Derek Lee

[Law Commission Of Canada, October 19th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member in his remarks questions why we would be debating this bill today when as he suggests it is some kind of a done deal. He knows full well that the bill is not passed until it is passed.

I am sure the hon. member would not for the world miss an opportunity nor would his colleagues have missed the opportunity to take the time of the House and tell Canadians how undeserving and unworthy this bill was of support. Having taken all his time to do this, something he figures was not worth his time in the first place nor worth the time of this House, maybe he will not find it worth his time to reply to my question. We will see.

This bill which sets up this renewed law commission states very clearly in clause 6 that the commission is accountable through the minister to Parliament for the conduct of its affairs. That is a fairly clear statement, that this commission is accountable to Parliament. It is Parliament that will make decisions about changes in law.

I am wondering what his comment is, what he thinks about the very clear statement that this commission is accountable to Parliament and not anybody else. It is accountable to Parliament. Does he believe what is written in the law on which he will have a chance to vote?

[Corrections And Conditional Release Act, October 6th, 1995]

moved that Bill C-242, an act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the Criminal Code and the Young Offenders Act (improvement to public safety), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have this private member's bill reach the floor of the House of Commons. As members know it is not an item of Private Members' Business which will be voted on. We all know and believe, because we have to, that our Private Members' Business arrangements sometimes shine a light, point the way and give direction in the field of statutory and policy reform. If it does not happen here it is not going to happen anywhere.

My bill-perhaps I should not call it my bill because a lot of people, events and persons contributed to the bill-reflects six or seven years of experience in this House as a member of Parliament, regionally and nationally and more particularly the seven years I spent on the House of Commons justice committee. Some of the things in the bill actually evolve directly from that experience on the justice committee.

To be sure there continues to be flaws in Canada's criminal justice system. We all recognize that. The challenge is to find solutions and make corrections.

I am not one of those who would say that the whole system is in disrepute. I have a great deal of respect for the Canadian criminal justice system, notwithstanding some of the flaws that it has. Let us be honest, there is not a criminal justice system in the world which will not over time develop flaws and show need for change.

In the past year and half the government that I sit with proudly has made a number of changes in the criminal justice area. I will mention the Young Offenders Act, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the new sentencing act, amendments to the Criminal Code to deal with DNA testing and other areas and last but not least the institution of a new national crime prevention council.

The council recognizes that we have a long way to go, maybe forever. The business of reducing the potential for crime will go on forever. The business of addressing society's needs in a way that will reduce the propensity of our citizens to resort to crime will always be there and will go on.

Last night, by coincidence I guess, I had the opportunity of watching on one of our Canadian networks an interview with the French and Mahaffy families following the conviction of the accused Paul Bernardo for the murder and other crimes in relation to their daughters. Thanks to television and to those families, we were able to enter into the homes of these two Canadian families. I could not help but sense that the families were hoping for a reconciliation with Canadians to meet the challenges in their personal lives. I cannot imagine that had anything to do with why they agreed to do the interview.

I want to thank them for doing the interview and I hope that Canadians have been made aware of several things. It shows how vulnerable we all are in terms of public safety. We share our vulnerability to a psychopath or any criminal intimately with every one of our fellow citizens.

Last night's interview permitted Canadians to understand how important this area of law and policy is to all of us. I hope those families will forgive me for even attempting to suggest what they wanted to convey. I believe one area where we still have some reform ahead of us is the criminal justice area. I hope they would agree.

There are still reforms that we must address. The bill before us today is a short list. It is not comprehensive. It contains six areas of reform. I am going to walk through it now. I believe it is fair to say that not every element of the six areas will have universal support. That is rarely the case when one tries to make a change in the criminal justice system. However, I would like to think that there

is a sizeable consensus that this list is just part of the reforms still out there for us to accomplish.

The first item is the denial of statutory release for serious, repeat offenders. A serious repeat offender in this case is a person who while on any form of early release, has been convicted of an offence for which that person has been sentenced to five years or more. The subsequent second offence which would result in the denial of early release is certainly a serious offence. It would have drawn a sentence of five years or more.

I am not being particularly aggressive in this. In April 1993 the standing committee on justice reported through its 14th report and recommended that the sentence for the subsequent offence be set at two years. It is the same recommendation of denial of parole and early release but the threshold was two years. In my bill I have selected five years.

I hope I will not be accused by anyone of wimping out. The Liberal Party of Canada in May and August of the same year adopted the report of the justice committee as part of its criminal justice policy package. The House of Commons justice committee unanimously endorsed the provision and referred it to the House. The Liberal Party of Canada adopted the entire justice committee report. At the moment that recommended reform has not yet been adopted.

One of the most glaring examples of why reform is necessary is the case of the conviction of Albert Foulston in Edmonton for the murder of a police officer in 1990. This person has had 48 separate convictions so it is fair to call him a convict. This convict was in prison serving a sentence of approximately 10 years. I do not know whether anybody really knew exactly how the 10 years was composed because the sentencing mathematics contained in the Criminal Code and in the CCRA are very complex. In any event, he was released.

On several occasions while he was on early release he committed other offences. I will not go through the list. It is part of the public record elsewhere. While on early release for the umpteenth time he participated in the killing of an Edmonton police officer for which he was fairly promptly sentenced to 20 years.

The sentence calculation resulted in his total sentence looking like 30 years because it was consecutive. However, because of the way we calculate sentences, he was eligible for parole one year and five months after he was convicted of the murder. With his life sentence he was eligible for parole one year and five months after he was convicted of murder. That is absurd. The absurdity has been recorded in public journals.

One is moved to say that the system is obviously in some disarray. I will leave that as an example of why the existing provision must be changed.

My bill says that if a person is on early release and is convicted of a crime and sentenced to two years or more that person loses the right to early release.

I accept that there must be at the end of the consecutive sentences a period when the offender will be integrated. That has to be in the statutory release portion because I do not want that guy being released at the end of 30 years and sitting on the Bay Street bus the next day beside my kids. I want a period of integration.

The bill would close a loophole which allows offenders to avoid serving time for new offences if those new offences occur while they are on early release or even while they are in prison. If a person is sentenced to seven years for a particularly bad crime and during the fifth year that person gets out, beats somebody up and steals his money, that would normally draw a sentence of a couple of years. The way the law is currently written it requires that person to start the two years back at the beginning of the seven year sentence.

I am not going to take time to read that section of the Criminal Code. It is a public statute and anybody can read it. They can read the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and the appropriate section of the Criminal Code.

Basically the second offence is what I had call a freebie. There is no sanction. You can steal a car, steal a purse, commit an assault, and provided of course that the sentence for the second offence does not exceed the length of the sentence you were first on, you do not have to serve any additional time. This needs to be corrected.

We tried in the House in the last Parliament, I know we tried in this one, and we are getting closer. We have made amendments, but officials seem to be reluctant to alter the system too much, because every time you change a sentence calculation it costs money, and they do not have the money in their budgets. They are very cautious about making changes to the way we sentence people and keep people in our correctional institutions. I accept that.

In any event, I am still on the case and many of our colleagues in this House are still on the case and we are slowly getting to those reforms.

The third area is the lowering of the age of criminal responsibility from age 12, where it is now, to age 10. That has been misinterpreted in a lot of quarters. People ask how you can throw the Criminal Code at a little 11-year-old. That is not the objective, any more than it is the objective to throw the book at the 13-year-old or the 14-year old. What we have done in this country is arrange for intervention into the life of a young offender when they are under 18 years of age. What this does is allow the appropriate intervention for a 10-year-old or 11-year-old. At present there is no intervention.

I remember in the last Parliament, the day before I introduced a similar provision in private members' business was the day of that unfortunate killing in Great Britain where the two 11-year-old boys were involved. If that had happened here in Canada there would have been no intervention. In some provinces there would have been a social worker, but no Young Offenders Act. The social worker procedures vary from province to province. This would allow intervention at an early age, the same way we intervene for all young offenders.

The fourth area is a provision that deals with the community scourge of crack houses. Municipalities are crying out for some way to deal with this. I suggest the solution is to redefine what we call a disorderly house or a bawdy house in the Criminal Code and allow the same procedures that communities use to deal with bawdy houses and disorderly houses, where there are procedures to deal with what we call found-ins and procedures to deal with landlords. There is nothing else out there. It is a simple amendment, and many communities I know would want to take advantage of it to deal with crack houses.

Fifth is stiffer bail provisions for two categories of cases, where you have people out on bail or on peace bonds committing other offences. This proposal deals with being on bail or on a peace bond and committing an offence on the peace bond or committing another driving offence while on bail for a driving offence. There are very serious implications for the public to have a drunk out driving again when he or she is on bail on a driving offence. To reverse the onus in the bail does not mean they do not get bail; it means that it is up to them to show the judge why they should be released. The onus or the burden of proof changes in terms of entitlement to bail.

Last is a matter that has been discussed publicly. It would allow victims of sexual assault to have the blood of the accused tested only under a judge's order and in such a way that the evidence of the blood test would not be used against them in the trial. This provides something for the victim to make sure that he or she has not been infected with many of the sexually transmitted diseases that are out now. There are half a dozen of them. Some of them are lethal. We have to have some compassion for victims where you make a prima facie case in front of a judge and the judge says there will be a blood test. In this way the victim can be assured, as best we can using the medical testing we have, that he or she has not been infected with one of these STDs.

Those are the six parts. I have had a lot of help preparing this, first from my constituents, who have given me a lot of latitude here in Parliament to deal with a lot of issues. I hope the bill reflects their concerns. I received a lot of help from Canadians. I will mention some of the people with whom I have had contact over the last few years: Margot Blackburn, who has gone public, Priscilla de Villiers, who has gone public, Mrs. Mahaffy, the Rosenfeldts, and others. These people have all been direct or indirect victims who want to see change. I have also spoken to public interest groups, Victims of Violence, CAVEAT, the Canadian Centre for Victims of Crime, financed by the Canadian Police Association.

I am grateful to my colleagues in this House for their continuing support. Sooner or later, I hope these initiatives will bear fruit.

[Witness Protection Program Act, October 5th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have a few moments to speak to Bill C-78, the source witness protection program bill.

There are two or three perspectives I thought I would like to touch on. My colleagues have touched on most of the technical aspects of the bill and all parties in the House are apparently supporting it. Therefore there is nobody really nibbling at the corners. I am certainly not going to do that. It is a good bill, as has been recognized by colleagues.

There are two or three perspectives that should be brought out in discussion. I want first to pay some tribute to police officers across the country who over the past many years have informally provided protection for witnesses. They have done it in many ways, often not at taxpayers' expense.

This is something that has not been recognized very much in the history of law enforcement in Canada and North America. It was very real over the past decades when no public moneys were formally available to protect witnesses that police officers had to use their cars, their garages, their basements, freebies from the motel outside town, and all kinds of different devices to make sure the witness who was scared to death got a chance to get into the courtroom, give the evidence, get out and survive in the face of great risks. I pay tribute to all those policemen, many of whom were Mounties. This was not confined just to the federal police force but also to provincial and municipal forces across the country.

That history is not written; it is all unwritten. It is anecdotal now to the extent that these policemen and former policemen get a chance to talk about it. It is an unwritten part of our Canadian criminal justice history. I wanted to note it here and pay tribute to the many who made the system work.

Starting in 1984 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police began a witness protection program that provided some kind of framework for witness protection albeit not recognized in statute. That was in the face of the growing threat from organized crime which developed post-war. Also as was mentioned earlier, there were threats from individuals who while they might not have been part of an organized crime group apparently were not prepared to stop at anything in trying to preclude their conviction.

There have been many bad stories in relation to that as part of our criminal justice history but there have also been many good stories. With the growth and public knowledge of the availability of a witness protection program in many parts of the world, there began to be some confusion about what a witness might be entitled to have: a free bus ride, a free taxi ride, a free room or some accommodation, money, protection and a new identity.

Over time the field became more and more confused. It was not so much on the part of the police, as they were simply doing their very best to deliver evidence to the courtroom door for the prosecutors. It was more so for the witnesses who from time to time and place to place became confused about exactly what the protection was composed of.

Some witnesses were more accommodating than others; some wanted more than others. It became more difficult for the police to manage. There might often be cases where when the process was over, the evidence had been given hopefully ending in a successful prosecution, witnesses felt they did not have the protection they thought they were to have. Maybe they made it difficult for the police involved. Maybe they went to the local newspaper, the local media. It became confusing and embarrassing for some. Something had to be done.

The first positive signs I saw in the House was the research and the bill produced by our colleague, the member for Scarborough West. That was quite a credible exercise. A private member's bill was passed in the House at second reading and referred to the justice committee. At about that point in time the Ministry of the Solicitor General indicated it would want to have a bill similar in nature. Our colleague essentially acquiesced and the solicitor general has presented the bill which apparently has support from all sides of the House.

The last perspective I want to address very briefly is that the bill will help us better manage the safe streets policy the Liberal Party has adopted. It will better manage the costs. The program will be codified. It will probably show up as a cost item in the estimates and the parliamentary authorizations as a specific category rather than being buried as it was in part previously.

The bill will help us better manage what we are doing in the safe streets policy. It will result in better prosecutions. The crown attorneys will know what the infrastructure will be for their witnesses if there has to be a witness protection program extension. It will result in better criminal procedure, a better understanding both on the part of witnesses and the people who manage the witness protection program of what they have to deliver.

It is a three-way street. We have the public that wants to see the benefits of a better managed system. We have the witnesses who need to know what they can expect, who will know what they have the right to ask for and require in terms of protection. It will assist the police better in knowing what the deliverables should be and what the deliverables are, both to the crown which is gathering the evidence and to the witness.

I congratulate both the solicitor general and the hon. member for Scarborough West for their contributions in this regard.

[Committees Of The House, October 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 10th report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs, being the first report of the subcommittee on national security.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) the committee has agreed to the first report of the subcommittee on national security on the subject of document and personnel security.

Pursuant to Standing Order 109 the committee requests a comprehensive response to the report within 150 days.

[Point Of Order, September 20th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I passed written notice to you that during question period at approximately 2:40 p.m., if my eyes did not deceive me and I do not have a videotape, it appeared to me that a stranger entered the House and spoke with the hon. member for Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup at his desk in the front row. If my eyes did not deceive me, this would be a very serious breach of the rules and traditions of the House. Under Standing Order 14 either I or one of my colleagues who witnessed this could have risen at that time during question period with an appropriate motion in relation to strangers but we did not, given the fact that it was an interesting question period.

I put the matter to you now. I place the matter in your hands to clarify as you see fit, keeping in mind that if it did occur the way I saw it this would be a very serious breach of the House's rules and traditions.

[Firearms Act, June 12th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to be recorded as voting against Motion No. 227 as well.

[Immigration Enforcement Improvement Act, May 12th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to this private member's bill introduced by the hon. member for Cambridge.

One of the things that makes Canada so great is the make-up of its population. People have come to Canada from all over the world, including those who came hundreds and hundreds of years ago over the land bridge from Asia.

However, as delightful and as strengthening as all of that is, there are a very small minority of immigrants from time to time within the country who refuse to take the benefit of and contribute to this longstanding tradition. Those relatively very few people break our laws and victimize our citizens. Some of these people are dangerous. This is unacceptable. Our country must deal with that very small group of people.

The hon. member's bill focuses on that very small number of immigrants or others who come into this country illegally and have committed serious criminal offences, sometimes violent. This bill distinguishes the criminals from the overwhelming majority of law-abiding immigrants.

I attended the CAVEAT Safety Net Conference this past September in Hamilton, Ontario. The conference was composed of leading justice reform and community activists as well as victim advocacy groups and persons from many other disciplines. The main goal of this conference was to put together draft legislation and public policy that would improve the safety of every Canadian. This bill takes into account many or some of the concerns raised at that conference.

The bill would do the following. It permits a criminal court to order the removal of a non-citizen convicted of an offence punishable by 10 years or more. It would accelerate the deportation process that already exists today. Currently deportation orders can only be issued by immigration officials. However, this bill would authorize criminal court judges to issue deportation orders at the time of sentencing and obviate the need for a second deportation step procedure.

The bill would not apply to anyone who arrived in Canada prior to reaching the age of 16 with some provisos.

Canadian laws have always recognized that serious criminality should have the consequence of removal from this country. The bill aims to improve the procedure under which violent and serious offenders are deported. Offenders will be required to serve at least a portion of their sentence in Canada in order to ensure that fundamental justice from the perspective of Canadians will be served.

The bill also provides for the removal by a court order of foreign offenders, that is non-citizens and persons illegally here, to their country of origin if reciprocal conditional release provisions exist in that country.

I should bring a few background facts to the attention of the House. The current state of immigration procedures reveals that approximately 40,000 to 50,000 persons-a layman's guess based on publicly available information-remain in the country in violation of the terms of their admission or for whom arrest warrants have been issued. That includes people who have been ordered deported.

Of this huge number, about 70 per cent are in the metro Toronto area. Many of those individuals will already have left the country on their own accord without checking in. Their names should not be on the system any more but we do not have a viable way of checking people out. There are about 2,000 warrants for people who have been ordered deported due to their criminal conduct.

We have a relative shortage of immigration officials. We have a great number of other government tasks we must do across this huge country and the people who are there are doing their best to manage our immigration laws and procedures.

In short, the bill would take the current two step procedure of conviction and deportation and combine them into one for serious offences, not for minor criminal offences.

In a private member's bill intended to amend existing legislation, as my hon. friend opposite has pointed out, there are always some procedural and substantive issues which arise. We in the House realize that. The procedure today is to adopt the bill in principle and refer it to a committee. My friend opposite has mentioned a number of things which will have to be looked at in this bill. I do not agree with everything on his list, but he has hit most of the hot buttons.

I would want colleagues to look closely at the application of this bill to the dependents of deportees. In addition, there would have to be some procedural preparation for criminal court judges to enable them to handle this type of procedure in the sentencing procedure at the end of a criminal trial. That needs some work as well. I know that colleagues on the citizenship and immigration committee will be able to do exactly that if the bill is adopted and referred by the House.

All of this would only happen with the co-operation of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, which I hope the hon. member for Cambridge will have. I would like to congratulate him on putting forward a private member's bill which addresses a procedural need. I hope it will fill the arguable procedural void

which exists now, the arguable duplication procedure which exists now, and that at the end of the day we will have a good and fair procedure, one which is efficacious for the intended purpose.

[Supply, May 11th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, this country has some of the most advanced access to information legislation in the world. I did not arrive in this place until 1988 but I did sit on committee with the chair of the committee who played a great role in the report referred to by the hon. member.

I believe there is a role to expand the ambit of access to information. By the same token I am sure the member opposite will agree there are some areas of government that simply are not conducive to full and complete access.

Where do we draw the line? Which agencies will be accessible via open access to information and which will be on the schedule as not being fully open to access? Even agencies that are on the schedule and cannot be accessed completely and comprehensively provide information with exclusion, for example, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. Many others will provide information with some exclusions.

Parliament has never been bound by access to information statutes or privacy statutes. Parliament in my view never did bind itself. Members need not feel restricted by those statutes. If a committee of Parliament wants access to an area of government, there are no restrictions on Parliament's ability to access them. That is something of which all members should be aware. These powers have been given to us historically over the past centuries. If members want the information, they have the ability on the floor or at committee to get that information. For heaven's sake, use it.

[Supply, May 11th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I had the pleasure of raising this question about two weeks ago. I asked a similar question of a former prime minister who was prime minister here for many years. I thought I could get a crisp answer. He gave a good answer but it did not help us at all. It does not have the easy answer.

Each MP sitting on a committee is part of a party. Members realize that they got elected as part of a party in many cases. When some direction comes from the team captain, they listen carefully.

I have found in my experience that as one gets experience in parliamentary work and as committees get experience and build up a sense of cohesion, a policy base and a policy focus, its members are more confident in the views they may take and put forward. As to questions that have come up at committee where there has been some tilt from the executive

part of government, I can honestly say that I have seen these things go both ways.

I remember on one committee a few years ago, I had to wait a whole year to get through a resolution on a matter where the government absolutely did not want that to happen. In the end colleagues on the committee on the government side saw the right way, acquiesced and it went through. That matter is still a matter for this Parliament. It is in the pipeline.

It is a matter of generating the self-confidence and the knowledge in the field. It is a matter of MPs themselves making the right decisions in committee, taking into account their team responsibilities and the public policy interests that may be involved in a question. In the end, there is no simple answer.

[Supply, May 11th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I must say at the outset that I certainly would never take a view as pessimistic of the role of Parliament and the work of the new Liberal government as my friend opposite has. Perhaps we simply see things from different sides of the House.

I can assure my constituents and other colleagues in the House who would care to listen that my experience in Parliament is much more positive than my friend articulates. Again, by another dimension of measurement, my experience in Parliament is much more satisfying and fulfilling to me, to

Parliament, and I hope to my constituents than was my experience in the last Parliament.

Hopefully we can continue to make things better. To be sure, things are not yet ideal. All of us in the House are working to improve the way the House represents Canadians in debate and in the generation of legislation and in that other area, which often goes unnoticed in the House, the area of delegated legislation; the field of creation of statutory instruments and regulations.

The government has made great strides in fulfilling our red book commitments for a more open and accountable process based on fair play and other principles that they know Canadians will endorse. We have made a commitment in the red book to review the appointment process to ensure that necessary appointments are made on the basis of competence, not political affiliation or other criteria.

My friend opposite has listed a number of appointments and made reference to their relationship and affiliation with the Liberal Party. He failed in almost every instance to make reference to the abilities of those individuals.

As the Prime Minister has said, and I support him wholeheartedly on this, one is never going to be prejudiced from serving in a part time or full time position for the Government of Canada just because the person happens to be a Liberal.

We promised accessibility and transparency. I accept that things do not necessarily happen overnight around here. One does not simply push a button and get exactly what one wants. But the process has been in place for over a year and we have produced some excellent results.

We also undertook to examine the size and relevance of existing boards and commissions to achieve cost savings and to fill the remaining vacancies in relation to some of these agencies, boards, and commissions by way of an improved appointment system. The first step to establish an efficient appointment system was by means of a thorough review of the agencies. More than 350 agencies, boards, and commissions were examined, which involved 500 full time positions and 2,000 part time positions.

As a result of the review, 30 per cent of federal boards, agencies and commissions have been wound up or streamlined. Wound up means gone. We want to eliminate overlap, duplication, and to simplify government. Again, this is easy to say, tougher to do. We are still working on it. We will continue to wind up those agencies that no longer serve a purpose. This agency review has improved the accountability regime for governor in council appointments, and this enables the government to manage these agencies more effectively.

The second part of this process, after streamlining the agencies and reducing the number, was to improve the appointment process. There also the government has done a thorough review of the process. We want to make it more open and accessible.

The role that boards and agencies are expected to play is clear and appropriate. When that is the case it is possible to be more precise in identifying the qualifications needed by appointees. This in turn permits improvements in the recruiting process. In this respect the government has made changes in the process for these appointments, always keeping in mind accessibility, transparency and confidence.

The appointment process has been made more open and transparent through the advertisement of vacancies for full time GIC positions in the Canada Gazette . I know a lot of Canadians do not wake up with the Canada Gazette on their doorstep, but it is one instrument that publicizes for the public record all these openings and is disseminated across the country, including to all the libraries on the list. All these openings are advertised there. People who have an interest will be able to find out when the vacancies come open.

In order to place the advertisements it is necessary to develop job profiles that contain job descriptions and selection criteria. In those notices there are references to job descriptions and selection criteria. All federal agencies are required to provide job profiles and these same selection criteria for full time fixed positions. The selection criteria are then used to find the most competent people to fill these positions.

The advertisement of vacancies in the Canada Gazette generates a greater pool of candidates and contributes to better appointments. Interested individuals send their CVs either to the agency or to the minister's office. Some people even send it to the Prime Minister's office. At the end of the day these resumes and CVs end up in one pile. Each CV is then evaluated in accordance with the established selection criteria.

This particular process has been in place for nearly a year. As I say, it was not in place when we first took over government. It may be some time before all of the wrinkles and variations in the process are fully dealt with. The improvements have begun. I can testify to that.

As a Liberal member of Parliament in the last Parliament I sat in opposition and watched the appointment process as it was. While on the opposition benches we noted what we regarded as deficiencies in the process. We did not have much impact on it.

In this Parliament we have made a change in the process. What is remarkable to me is that after nine years on the opposition benches and as a person active in Liberal politics, having ended the nine year mandate of the previous government, I have had more than one Liberal come to me and

question me as to why it is not possible for Liberals to get appointed to agencies, boards and commissions.

To be sure there are many Liberals being appointed. People I have worked with in the party have taken note of the fact that being a Liberal and just being there is no longer the way one gets appointed to an agency, board or commission. One has to have the competence. I have passed that message on to many. It is a change from what has happened in the past, going back five or 10 years.

The other part of the motion today has to do with parliamentary reform. It is a subject I have always taken a great interest in. I have said to my spouse and friends that I would be willing at the appropriate point in time to lay my career on the altar of parliamentary reform. I have not had to do that yet.

Parliament is changing. It is reforming. This government made a commitment to be a part of the reform process. I have to point out something that is very fundamental in understanding what drives parliamentary reform. It is almost impossible for a government to say that it will and that it does take full responsibility for parliamentary reform. A government does not own Parliament. A government does not at all times of the day drive Parliament. Parliament belongs to its members and through them to the electorate of Canada.

People must realize that this Parliament is a distinct branch of government, distinct from the executive. The lay person who has not spent time around the House of Commons or who has not studied it in great detail in high school or university might miss some of the more obvious distinctions between the executive branch of government and Parliament.

Let me record my perception that there is a huge difference. If Parliament is to be what Canadians expect it to be, it is important for members of Parliament and Canadians to understand that distinction and to understand what drives Parliament and parliamentary reform.

The government has gone on record as wanting to play a role in the restoration of confidence in Parliament and confidence in government. The government can take care of the government but it is those of us in Parliament who have to take the responsibility for Parliament.

It has to be pointed out as well that all ministers of the government sit in Parliament. I hope that their focus when they sit here is as much parliamentary as it is governmental, but I accept that from time to time a minister's role is to account to Parliament for the management of his or her portfolio. The ministers will not, by the nature of their work, be fundamentally involved in driving parliamentary reform.

In any event, from the point of view of the government this is just not talk. We started with parliamentary reform very early in our mandate. In January 1994 we introduced quite significant rule changes to open up the parliamentary decision making process.

The objectives of the reform were to make Parliament more relevant and to consult and work with MPs more in the day to day decisions of government so that MPs would have a greater impact on those day to day decisions. We have to keep in mind that outside of Parliament there is a vast public service which is loyal and operates 99.9 per cent of the time within the law in accordance with the mandate which comes to it by statute or by policy. We also wanted to give MPs a greater role in influencing legislation as it developed.

That is what the government said it wanted to give Parliament. I would like to repeat that it is not as much for the government to give than it is for MPs to take. The history of this place includes the history of all the British Parliaments. Over time, parliamentarians have given their lives to ensure there was a Parliament which would work. We in this country are the beneficiaries of that history. All of us ought to subscribe to the philosophy where we accept the burden of making Parliament work and take the obligation to reform it to make it vital and responsive to Canadians.

We made four changes in the rules of this place at the behest of the government. Committees of the House, which are a very vital part of Parliament, may now draft bills. Those are not just words. That was done.

Bill C-69 was drafted in committee. I sat on that committee. It was a tedious exercise. It is one which MPs are not used to, to actually meticulously draft a bill. We needed a lot of help but we got it done. It was a big job and there is room for more of that in this Parliament.

Bills can now be referred to a committee before the second reading vote. That is the point in time when Parliament approves a bill in principle. By referring it to a committee before the second reading vote, before approval in principle, it provides the committee with much more latitude to make changes or additions to the bill. The committee is not bound by the principles articulated in the bill which would have been adopted at second reading.

That is a very important change. We have already seen the benefit of it several times in this Parliament, including the Marine Transportation Security Act, the amendments to the Lobbyists Registration Act and the amendments to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. I sat on that particular exercise and found it useful. There are a couple of other bills coming into the House where we believe colleagues may be so disposed as to refer them to committee before second reading.

Two of these are Bill C-62 and Bill C-84. My experience is that this is a very useful device.

Standing committees of the House will have the power to look at the department's future spending priorities. If there is one area of work in Parliament where I think Parliament and the government has let Canadians down it is in the review of the estimates. It is an institutional fault. The estimates procedure as it has evolved over many years has left this House almost functionless in carefully reviewing government's proposed expenditures.

The new rules turn the tide and provide another area of work for MPs. As a member of Parliament, I cannot say that MPs have taken up the challenge. The process is just beginning and the proof will be in the pudding. I do not know where it will end up. However, if MPs do not take the challenge and work with the new procedures, then we may be seen to have been as ineffective under the new rules as we were under the old rules. That is something which is coming down the pipeline. I for one will watch it closely and do my best to make the system work.

The finance committee was given the power to report on the budgetary policy of the Government of Canada. That was a specific mandate given to a specific committee. There is some historical precedent for that.

There used to be a committee and I think it was called the committee of the whole but it was not the committee in the House. It was a standing committee that used to review all of the estimates and put its stamp of approval on it at the very end. That ended about the time John Diefenbaker ended his career here. He was one person who regretted the demise of that particular committee and procedure. In any event, we are making an attempt to get back to focusing on government expenditure policy in the one committee. At least one committee will make some macroeconomic comment on it, if I can put it that way.

The last thing has to do with Parliament's right and ability to require disclosure from Canadians. In this place we call it the power to call for persons and papers. It basically consists of requiring people to attend, give answers to questions and produce documents much like the power a subpoena would have.

There are a number of things developing in this Parliament where we will have an opportunity as a House to reconfirm the rights and authorities that we have as a Parliament to require disclosure. Over the last decades we have not used it. We have accepted an ill advised view of the executive branch of government that we really do not have those powers. However, we do. Parliament does and at the end of the day we may exercise them at committee and on the floor the House.

I hope when these parliamentary tests both in the House and in the other place come up this year or next, MPs will make the right decision to confirm those powers which have been passed on to us over a number of generations of parliamentary history. It is a challenge and I hope my colleagues will not let us down. I am sure they will not, but the challenge will not be here until it gets here. I invite MPs to play a role in that vital element of parliamentary reform when it gets here.