any problems with writing these dates all over. Over and over again I have seen the examples the member gave. Again, I have had a great deal of correspondence from people who have had these same ambiguities.

On my bank statement not long ago they used just two numbers, one for the month and one for the day. Of course I just received the statement so I knew that when it said 10/3 it meant October 3. However it was still a bit ambiguous.

I would also like to point out that if this were votable I would vote in favour of it because it is a step in the right direction. I would like to advise the hon. member opposite that I think he may still be permitting an ambiguity with clause 6 of his bill. He is probably aware of that.

Part of the bill states that the last two digits may be used to represent the year if it is between 1990 and 1999 or subsequent to the year 2032. If we use 95, I am still left guessing again if it is 1995 or 2095. I would cut that out of there. After our Y2K experience, we should get in the habit of using four digits to represent the year.

Those are my thoughts on this. This makes so much sense. Why can we as Canadians not just put this into legislation and say this is the standard, start using it?

I would like to see some of my bill incorporated into it with respect to business billings. When a business sends out a bill and the date is ambiguous, if the person does not pay it until the date that he interprets it is due, it can be to the advantage of that individual instead of to the business because the business was sloppy in the way in which it produced its bill or statement. This way we would have a rapid change.

I think we would find that if this bill were passed and the Minister of Industry put out some ads saying that this was the new standard and that we were going to start following it, then Canadian usage would change very rapidly. We then would be able to communicate with one another in such a way and actually understand what each other meant, which might be quite novel in Canadian history.

[All-Numeric Dates Act, October 2nd, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I think there will enough time for everyone. The member only used 10 minutes.

[Supply, October 2nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I have more of a comment than a question. I remember hearing a couplet a long time ago that said “a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still”.

Passing laws to reduce feelings of racism and hatred are totally non-productive and not effective. It makes us feel good if we pass such laws, and we should do everything we can to practice the tolerance we have.

I grew up as a Germany-speaking child three-quarters of a mile away from an air force training base in the second world war. How did we got along in that community in those years? Because my mother and father led our family to be the most co-operative, helpful, useful and tolerant people in that community. We had great acceptance, not because someone passed a law, but because we proved to them that we were tolerant.

[Canadian Airline Industry, October 1st, 2001]

Madam Chairman, I rise on a point of order. With all due respect, there are a number of us who want to speak within the time limit. I do not think you have the option under the rules. Perhaps you could check with the table officer.

[Export Development Act, October 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, one of the perplexing things about the Liberal government is that it is just not open about information. As a comparable situation, I have noticed this particularly with respect to the press conferences being held by government officials with respect to terrorism lately. When we tune into CNN, government officials in the U.S. from the president on down seem eager to give the maximum amount of information to their citizens so that they are fully apprised of what is being done. In Canada however, it is like squeezing orange juice out of a lemon. It is impossible to get any information out of the government.

I noted with interest that in testimony to the foreign affairs committee, an organization called Probe International made mention of this. It asked for the five year report from the auditor general and was told that he was not permitted by legislation to disclose it but that the inquirer should go directly to the corporation, which they did. When they asked for that information they were told that it was confidential information and was not available.

At the same time, the witness at the committee said that a letter was written to the United States Export-Import Bank requesting details of a similar, almost identical situation. Included in the response to a Canadian from an American bank which was involved in a comparable situation was information including tables, accounting, rescheduling agreements and the whole thing. The Americans seem to be more accessible or more willing to give information to its citizens and even Canadian citizens than is our own government.

I believe it is a culture. It is time for the Government of Canada to level with its citizens and give them as much information as it can rather than hide behind all of those other little rules all the time which prevents Canadians from knowing what is happening to their money.