House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2021, with 35% of the vote.
Request For Emergency Debate September 28th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I fully respect your judgment considering the interpretation of Standing Order 52.
However, I would seek now, and I feel it is important, if we had unanimous consent to have this debate tonight. I would ask the other parties if they would give unanimous for the debate to take place tonight where we could discuss this issue.
Request For Emergency Debate September 28th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, I rise to give notice under Standing Order 52(2) that I would request and seek leave for an emergency debate stated for Wednesday, September 28 to address the current situation with the CBC. This is a debate that is not focused at all on the issues of the management and negotiations that are ongoing. I do not believe that is an issue for us to be discussing.
However, what I feel is very important is the issue of the appropriateness of the CBC management unilaterally deciding to pull programming that was paid for by the taxpayer. My understanding is that $18 million a week in taxpayer money is being fed to CBC management and we are receiving no product in return.
This is a very important issue to be discussed right now for two reasons.
First, it is indicative of a lack of broadcast policy that we have in the country. There are serious questions being raised about the direction of the CBC and the direction of public broadcasting in Canada. I feel we have to be seen as taking action and taking a strong position.
The second issue, which is very important for me coming from a region isolated in the north and with a large francophone population, is that large sections of our country have been effectively cut out of the nation's business. They have no access to other sources of information. I feel this is completely unacceptable. This is a public corporation mandated by the people of Canada. Given its parliamentary appropriation it is obliged to respond to our concerns.
I would seek leave to have this debate tonight. I believe it is timely.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation September 27th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, seven weeks ago, CBC management unilaterally pulled the plug on the Canadian conversation. In doing so, they have undermined the credibility of the CBC, they have gambled recklessly with their audience base and they have reopened the debate about whether we need a national broadcaster at all.
Where is the heritage minister been on this file? She has been missing in action.
This is not about a labour battle. It is about a cultural policy adrift. This past summer, for example, the CRTC satellite radio decision overturned the fundamental principles of Cancon.
The minister and cabinet had the power to act but they did nothing while the airwaves were handed over to Nashville and Los Angeles. For God's sake, someone get the defibrillators. Our nation's cultural policy is on life support and an IV drip of Liberal platitudes will not bring the patient back.
Request for Emergency Debate September 26th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, tomorrow night, regardless of what happens with the discussions today, could we go to unanimous consent that this is an issue worth discussing by members of Parliament in an open debate?
Request for Emergency Debate September 26th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, under our Standing Orders I would like to request an emergency debate on the ongoing CBC lockout. It is not for us here in the House to raise the debate between management and staff in terms of the ongoing labour discussions, but I believe this lockout has raised a number of important questions that are being asked of MPs and in the media. I feel it is very important that we deal with this in the House now.
First of all there is the question of the appropriateness of CBC management withholding services that taxpayers have paid for. Questions have been coming up in the media about the future of the parliamentary appropriations and what is happening with those parliamentary appropriations. I think that discussion has to begin in the House now.
There is a question in terms of where we are going with our national broadcaster. This lockout has reopened a debate, a debate that many of us had thought was perhaps closed, a debate not just about the future of the broadcaster but even about the appropriateness of using federal funds to maintain a public broadcaster. I think it is important that we speak on it today.
As well, I think we have to talk now as we are six weeks into this lockout. We as MPs have to talk about it because we in a sense have an obligation as it is a public institution. We have an obligation to question the strategy publicly now because we are at a point where what is happening is a gambling with audience viewership, coming into the fall season, and a gambling with listenership.
As someone who represents a large rural riding, I do not believe people in the rural parts of my riding who have gone this long without CBC want this to continue. They are asking for direction from us as MPs.
I would like to have this debate because I think it goes back to the fundamental questions raised by the Lincoln report and the need for a coherent broadcasting policy in Canada and for us to take action on a coherent broadcast policy in Canada.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation September 26th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, that pretty much sums it up. The heritage minister cannot even stand up and talk about policies. Someone else has to do it.
Across Canada, Radio-Canada is the only service to the francophone community. By keeping quiet, the Minister of Canadian Heritage is holding the French-speaking people of Saskatchewan, Acadia and Northern Ontario hostage. This is unacceptable.
When is the minister going to do something?
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation September 26th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, the CBC lockout has been going on for six weeks and the only thing we have heard from the heritage minister is radio static. This is not about a labour dispute. It is about the government's lack of vision, the government's indifference to a fundamental Canadian institution, and most of all, the minister's unwillingness to stand up and fight for a coherent broadcast policy for Canadians.
My question is simple. Will the minister hold CBC management to account and insist on the delivery of services that Canadians have already paid for?
Civil Marriage Act June 28th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for taking the time to present his views tonight. We are coming to the end of a debate that for many of us has been a very hard debate, a debate that many of us have had to cross many long and hard roads in terms of our own personal views and where we come from. At times I do not think we have risen to the occasion. We have heard hyperbole and accusations on all sides, but this is a moment where we are moving forward as a Parliament.
I would make two observations. One, I do not know if this is as historic as people make it out to be, in that in Ontario this has been the law. Just a few months ago, 70 amendments pertaining to all the definitions surrounding marriage at the provincial level in Ontario were changed without comment. Perhaps 90% of the Canadian population are living in jurisdictions where this civil same sex marriage is legal. So I do not know if we are actually crossing the Rubicon for the first time. I think we crossed it a number of years ago.
In terms of my comment to the hon. member, I have appreciated the fact that we have debated here in the House of Commons on this issue, and I would point out, and I know it is definitely against protocol, that people who have very strong views on all subjects have sat in the gallery day after day. Their level of respect for the debate, and their patience and their willingness to listen, has sometimes been a little better than some of us here on the floor. I know I am never supposed to point out the people in the gallery, but at this time, as we are closing down the debate, we should recognize the people on all sides of the debate who have sat here day after day because they care about this issue.
Is it a question? No, Mr. Speaker, it is just a comment. Thank you.
Civil Marriage Act June 28th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, for many Canadians this is a contentious issue. We hold the idea of marriage as fundamental. Personally, my whole life I have seen it as a sacramental notion of marriage. When I talk with people in my riding who are very concerned about this issue, they are very much concerned about the infringement on our notion of the sacramental sense of marriage.
However, it seems to me that there has been a deliberate blurring of the distinction between the sacramental religious nature of marriage and the civil nature of marriage which exists in Canada today. For example, we have heard member after member state that marriage is procreative in nature. If we accept the sacramental basis of marriage, and I was married in a church based on that, I accept that.
When I hear members standing up saying if it is not procreative then it is not marriage, I would suggest what they are saying is that we are rewriting the civil laws of Canada. Then those who went before a justice of the peace would have to state that they were going to procreate, otherwise it would not be a real marriage.
There is another example I would offer the member. People get married at Blue Jays games. They get married jumping out of airplanes. They get married at the bottom of swimming pools in snorkelling outfits. It is not my idea of marriage, but it is a civilly defined understanding of marriage. I do not think that anybody in this House would stand up and say that members of Parliament have to regulate that.
Is the hon. member concerned that there has been a deliberate blurring of the legitimate religious notion of marriage and a very separate sense of civil marriage throughout this debate?
Civil Marriage Act June 27th, 2005
Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a few minutes to thank the hon. member for what I think is one of the finest speeches I have heard in this House on this issue. In particular, what struck me about the member's speech was the fact that he was speaking without the rhetoric and without the attacks that we have heard on this issue.
I also represent a rural riding. When an issue such as this comes up in a rural riding it is definitely contentious, but what I find people are more uncomfortable with than the issue of civil marriage is this false Manichaean divide that exists between the so-called enlightened and the so-called dark forces and the kind of bile and attacks that have been laid out in this campaign time after time. That is what people in my constituency are growing more and more uncomfortable with.
Like the hon. member, I have received hundreds of letters attacking and ridiculing people of faith who believe that civil marriage should go forward. They have attacked us because we are considered not religiously proper enough, which I find is a falsehood.
I could live with that because people are sincere and concerned and feel strongly about this, but what I have a hard time accepting is the sight of politicians standing up and treating themselves as paragons of moral virtue, lording it over us on how the family should be. Most families I know have a hard enough time getting by. In most families, people have agreed to marry their loved ones and have done it with the best of intentions. Some are undermined over the years and their marriages break up. Do we condemn those people? No, we do not. Do we say that their children are failures? No, we do not. Or do we say that if those families cannot have children they are failures? No, we do not.
Fundamentally, marriage is two people trying to build a relationship in the long term. This is what it fundamentally is. When I see politicians standing up and offering their example as something that we have to look up to morally, I find that very surprising, because at the end of the day I do not think this is a matter of one party having truth or not.
On this issue, I feel that as members of Parliament we came here all of us in good conscience, all of us having to come together, all of us having to vote, and at the end of the day it does not make someone better or worse for having made the decision.
I would like to ask the hon. member if he feels that at the end of the day the best we can do as parliamentarians is to vote according to how we think is best for moving this society forward.