Bill Casey

[Supply, May 15th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I love it. The hon. member stands up and says that they are discussing this in cabinet and in caucus and that they will be making a decision. What about Parliament? That is exactly my point. We know nothing.

She said a minute ago “caucus and cabinet”. What happened to Parliament? Why is Parliament not involved in this? She said that we have not been asked to support it. That is because the government has not brought it to Parliament. She said herself that they were discussing it in caucus and in cabinet. This is something for the entire country to discuss. The government does not have members of Parliament in every riding in the country. This is Parliament. This is where it should be discussed, and that is exactly my point. We are in the dark and the government does not want to reveal any information about it. It just wants us to support it.

[Supply, May 15th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to follow the remarks by the hon. member for Saint John. She has been very involved in this debate from the very beginning. She is very involved in the committee. Like her, I would like to state the position of our party but it is not possible because we do not know anything about what is being proposed.

We are inclined to support missile defence but we have never been told any details about the proposal. How will it involve Canada? Who is the threat? Who are we saying is going to threaten our country or the United States? We should know these things if we are going to build a defence system and pass judgment on it. We should have information available to us about who our missile defence system would be aimed at. Will it be based on land? Will it all be land? Will it be partly sea? Will it be partly space?

We do not know whether it could be nuclear or not nuclear or whether it could be adapted to nuclear. There are many questions that have a huge impact on our decision to support this or not. We want to support it but we need the information. It is incumbent on the government to give Parliament that information but it is not giving us any.

Hopefully the government has the information but if it does not I do not know how it will decide either. However when we are being asked to make a decision on such an important issue, which could affect every aspect of our country, our security and certainly life and death in the event of an attack, we must know the details of what we are getting into.

Who will manufacture these weapons? Will Canada get a benefit from the technology? We do not know that. Who is developing the specs and do we have those available? We do not know. We are being asked to pass judgment on this but we do not even know the specifications.

Where will the incoming missiles be intercepted? Will they be intercepted over Canadian soil, over the sea or where? What is the plan? What is the proposal? Will Canadian bases be asked to have missiles on them? We do not know that and we should have that information. There must be a plan or proposal somewhere. Hopefully the government has it. If it is discussing these issues it must have this information, otherwise I do not know how it could have an intelligent discussion or bring the question to Parliament and ask us to make an intelligent decision.

Is there any possibility these weapons could be used defensively? We have to know these things. What is the timeline for implementation? We do not know that. We do not know how fast this will go. We do not know whether it will be part of Norad or outside of Norad, or how that system will work.

Has Mexico agreed to participate, and what is its thoughts on this? We should hear from Mexico, as well as the United States, if we are going to have a continental defence system.

What is the proposed budget for this? What will it cost the Canadian taxpayers? Is there even an estimate of what it will cost? What is the benefit? Is there an estimate of the benefits to Canadian industry? Will we be involved in the technology and development of this high tech system? How much will come to Canada, if any?

Have we been consulted? We do not even know if the government has been consulted. The Prime Minister said in the House that he does not know anything about the plan yet he is having meetings with his cabinet to decide whether to participate. What is the consultation process? If we are to be a partner in this we should be consulted and not have the plan imposed on us. I do not know if we have been consulted but it sounds like Canada has not really been consulted and brought into the loop about all these questions I am asking. The government, apparently, is holding cabinet meetings to decide whether it will participate. How can these issues be discussed if we do not have these questions answered?

What departments in Canada would be involved? A missile defence system could involve the Department of Health, the Department of Industry, the Department of National Defence, CSIS, the RCMP and the Solicitor General. Will all these departments be keenly involved or will it just be the defence department? All these things are really important.

In my view our participation in this is dependent on the details of the plan. We are inclined to support it in principle but all we know about it is three words: missile defence system. There is a proposal for that but to ask us if we will participate in the missile defence system without any details is difficult to pass judgment. It is irresponsible to make a decision based on that minimum of information.

We in Canada must protect our interests. We must maintain our involvement with Norad. We must play a key role in Norad and stay in Norad. Hopefully this system will be part of that but we should enhance our participation in Norad and try to upgrade it.

We have to work on our relationship with the United States which has seen some rough waters lately. A great way to start on that would be to work as partners with the United States on the development of the missile defence system if we are expected to participate in the system. That could also go a long way to re-establishing the good relationship we have had with the United States for decades.

We must have access to the information on what this plan means before we can be asked to support it wholeheartedly. We hardly know anything about this plan and yet it is critical to our future, to our defence and to the safety of our country.

It is incumbent on the Prime Minister, the Minister of National Defence and any other minister who is involved to share with Parliament everything they know about this issue. Where will it be based? Where will it intercept missiles? What will it cost? What will the benefits be to Canada? We know nothing about this. All we are being asked to do is to stand up and support a missile defence system. We only know those three words and that is not enough.

[Softwood Lumber, May 13th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, for about a year now the Minister for International Trade has said that we were going to have a made in Canada solution, but the United States Department of Commerce has just produced a policy bulletin that says the U.S. Department of Commerce will determine whether individual Canadian provinces have reformed their policies and practices. If the U.S. Department of Commerce is going to determine what the Canadian provinces do, how is that a made in Canada solution?

[Public Service, May 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is quoted today in the media as dismissing allegations that Ottawa ignores the west. We often hear the Liberals say that it is very important to hear from the people in the west and that it wants their input in Ottawa.

There are five jobs on the government's website this morning paying up to $58,000, from five different departments. Who can apply for them? Only those people in eastern Ontario and western Quebec; eastern Ontario and western Quebec; eastern Ontario and western Quebec; and eastern Ontario. No one from the west can apply for any of these jobs.

How does the Prime Minister justify the contradiction when he says that Ottawa wants to hear from people in the west but they just cannot work here?

[An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, May 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, all I can say is we have been totally consistent for more than a decade on the aspects of gun control that we support, and one of those is not the firearms registry. The member referred to has changed positions, as members in that party do from time to time; changing names, changing positions and changing directions but that is their business.

However, we have been very consistent all the way through for about 12 years now on our position on registry of firearms.

[An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, May 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, this is an interesting question. However I will give the member a little history lesson. The Conservatives brought in gun control legislation which dealt with safe storage, registration of non-registered guns and better control, issues relating to transportation and storage and things such as this.

When we were presented as a caucus with a proposal on gun control issues, one of them was registry of firearms. We as a caucus turned that down. We said that, yes, we would take the safe storage, yes, we would take the FAC issue and yes, we would have conditions for the transportation of firearms. However, it was no to long arms registration. We turned that down in the beginning when Bill C-17 was brought in because we did not think it was required and we did not think it would be effective or do the job.

The bureaucrats at the time were advising us to go the gun registry. We chose not to. The Liberals listened to the bureaucrats and adopted the gun registry. That is where we are now, a billion dollars later, a thousand million dollars down the drain because the Liberals did not use any of their own intelligence to deal with this issue.

[An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, May 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this subject. I want to hit on two issues; one is the effectiveness of the process and the other is the waste that we have heard so much about.

The Solicitor General was up on his feet this morning saying that we have to have an efficient system. He must have used the word efficiency a dozen times but never once did he say effective. One of my beefs with the system is that it is not effective.

There is a person in my riding who registered one rifle. He got five registrations. That may sound like an insignificant issue but the police out there, who the Solicitor General said are counting on the system to help them do their job and protect them, may go to that man's house, call the firearms registry and be told he has five rifles. He does not. He registered one but the registry registered five.

Another man I know registered 18 firearms and got 36 registrations. Another man registered five firearms and he only got two registrations. He is a doctor. He knew how to fill out the forms. He did the best he could. He filled the forms out right and that is what happened.

When we tried to find out what had happened with one of the men I mentioned earlier, we found there were five lines on the form to fill in. He had one rifle. He filled it in five times with exactly the same information on each line and still the firearms registry registered five firearms. Anybody who looked at it could have seen there was a mistake, that he had listed the same gun five times but the system is so ineffective and lacks such credibility that nobody could even understand it.

When I asked the Solicitor General this morning about some of these problems, he agreed. He said that there are bad examples. The minister said the government is trying to personally contact some of these people at the very least to find out what happened to see if it can be corrected.

We as a party have established a website exactly for that. People can contact us or Parliament, and tell us exactly the problems they have had. It is really simple. People can access www.gunregistry.ca and type in their problems and difficulties. They will be given to the Solicitor General and hopefully he will deal with them in the way that he promised in his statement this morning.

In that way we hope to deal with the ineffectiveness of the program which I am sure has ruined the credibility of it so that no police officer could depend on it. If it is not credible, I do not know what good it is in any case. Never mind the money that was wasted on the whole program, if the information is not right, and I know it is not right, the Solicitor General admitted it is not right, then what is the point in having it? Even though some people support it, it is no good if the information is not credible and it is not.

I want to touch on the waste aspect of it as well. The government side often says that we are just complaining, that it is the opposition being the opposition, but it is not only us. It is people, organizations, authorities across the country, provinces and attorneys general. It is everybody.

One for whom I think most of us around here have a great deal of respect is the Auditor General. She is a person for whom I have the utmost respect and I think we are very fortunate to have her in her position. We are very fortunate that she does the job she does.

The Auditor General has said that only 30% of the funds used for the program came through the right system while 70% of the funds came through inappropriate systems, supplementary estimates and other departments. It is incredible that the government could try to hide this. That is exactly the point she was trying to make.

The Department of Justice, in the Auditor General's report, did not provide Parliament with the estimate of all the major additional costs nor did it give us an accounting of the additional cost. The original cost was to be a couple of million dollars and now it is estimated, by the time it is done if it ever gets done, at over a thousand million dollars. It has gone from two million to a thousand million dollars.

I talked to a CEO of a major privately traded company on the plane the other day. He said that if they start a project in that company and there is an overrun of 5%, the project manager has to report back to the board of directors and explain why it is 5% over. If it is 10% over, the project stops. That is in the private sector.

We have a government project which we were told would cost about $2 million. Now it looks like it will cost a thousand million dollars, and the government runs and hides. The word now is that the government is trying to privatize the process so it can further confuse everybody and avoid answers. Then the government can say that it is privatized and it cannot answer those questions.

The Auditor General says that she was unable to complete her report because of the multitude of discrepancies and shortcomings in the information provided by the Department of Justice. That must make the government feel very proud, to say that the Auditor General could not even do a report because of the inconsistencies, the discrepancies and the shortcomings of its accounting, especially when it knew the whole country was watching this program. It is one of the most controversial issues. It did not even bother to account for the money and it cannot explain where the money went.

The Auditor General, who has proven to be extremely capable, extremely effective and efficient, cannot do an audit on the firearms registry expenses of a thousand million dollars.

It is a shame that we are back at this once again trying to get more money. I want to remind the House that if members wish to register their complaints with the firearms registry, all they have to do is send us an e-mail at www.gunregistry.ca. We will be glad to hear from members and all the problems they have had in registering their guns.

[An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, May 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the minister has said that he has to have an efficient system, but I think it also has to be effective and credible. I would like him to explain how it can be credible when a man in my riding registered one firearm but got five registrations; so now the police, who are depending on this registry to know how many firearms this man has, think he has five. Another man registered five guns but only got two registrations. Another man sent money a year and a half ago and has nothing. Another person has registered 18 firearms and the system registered 36 firearms.

How can anyone have any faith in the system with this incredible amount of inefficiency and error in the system?

[Question No. 171, May 5th, 2003]

With respect to Bill C-25, An Act to modernize employment and labour relations in the public service and to amend the Financial Administration Act and the Canadian Centre for Management Development Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, which received its first reading on February 6, 2003: ( a ) have steps been taken to anticipate the cost of implementing the transition of the title “Public Service of Canada” to “Federal Public Administration”; ( b ) if yes, what steps have been taken and what is the amount of the anticipated cost of changing this title; ( c ) how many legislative acts will this title transition affect; ( d ) is this change of title to be retroactive to all relevant legislation; and ( e ) if yes, what is the anticipated cost of making this change retroactive to all relevant legislation and departmental material?

[Public Service, May 1st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have in my hands a job listing for at least 10 administrative support jobs for the Government of Canada. Anyone in Toronto is eligible to apply for these jobs, but not one person in Perth—Middlesex is even allowed to apply. Constituents in all the ridings in Toronto are automatically included in the job competition, but the residents of Perth—Middlesex are automatically excluded because of where they live.

Will the government change these offensive hiring practices and stop discrimination against the people of Perth—Middlesex?