Derek Lee

[Situation in Sri Lanka, February 4th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, we have had a good debate tonight in this emergency debate. I have a couple of things that I want to add to it.

I think there has been a kind of a victory here today in Ottawa. A lot of Canadians over the last few days have been demonstrating publicly in Canada to bring attention to this issue of civilians at risk in Sri Lanka. They have done it peacefully. Today they have come to Ottawa in large numbers and brought that issue to their Parliament and I would have to say they have successfully done that. Thanks to the Speaker and the seven members of Parliament who asked for the emergency debate today, that issue was actually put on the floor of the House.

I think we will succeed here as Canadians in shining a light on this very serious situation in Sri Lanka. The government of Sri Lanka may not like it. It may think that we are meddling, but this is a very serious human rights issue and I think we have every right, representing Canadians, to shine a light on the death, destruction and displacement now taking place in Sri Lanka as the government of Sri Lanka pursues its, arguably, legitimate military objectives, but not in a way that is consistent with our view of human rights.

I myself have had the opportunity to visit Sri Lanka, as have other members in the House. We are grateful for that. It is a beautiful place, scarred by this war.

I sent a letter on this issue to the high commissioner for Sri Lanka last November. I have not had a reply yet. I am sure in the fullness of time, he will grace us with a reply.

I held a forum in my riding less than a year ago involving Sri Lankan Canadians, those of Tamil origin, Sinhalese origin and the other minorities. It was a successful forum in which all those Canadians participated and discussed frankly these issues in Sri Lanka.

The second thing I want to say is regarding the battle that is going on there now, the military conflict. It might end the current phase of whatever is happening now, and it might even end the war, but it will not end the struggle in Sri Lanka for fairness, for equal rights and for respect for the minorities there. This struggle will always be there until it is achieved by the people together. Whether or not the violence ends now, sooner or later that sad but beautiful island must address the pressing issues of reconstruction, reconciliation and political accommodation. These are things that must happen in Sri Lanka. Whether one more drop of blood is shed there or not, or if more or less blood is shed, those goals and objectives, that reconciliation, must happen. It is not worth more bloodshed and suffering. Right now we look at the civilians there and we see the suffering. More bloodshed will not change any of that. It will not get us to those goals.

The debate in this House tonight has clearly shone a light on this very dire humanitarian situation. We have successfully done it as Canadians. We here in the House, if I take the sense of all of the speeches and sentiments expressed here tonight, are calling upon the government of Sri Lanka to accept and agree to engineer a ceasefire to protect innocent civilians and to begin the work of building an equitable peace in Sri Lanka.

[The Budget, January 29th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened carefully to the member's speech, and he has done a pretty good job of running through the index of measures in the budget. I am not sure he has actually completed the list; there are so many measures in this budget that one actually does need an index to go through it.

I am not sure that every measure in that budget is as stimulative in impact as the suggestion is here. Two items pop out.

The member could not resist his party's neo-con desire to give tax money back to the taxpayers. I am not so sure that economically that item is a stimulus. He could not resist mentioning it, which is okay.

However, there is a second thing I want to ask about. The member mentioned that the increase in the income tax personal amount would result in a tax saving to the lower-income Canadian taxpayer, but is it not a fact that the personal amount is claimed by every taxpayer, even the Prime Minister? The Prime Minister has a tax break that is similar to, or better than, the poor person's. I am going to ask the member why he did not mention that upper-income Canadians have tax breaks as good as, or better than, the one he has just somewhat myopically described.

Was it the government's intention to give a better tax break to the high-income earners than to the poor? That is exactly what this budget contains.

As for my party's alleged support for this budget, we are going to squeeze the budget through. We are going to make it fit. We are going to put the round peg through the square hole so that Canada benefits, but the government is on probation.

[Economic and Fiscal Statement, December 3rd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I acknowledge this was the member's maiden speech. I congratulate him at least on the form, if not the content.

I want to ask the member a few questions.

First, would he not acknowledge that the subject matter of the debate is not the reference to separatism? I acknowledge that the Conservative Party and government may be looking at desperate times and maybe this is the time for desperate measures on their part, but the subject matter we are looking at is the economy and Canadians, and the member has addressed that.

However, will he not acknowledge that the economic statement last week did not, in and of itself, address that, and that any big, major economic plan to address the financial tsunami now approaching Canadians is off in the future, in 2009 some time without any commitments from the government?

Will he not also acknowledged that this place is about Parliament and Parliament will decide who governs?

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, November 25th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the member for Churchill on her election and welcome her to the House.

I have a brief comment on her speech as it reflected on the throne speech.

It seems to me that our economy is almost certainly heading for a more conspicuous downturn than anything we have seen in the past. In fact, the throne speech was very much, in my view, an attempt to govern by looking into a rear-view mirror.

The Minister of Finance will tell us everything the government did last year, or the year before, or the year before that. We are looking at a serious economic issue here and some very serious fiscal stimulus needs to be directed into the economy by the government. The throne speech failed utterly to address that. It is imminent, and we will be going into our Christmas break in a couple of weeks.

Would the member care to comment on what I regard as a serious failure in the government's throne speech?

[Privilege, June 17th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, if I had my way, I would get the question called on this particular motion and let the House get back to debating legislation. I think the government wants to get on with Bill C-7.

With reference to our committees, colleagues have to recognize that Parliament, with the House of Commons as a political instrument, is at this point filled with four parties, not one of which has a majority. We are dealing with a minority House and things happen in the context of minority governments and minority houses that would not happen normally in a routine majority government scenario.

The fact that we have a couple of committees, and we have more than a couple now, which are not properly working is a function of the stalemate that exists to some degree in and around this House now.

The government is trying to get its agenda through. Opposition parties each have their own agendas. There is a lot of competition on those competing agendas and sometimes the clash and the pressure creates the gridlock.

The procedure and House affairs committee, the justice committee, and maybe one or two others are feeling the strain. I wish that were not the case and there may only be one solution, which is to go back to the people in an election. But because the committees themselves are not the fundamental components of our House of Commons, the House itself is, we are still able to meet here today.

We are still getting some business done and, as I say, the government would really like to get back to dealing with some legislation. We just have a few days left this week before the summer recess. I will stay here for the debate, hoping it will not go on forever and ever.

As a member of Parliament, I was placed in the position today by the Speaker's ruling of having to move a motion. I suppose I might not have moved any motion, but he did invite the movement of a motion. I crafted it and I hope--

[Privilege, June 17th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I think the Speaker firmly dealt with that in his ruling today in referring to Speaker Fraser's decision in 1991, but even if Speaker Fraser's decision did not exist, I would have thought it would be clear to all members that it is the House that decides on what the Standing Orders are, not a committee.

A committee is there as a referee from the House to deliberate, study, recommend and report and that is what the procedure and House affairs committee does. It is the normal practice of this place to refer such matters to that committee. It is a committee that is particularly well equipped to deal with these issues. The agriculture committee, for example, would not be a committee to which we would send a rule change.

I am even of the view that in normal times we should not adopt a rule change without first referring it to the procedure and House affairs committee. We should not do it just as a matter of practice, because making rules is sometimes a fairly delicate surgery. I could gather 10 or 20 MPs, have a chat and we could probably come to a conclusion, but not when it comes to rule making and the traditions of the House. For heaven's sake, even the Ethics Commissioner seemed to have missed the totally fundamental piece of our free speech privileges when she did her work, and she is very skilled as a lawyer. I think these things should go to the procedure and House affairs committee.

That is why in my motion today, even though we fixed the problem, I still say that we should refer the subject matter to the procedure and House affairs committee in the event it wants to take a look at it and report back. My motion uses the phrase “if necessary”.

In the end, this House absolutely and clearly has, and never did not have, complete and full jurisdiction on this floor, when the mace is sitting on the table, to make changes or rules for the operation of the House. We can also make laws for the country, but when we make rules for the House, we make them right here in this House and they do not have to go to a committee.

As an example, I believe the member for Crowfoot, who is an experienced member of the Conservative Party, has a motion as an item of private members' business that would have the House adopt a change to the Standing Orders. While I have already said that I do not think the House should coldly, blindly and on a summary basis make a rule change just like that without referring it to the committee or broadly consulting, the House clearly has the jurisdiction to do it and it did it last week.

I was the author of the motion, but I must say that before I moved it, I realized the significance of it and I consulted considerably with members opposite, members on this side, members of different parties. The table was fundamentally involved in assisting me in crafting the motion that was ultimately put before the House. I did that because I knew the complexity and importance of getting it right.

I am not sure all members in the House have a head for that kind of work, but I am one of quite a few members who take an interest in the rules of the House. I wanted to make sure I got it right and I worked very hard at doing my homework. The motion today was similarly crafted to not impose a stricture on the procedure and House affairs committee because it is not sitting, but at least give it the ability to deal with the issue if it feels so advised when it starts meeting again.

[Privilege, June 17th, 2008]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That relieves the Table and the Chair of sorting out that sticky point of order.

I thank my colleagues for allowing me an opportunity to address the House. I want to say three or four things.

First, I have an immediate response to the question put by the member for Windsor—Tecumseh, who questioned whether or not it was foreseeable that the procedure and House affairs committee would be able to deal with the matter being referred to it. The motion I moved was put in a kind of “if necessary” conditional mode, because we all realize that at this point in time the procedure and House affairs committee is not meeting given its inability to elect a chair.

The reason I put the motion in the conditional mode is that the House, as most of us will realize, has already fixed the alleged problem. It is not alleged any more.

There was a problem in the Standing Orders and the Conflict of Interest Code, flagged by us here and partly by the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, so in the supply day motion last week, we adopted a new wording, essentially an exception to the Conflict of Interest Code in terms of its definition of what an asset or a liability would be.

Therefore, because we have already fixed the actual problem in the Standing Orders, there is no actual need for the procedure and House affairs committee to take on the issue and fix it. What it might wish to do is review with the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner any related issues that have come up as a result of the rule change and any changes in procedure that perhaps should be there to assist members of the House in dealing with the kinds of issues that come up in conflict of interest, and those types of things.

Thus, if the procedure and House affairs committee actually never gets around to dealing with it in the next while, the referral from the House will still be there when it eventually gets traction. I am sure the Ethics Commissioner will want to provide some advice, if so advised, on these issues.

Because we had already fixed the problem last week, thanks to my party's decision to make this a supply day matter and thanks to the eventual vote adopting the change to the rules, I did not think there would be a huge amount of interest in pursuing too much debate on this. However, having embarked on this, and I thank my colleagues for allowing me the opportunity to speak at this particular point in time, there are two or three issues I want to put.

The first issue, as has been said so often here, including by the Speaker, is the fundamental nature of our free speech right and privilege in this House. What is a privilege or a free speech right for one member is a right for all members. I was slightly disappointed during the debate on the supply day motion on this very issue. I thought I would see more unanimity among members in supporting and promoting the free speech rights among members.

For partisan and political reasons, one never expects total support on anything around here, but I did expect to see more traction on that. In the end, it worked out just fine, but I would leave members with one question. What if, on this particular matter, in any old Parliament, there had been a majority government? Would the matter have been fixed? It is not clear.

We have to remember that in this particular circumstance, for better or for worse, we are in the context of a minority government where no one party dominates the House. Thanks to that, the apparent reluctance last week of many government members to fix the rules was displaced by the majority of the House. Some may call it the tyranny of the majority, others may now stand in fear of the tyranny of the minority; whatever, the House did very much freely and democratically decide to fix the problem and the rule.

I want to talk just a bit now about the problem, and it may add a little bit of understanding to how the problem has come about. The rules of conduct for members of Parliament and the conflict of interest rules have focused on the potential problem of members furthering their own personal interests when they do their public work as MPs. We thought the rules had nailed that down and fixed it, but the problem arose in this particular case when the commissioner, in looking at the definition of both an asset and a liability, because a private interest of a member can be an asset or a liability, she made it even more complicated. I do not object to her doing this because it was not unreasonable for her to do this, but she adopted into the definition of liability, the concept of a contingent liability.

For sake of discussion here, because I am going to point out something else in just a moment, if it is possible to import the term “contingent liability” and add it into the concept of liability, one could also have a potential asset.

I want to put on the floor here for the purposes of my remarks that the concept of having a potential asset and a contingent liability might, under the previous interpretation of our rules, have impaired the ability of members to speak and vote freely in the House. We all know that more than one member here has commenced a lawsuit. I believe the Prime Minister has commenced a lawsuit. I am not fully informed on that and I am sure members will correct me if I am wrong, but having commenced a lawsuit, the Prime Minister, as a member of the House of Commons having commenced the lawsuit, now has two things, I would suggest to the House. He has a potential asset in a recovery in that lawsuit and if it is a potential asset, then perhaps he should be recusing himself from voting or speaking on any of those issues in the House of Commons.

However, we have changed the rule now, but if the rule had stayed, I just put that question out there. Would the Prime Minister have become handicapped here as an MP, or would any other MP become handicapped because he or she commences a lawsuit and therefore has a potential asset?

The flip side of that is when one commences a lawsuit, one also has the possibility of losing a libel or slander lawsuit, a lawsuit for defamation. If one loses, the court system here in this country whacks the person up pretty good with legal costs, in fact, a lot of legal costs. Based on the old scale of solicitor and client costs, a loss in a libel or slander action could occasion hundreds of thousands of dollars of costs. That is a contingent liability, in my view. There is a possibility of a loss; there is a contingent liability. Even if one is suing in a lawsuit, let alone the issue of being sued in a lawsuit as a defendant, does one not have a contingent liability? If it is a contingent liability, based on the previous ruling of the Ethics Commissioner, we had a possible need to recuse and not speak. That could happen to any person on either side of the House.

The fix in the rules, the change we made last week, was intended to remove from that basket of issues the asset or liability, the personal interest where one has become a party to a lawsuit. The change in our rules referred to being a party in a lawsuit. It did not refer to being a defendant, or a plaintiff, or a third party, simply a party to a legal action.

I do not see anyone standing up and smiling and cheering here, but as of last week the circumstances that might have a member as a party to a lawsuit and therefore acquiring a contingent liability or a potential asset has been removed from the conflict of interest paradigm. I think we have fixed it.

I think I have answered the member for Windsor—Tecumseh. I have made reference to our ability to make the fix last week, possibly because we were in a minority government scenario and the votes necessary were there in the House. I say that on a fairly non-partisan basis, because I know there were members in parties on both sides of the House who truly had some questions and differences in relation to the motion that was ultimately adopted.

It is never an easy fix around here to get things through a House like that. It did happen and I think we should all be pleased by that outcome.

That would close my remarks and I thank my colleagues for that opportunity.

[Privilege, June 17th, 2008]

I suppose I could ask for unanimous consent that I be allowed the floor to speak to this motion. If there were unanimous consent, I would speak for a normal time.

[Privilege, June 17th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am not going to take too long on this point of order, but I had just finished saying to the House that this was not a very typical procedure. I was given the floor to move the motion. I read the motion and sat down. Then the Speaker called for debate. I did not rise, so I put it to you, Mr. Speaker, that I did not speak to the motion. I merely moved the motion.

While the Table looks for precedents to try to figure out where we are on that, I will ask you, when you have dealt with this point of order, and I do not expect you to deal with it immediately, if it is in my favour, that you will immediately allow me to make some remarks. I do have some things to say and it was not clear to me that there was going to be significant debate on this.

[Privilege, June 17th, 2008]

Not as the mover, Mr. Speaker. I moved the motion.