Derek Lee

[Taste of Asia Street Festival, May 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, this year, the sixth annual Taste of Asia Street Festival will take place in Markham, Ontario on June 28 and 29 on my riding boundary.

This annual event is co-hosted by the Federation of Chinese Canadians in Markham, the town of Markham, the Association of Progressive Muslims of Ontario and with the cooperation of the Canadian Federation of Intercultural Friendship.

Last year, the event was attended by over 50,000 persons over two days and this year they are expecting an even bigger crowd. Activities during the festival will include cultural performances, food offerings, sports, community displays and outreach.

Right here on Parliament Hill, all members of the House are cordially invited to attend the Ottawa launch of the sixth annual Taste of Asia this afternoon in room 237-C in the Centre Block. This large and growing South Asia Week event is honoured to share its pride and vitality with Ottawa and Canadians on Parliament Hill.

We look forward to seeing everyone there as we help kick off this remarkable event.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, May 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-33 this afternoon as we are nearing the end of debate at third reading and final passage.

The bill has received fairly normal treatment through its early stages, through committee and then reported back to the House, but then something interesting happened. The spotlight of the world was turned on food commodity prices. It looked like we had a very significant spike in the pricing of many world food commodities.

Some of the people looking at those spikes in prices speculated that it was possible that the new market for biofuels, which requires the production of some agricultural commodities, was part of the reason that the prices of the commodities were being bid up.

It is certainly possible that is and was the case and it may be the case in the future, but, in my view, there is a very tenuous line between that circumstance and the need for passage of this legislation.

I will say right off the bat that while the bill deals with the regulation of biofuels in the sense that it defines them and purports to give over to the government, from Parliament, regulatory authority to manage and regulate biofuels as a new commodity in the marketplace, which needs some regulation, there are very few standards in the industry. I will note that ethanol has already found its way into our fuel supply. I can think of at least one gasoline refinery and retailer who have up to 10% of their fuel as ethanol. At the present time these standards are being managed by the fuel companies.

The bill indicates a need to have the regulatory tools and instruments to define and regulate the industry, where needed, in the public interest.

The real issue being raised by the hon. member for British Columbia Southern Interior is the whole issue of a biofuels policy, not the regulation of whatever component of the industry may need regulation. At root is his suggestion, although he did not put it this way, and perhaps his party's position on the bill, that we have a clash in public policy terms between food for humanity or killing the planet with greenhouse gases, or something in between.

I suggest to the House that we are not there yet. I suggest that we can grow lots of food for humanity, while, at the same time, deal with our greenhouse gas challenges. We also may be able to use some biofuels to offset the need for fossil fuels in some sectors in some countries, as is already happening.

The real issue for the House and in the bill is the ability of the government to regulate biofuels policy, not necessarily to push biofuels nor to do it in a way that bids up the price of food commodities on world markets or even Canadian markets, but simply to regulate it as a consumer and industrial commodity in the public interest.

If we were to have half a dozen different types of ethanol and half a dozen different types of fuel, the consumers with a car or the truckers with a truck may not know what fuel that would be putting in the fuel tank. In order to get maximum efficiency, we need to match the fuel with the engine that is being used.

In the absence of regulatory tools, the government will not be able to refine what those things are. It may not be able to say that it is 5%, 7% or 10% or that it is called such and such and only goes into a certain type of engine.

I read last week that some truckers in some places were running around buying cooking grease from restaurants for their trucks. Maybe it works but I would not use it in my car. I can just imagine what it does to the truck engines or the environment when it is being burned. I am sure everyone will accept that there is a need for the government to have the tools it reasonably requires to regulate this particular market price.

I must say a few words about food commodity prices because it is that circumstance that has caused many environmentalists, observers around the world and people in this Parliament to pause, have a look at this bill and perhaps even reconsider positions. I do not know whether the party of the hon. member who spoke earlier is changing its position or not but it is clear that this globe that has six to seven billion people on it needs a lot of food every day.

The recent interest in food commodity pricing was not displaced. There were huge increases and still are increased pricing for rice, corn, wheat, barley, oats, vegetables, fruit, fish and pork. Somebody approached me last week looking for pork in Canada for a region of China that has a shortage of pork. The individual was interested in developing a supply chain for that purpose.

What is happening is that countries that we used to think of as lesser developed countries are now developing very rapidly in Asia. They are consumer nations. They are out there bidding on all commodities and they have every right to do that because they have billions of people to feed and they need to get food at the best prices. However, if there are too many bidders for a limited food supply, the price will go up. This is a concern around the world for people of limited means, poor people or people who might go hungry because they cannot afford food. We need to keep our eye on that.

It is probably a fact that there is absolutely nothing in this bill that would bid up the price of food or cause the price of food to be bid up. The bill does not mandate that there be any biofuels produced. It will, in a sense, follow the marketplace if biofuels are produced and if the market needs biofuels. If the government wishes to encourage biofuels, it will have the tools to regulate it but the bill itself does not encourage, promote or trigger biofuel production in any direct or visible way.

I will give the example of corn, which the hon. member mentioned earlier. It is a good one. Corn is a major crop in the western hemisphere. Our American neighbours produce a whole lot of corn. I think at some point the American government is or was paying its producers to not produce corn because there was so much of it. It is likely that a corn producer will not grow a crop if he or she cannot sell it. However, that may vary in the United States. If there is a subsidy to produce and it is produced because there is a subsidy, the country may end up with a whole supply of surplus corn. In Canada, however, I do not think a farmer will produce corn if he or she is not able to sell it. Right now, for the most part, it is sold for food in various ways or for components in food. However, there is a biofuel industry here now and some of our corn does go into that.

I could perhaps say it best this way. If we had a growing biofuel industry and a particular farmer wished to produce a corn crop for that, why would we want to do anything to prevent that? Surely nobody in here is saying that there is anything wrong with growing corn. If there were to be an additional corn supply grown here and put into the marketplace, at whatever price, including higher prices, induced by higher prices even, that would not be a bad thing.

What might be bad are two things. First, if the promotion of biofuels were to cause the diversion of human food into a biofuel production and take food off the marketplace that would otherwise have gone into somebody's mouth, that would not be a good thing.

The second thing that would be bad is if the biofuel manufacturing caused the food pricing for the food supply to increase and put it out of people's reach. We have seen the news reports of a number of countries that have had to take special measures to ensure a supply to its population. I suppose we must keep our eye on this.

Canada is a rich and well-fed country. I think we are even a bit overweight these days. However, we are a well-fed country and we have a moral obligation to ensure we do not do anything to impair food supplies for other countries. We must do what we can to assist in feeding them and to assist them in growing food on their own. Those are things I know all Canadians would want us to do.

I want to come back to the bill and point out a couple of things.

First, the government in this case has not taken any steps to deal with ethanol as a fuel component. At this point, I believe the government sets the fuel standard for ethanol at 5% or encourages it go to 5%, but some countries have gone beyond and gone to 10%. There may arguably be a need for government to become a leader in this, in consultation with industry and with automobile manufacturers, in pegging certain standards that involve the use of ethanol. This particular bill might open the door to that but it would not, as I say, actually make that happen.

The second thing I want to comment on relates to ethanol. For reasons that have not really been adequately explained in the House, the government decided that it would remove the excise tax exemption from ethanol that had previously existed to stimulate the production of ethanol. It removed that exemption in the last or the second last budget and it did it without really explaining why. I suppose it could say that it wanted to create a level playing field, but if we are in the business of stimulating alternate fuel sources or fuel supplies to offset the greenhouse gas emissions and the carbon reduction targets we have, then it seems illogical that the government would remove the exemption. However, that has been done. It seems rather contrarian but, as I say, I have not heard an adequate explanation.

However, now that the exemption is not there, it leaves room for the government to do something else to stimulate biofuel production. I have said many times that the government hates the policies of previous governments, particularly mine, which is why so many times it has terminated an existing program and then brought it back rebranded with a new name and perhaps with less money.

This rebranding has been going on since the Conservatives took power a couple of years ago. Maybe that is what will happen here, that the government has gotten rid of the exemption and in the next budget it will come forward and tell us that it has a brand new tax exemption, rebranded with their name on it, to stimulate ethanol production. I would not be shocked to see that at all.

Last, the government, with its apparent lack of interest in ethanol, has failed to note that cellulosic ethanol can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, currently measured, by up to 64%. That is a major reduction in greenhouse gas emissions if they can be attained by the use of the average automobile engine. I do not understand why the government is not pursuing that a bit more aggressively.

All of that having been said, Bill C-33 provides appropriate administrative tools to the government to regulate the biofuels field as it evolves in the marketplace. For that reason, and because we are very certain that what is in the bill does not cause the price of food commodities to go up around the world, at least not at this time it does not, my party is prepared to support the bill.

[Canada-EFTA Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, May 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin my remarks by endorsing the remarks that the hon. member made in relation to Parliament's unmatured role in ratifying or consenting to treaties entered into by the Government of Canada. Up to now, of course, when a treaty was entered into by Canada with another country, if there was no change to our domestic law, there was no need for the government to bring the matter to Parliament at all, and the treaty was entered into, signed, executed and parliamentarians would just be spectators.

In this particular case, entering into the treaty requires some adjustment to our domestic laws, therefore not the treaty itself but the changes to our domestic laws have to be presented to Parliament, and we now have the opportunity to comment on the overall treaty.

The hon. member, in talking about how agricultural products are dealt with under this treaty, treated the subject area a little bit like it was a zero sum game. In every trade treaty like this there are undoubtedly winners, losers, and an adjustment period as the two or more economies adjust to the new trade environment.

Would the member not agree that even with an adjustment where there might be some losers, there are always winners and in fact it is not a zero sum game? In fact, a trade treaty almost always brings about a quantum jump in overall trade where there is growth and many more winners offsetting whatever people have been harmed by the adjustment phase, even though these treaties try to protect those who are potentially harmed in the adjustment phase.

Would the member not agree that with this treaty, if it is adopted by Parliament, the House and the Senate, that there will be a lot more winners, that all of us will win?

[Canada-EFTA Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, May 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, as much as the member had difficulty cramming 50 years of wisdom into the last minute of his speech, I will have difficulty cramming into 30 seconds what the Liberal Party might or might not do in relation to a shipbuilding strategy in Canada.

Suffice it to say that all parties possess and have this additional baggage of a need to deal with our Canadian shipbuilding industry. The issue here today is the adoption of this treaty. I appreciate the member wants to hear the Liberal Party's position. However, the current government policy may or may not come up, which I am sure it will, during the foreseeable upcoming election campaign.

[Canada-EFTA Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, May 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is somehow suggesting that this particular trade agreement does a wraparound policy around all of our shipbuilding policies, or the lack thereof, in Canada. In fact, this treaty only concerns the four countries involved, one or two of which may produce ships. We need to make an adjustment with respect to those one or two marketplaces.

As he has pointed out, if Norway heavily subsidizes its shipbuilding, Norway will need to deal with that same adjustment period vis-à-vis Canada. If a country heavily subsidizes a production, the other party to the treaty will then point it out as a countervailing situation and then a countervailing duty will be invoked. Therefore, Norway, similarly, must make an adjustment.

What is happening is that all the countries to these trade agreements are signalling the end of subsidies.

We have made an exception for supply management in the agricultural sector. However, in shipbuilding, if we cannot subsidize but we can have tariffs, we get rid of the tariffs. If the other country cannot have tariffs and cannot subsidize, then we are on a level playing field.

Both Norway and Canada will need to have strategic plans in place, either to keep their shipbuilding, let it go or modify it so it can live on in the face of intense global competition from low wage countries.

[Canada-EFTA Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, May 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is quite right. The protection in this trade agreement would only last for 10 or 15 years, depending on the type of ships involved in the shipbuilding. However, there is no solution. If one is going to have a free trade agreement, that means we need to have free trade. This particular provision is an exception. The 15-year adjustment period is quite a lot longer than would be normal in a treaty scenario.

The member's offering as a solution is the Jones act, which the Americans adopted many years ago. The solution for her and her party may be to join the U.S.A. and live under the auspices of the Jones act. The Jones act solution would not be available to Canada in this scenario. She has reflected on the need for a strategy. Either we are going to build ships in Canada or we are not. She is quite right when she says that the government will need to ensure it has some kind of a strategy as we move through the next 10 or 15 years.

We must keep in mind that these provisions only apply to these four countries. The Canadian shipbuilding industry currently is having to compete globally with shipbuilding nations around the world. It is a fact that while our people build very high quality ships, it is very difficult for them to compete with some of the low wage labour scenarios in many of the countries around the world.

There is not a simple solution. It does require government leadership and government-led strategy in relation to the several parts of Canada where ships are built. However, I do not believe we can piggyback that issue and look to this particular agreement to solve that broader problem.

[Canada-EFTA Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, May 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am quite happy to engage in the debate today on Bill C-55. It is actually a happy event. It is a trade agreement and my party, the Liberal Party, is in the normal flow of events very supportive of trade and has been for all 140-some odd years of our country's existence.

Before I get into remarks on this actual trade bill, a related matter has to do with what we can call ratification. I recall when the current government took office there was some talk, in fact I believe there was a statement, that the government would be submitting international treaties to the House for some informal ratification. It certainly was not a formal statutory required ratification, but I am not too sure whether the government has forgotten about that or whether it is going to live up to its commitment or not.

However, in this particular case, the treaty that has been entered into by Canada requires legislation that has to come to the House in any event, so there certainly is not a practical need for any kind of an informal or specific ratification. I wanted to put on the record that the announcement by the government that it would embark on this ratification mechanism was quite a significant change in the parliamentary process.

I will give credit to the government for that. We have not yet seen the fruits of that announcement. It has not played out the way we believed it would, however, I want to remind the government that it did make the commitment and while government officials in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade are probably squirming with that commitment, that is the way I believe the House is headed and the government has certainly reflected that in its announcement. I encourage the government to live up to its commitment.

Now, I will revert to this trade bill. As previous speakers have said, this is a new trade agreement which Canada has entered into with four European countries. It is a happy event with the trading stars of five countries coming into alignment with all of the countries potentially benefiting from the freer trade and access provided for in this treaty.

There is something actually quite grand happening in Europe which most of us and the world are aware of. But after some thousand years of conflict and fighting, killing, burning, looting, shifting of borders, and tribal inter-tribal conflicts, Europe, after the last war, came together and decided to form a union, and to adopt mechanisms which would pre-empt and get rid of this sordid history of war and conflict. It is succeeding beyond the dreams of most people who lived through the horrors of the first half of the 20th century.

The European Union has adopted models for trade, international relations, monetary and fiscal matters, criminal law, the environment, and certainly succeeding in making the EU a new focus for global presence. I was going to use the word “power”, but there is more going here than just that. The EU is certainly a focal point for economic and political leadership in the world. Recently, at a meeting Europe of course is grappling with what we sometimes call multiculturalism. We can see dozens and dozens of cultures and languages in Europe, not so much coming together, but living together, interspersing, accommodating and flowering, and that is all happening in Europe now, as much as it is happening in Canada. In fact, I heard the Europeans refer to the Canadian model of multiculturalism when they were looking for a kind of a road map as to how to handle many of their internal issues involving culture, language, religion, heritage and preserving these things.

The European Union has approximately 20 to 30 countries and it is a market of about half a billion people. The EU and the countries we are dealing with here is a part of the world that is highly educated and very well off. The point I want to make is that the four countries we are dealing with are not in the EU. They are interspersed throughout the geography of the European Union but they are not actually members. For their own reasons they are not a part of the European Union. Those four countries are Norway, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Iceland.

Those particular countries, while they may each individually seem small, are actually a fairly significant group of traders with Canada. As I said, my party is usually very keen to endorse, support and promote improved trading relationships around the world, and I know the current government is following a similar policy.

We are a big exporting country. We would like to have access to as many world markets as we can gain access to. I should say that in this particular set of circumstances as we enter into this trade agreement and change our domestic laws to align with the treaty, and they are minor adjustments, not major ones, but as we do this, one of the issues we do not have in this particular trade agreement is the potential problem of having a trade agreement with a country that has a labour force that is very inexpensive and has low labour wage rates. We do not have that issue here because these European countries all have fairly standard European level wage rate structures.

If we were doing a trade agreement with a country that had very low labour wage rates, organized labour and labour generally here in Canada would have some concerns. Those types of arrangements often involve significant adjustments in the marketplace with one country making use of the relatively valuable low wage labour rates in the other party to the treaty. In this case, those adjustments are not present. The labour wage rates are pretty typical and similar to those in Canada.

Some people will wonder what we are really dealing with here. We are talking theory; we are talking some money, but what are we talking about when we are talking about trade with these countries.

In this particular case Canada exports to these four countries which call themselves the European Free Trade Association. This is what we in Canada sell to them: pharmaceuticals, copper, nickel, machinery, precious stones, metals, medical devices, aluminum, aerospace products, pulp and paper, organic chemicals, autos and auto parts, art and antiques. That is a pretty eclectic list. What do we buy from them? Not the same type of things. We buy specific types of mineral fuels, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, machinery, medical and optical instruments, clocks and all those expensive watches that we see in the jewellery stores at the malls. A lot of those come from these countries in Europe.

We have a great trading relationship. In 2007 we sold to them about $5.1 billion worth of merchandise trade and they sold to us approximately $7.4 billion of merchandise trade. There is lots of other trade going on as well in agricultural goods and in services.

There is investment moving around. In 2006 Canada invested $8.4 billion in these countries and the four of them invested $15.6 billion in Canada. There is a fairly healthy foreign direct investment movement going on here. I think Canadians should be aware of that. Our entrepreneurs and our investors do not only invest in Canada, but Canada now is a capital exporting nation. We invest in businesses, places and countries all over the world. That may scare some people, but many of us have pension plans and I think it should be reassuring that Canada's investments now span the world, at least the investments of individuals and of our pension plans, and on a global scale, our pension plans are looking rather large.

There are some highlights that I want to mention for the record. There are special provisions in this trade agreement. Do not forget that this agreement has been negotiated and there were some Canadian interests that needed to be recognized in the agreement, just as there were interests of these four countries that had to be recognized.

The first one has to do with agriculture. As we all know, Canada has a fairly robust system of supply management for many agricultural products. We think this has served our country well, domestically and internationally. There is some debate about some components of our supply management system here in Canada, but generally, I think the agricultural community believes that it has served us well.

When we enter into a trade agreement such as this, it is necessary to take some steps to protect the supply management system we have here, because supply management is not total unrestricted free internal trade; it is a supply managed pricing and supply. The countries with which we trade want to know, are we really free traders with the market governing freely or do we have a supply management system. In this particular treaty, for those countries themselves that have some supply management mechanisms as well, we have recognized the Canadian supply management system in agriculture and it will carry on unimpaired by the provisions of this trade agreement. That should be good news that makes entering into the treaty a lot easier.

The second is in terms of shipbuilding. Canada's shipbuilding industry has been under pressure economically for many years now. Many members of the House ensure that their remarks and their work in Parliament are calculated to support and sustain the shipbuilding industry where it carries on in Canada.

This treaty, therefore, had to be adapted to ensure that our Canadian shipbuilding industry was reasonably protected. The means chosen for that involves tariffication, putting tariffs on ships that would come into Canada from these countries. I am sure that Liechtenstein does not have much of a shipbuilding industry, being landlocked in the European Alps, but I know that Norway does and I think Iceland does.

We have created a very long period of tariffication for different types of ships, which runs 10 to 15 years. For 10 to 15 years after this treaty is put in place there will be protective tariffs for the Canadian shipbuilding industry. At the end of 10 or 15 years, however, those tariffs must come to an end. They will be tapered off. Our Canadian shipbuilding industry must compete with these other countries, but there is 10 to 15 years of adjustment. That is good news for our shipbuilding industry.

The third component that was added is a component one finds often in trade agreements like this. It is called a snap back provision. I believe that in most treaties it is invoked unilaterally. It is there to protect areas of the domestic market where there is a serious threat by the import of a foreign product.

Where there is a threat, perhaps by very low predatory pricing or dumping of a product from outside Canada in Canada, Canada would have the ability under this agreement to adopt the snap back provision which would reimpose a tariff. We have to keep in mind that this is a free trade agreement where there are no tariffs. If there were a dumping situation and a serious threat to a Canadian industry, Canada could reimpose a tariff up to the level of what is called most favoured nation. That tariff would be reimposed to protect, for a period of time, against the unanticipated threat from this offshore dumped product, merchandise, whatever it might be.

Those are the three specific provisions. In retrospect, it looks like this trade agreement was actually quite easily reached. However, let the record show that it took 10 years to put it together. Negotiations on this trade agreement began in 1998 and were completed in 2007, and we are now moving to implement the completed treaty.

In the view of this particular member and my party, on balance this trade agreement is a keeper. It is a good one. It will serve our country well. It will serve the four countries of the European Free Trade Association well. Our trade showing will undoubtedly increase and improve. Exports, jobs, and prosperity in all the countries will undoubtedly improve.

We are planning to vote in favour of the bill.

[Privilege, May 26th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege, notice of which I had provided to you a few days ago while you were deliberating on another related matter. I thank you for allowing me to rise today, now that the other matter has concluded. It involves the right of free speech and the right to participate fully without obstruction or impairment as a member of the House. These particular privileges are fundamental to us here in the House. I will refrain from providing explicit citations and relieve you and colleagues of that part of it, but a reasonable discussion of those rights is contained in pages 70 to 75 of Marleau and Montpetit.

Former Speaker Bosley once described the right of free speech in this place as “absolute”. Going back through history, those attributes of our free speech rights here, our privileges, are contained in parliamentary law going right back to 1689, as one benchmark, the Bill of Rights.

The right to vote also is fundamental to our role here and is similarly protected by our privileges. They are so fundamental, Mr. Speaker, that you seek these privileges explicitly at the beginning of each Parliament.

I want to submit that in the result, these undoubted rights have been impaired by a ruling of the Ethics Commissioner on May 7, 2008 in relation to the member for West Nova. For reasons I am not exactly clear, the report of the Ethics Commissioner describes the member by name and not by riding, but I will refer to the member by riding in my remarks. One of three findings of the Ethics Commissioner is contained on page 21 of her report. Her words are, “I conclude that section 13”--she is referring to the code of ethics--“requires that [the member for West Nova] not participate in the debates or votes on the Mulroney Airbus settlement and that consequently he has contravened section 13” of the code.

Curiously, the commissioner's quotes and the evidence relied on by the commissioner appear, in reading it, to deal with a sequence of events that have become known as the Bear Head project and the Thyssen proposals and not the actual Mulroney Airbus issue, but I will leave that. That is already written in the report and I cannot do much about that. I would suggest that in practice and in theory the member for West Nova might actually still be free to vote and speak on the Bear Head project issue or the Thyssen proposal issues as distinct from the Airbus issue.

However, in this report, the Ethics Commissioner actually purports to remove the rights of free speech and the vote of the member in relation to the Mulroney Airbus matter. That was based on her reading and interpretation of our code. She did not do this on her own; she was simply interpreting our code the best way she felt she could.

Therefore, I have to note with some surprise that the member for West Nova, if this report of the Ethics Commissioner is to govern, is now completely free to speak on the Mulroney Airbus matter everywhere in Canada, on TV, on radio, in a scrum, in the press, as a citizen of Canada, but he is not free to speak in this House.

How could it be that a member has more freedom of speech everywhere except in this House, where we are supposed to have virtually absolute constitutionally protected rights and privileges of free speech? How could that member have less freedom of speech in this House than out on the street? How did we, in creating the code and in having it interpreted here, turn a freedom into a straitjacket?

Someone here today, Mr. Speaker, may say to you that this House adopted the rules so we should live with them, that this interpretation comes from that and the result comes from that and we should live with those things. However, I submit that the result is an unintended one, brought about by an unanticipated interpretation of the code, and in the parliamentary context, it is intolerable that we now have this abridgement of free speech and voting rights. It was not intended and it is intolerable.

Mr. Speaker, there are four points I want to make that you may find helpful in reviewing the report of the Ethics Commissioner, not in the sense of an appeal, but in relation to the privilege motion here.

First, in her report, the Ethics Commissioner concluded that being a defendant in a libel suit constituted a private interest. However, such a claim in a libel suit is not a liquidated amount. It is not a debt. There is no ownership or control of it and there is no real dollar value attached to it.

By concluding that this allegation gave rise to a private interest, the Ethics Commissioner potentially gives life and credibility, and validation, to a libel claim of any person or corporation who decides to sue any one of us here in the House before there is any conclusion to the suit at all.

I note that if one reads the popular press, there are at the present time two other lawsuits at play involving members of the House of Commons involving speech issues not in the House, but outside the House, as I understand it.

Our free speech privilege is here. It is living. It is protected from the police. It is protected from the king. It is protected from the powerful. It is protected from the press. How could it be lost by the simple filing of a lawsuit at the hands of a single plaintiff who makes such an allegation?

Second, the term “liability” as set out in section 3(2)(b) of the code is contained in a phrase that refers to “the extinguishment, or reduction in the amount, of the person’s liabilities”.

The Ethics Commissioner has decided that the term “liability” also includes a contingent liability. However, I submit that a liability claim raises the possibility of a liability, just the possibility. Just like the possibility of getting the common cold, just like the possibility of death, it applies to all of us, but that is not the same thing as a quantifiable liability that crystallizes on the happening of a specifically defined happening of an event described on formation of the legal relationship or obligation, two different types of contingencies here.

The mere claim in this particular case has no asset value and no dollar value, so the liability has no value. Therefore, if there is no dollar value, how could this give rise to any reduction in the amount that is described in section 3(2)(b)? Section 3(2)(b) clearly describes a reduction in amount of a person's liabilities, and there is no amount here. There is no amount in question.

The Ethics Commissioner may wish to reconsider this, and the House may also wish to consider this issue.

Third, the Ethics Commissioner's ruling on free speech on the member, in my view and I hope the view of the House, neglects to accord appropriate recognition and standing to parliamentary rights of free speech. Both the courts and Parliament have inquiries for the purpose of seeking the truth. Neither the courts nor Parliament will allow its members to be impaired in that function.

The objectives of transparency and non-furtherance of private interests are, to be sure, worthy goals, but as against the fundamental right of free speech, especially in Parliament, they must be seen and interpreted as subsidiary or secondary amenities in the public interest.

Fourth, in fairness to the Ethics Commissioner, she did recognize these principles. She says on page 20, “Members should not be precluded from participating in parliamentary votes and debates unless there is a serious justification for doing so”. It is good that she recognized that. In my view, that is a complete understatement of the principles involved. We should not just be unencumbered because it sounds good; we are legally, by constitutional privileges, accorded that right.

She also says, “the requirement to recuse oneself under section 13 does amount to a serious interference with the exercise of a member's public duties”. I say bingo, because she has recognized that the obligation to recuse oneself is a serious interference. I say it breaches the constitutional free speech rights of every member in this House, but at least she recognizes that it is a serious interference, to use her words.

She refers to our having public duties. Public servants have public duties. We do too, but we here must be vigilant in protecting our constitutionally protected parliamentary privileges of free speech and non-interference.

Lives in the past have been given to obtain and maintain these rights. History shows that a king was beheaded to assure these rights, and we must count on our Ethics Commissioner to recognize and uphold those rights. They are so fundamental that they do not even have to be pleaded outside this place in our courts. Section 5 of the Parliament of Canada Act says so.

The Ethics Commissioner is not and should actually never be asked, in my view, to become the gatekeeper of our parliamentary rights and privileges. This is our job in this House and if our code has somehow allowed the Ethics Commissioner to stray from the straight and narrow, we should at least take some of that responsibility. We must assist the Ethics Commissioner in achieving these broader objectives.

According to the Ethics Commissioner, a similar conjunction of circumstances is unlikely to occur frequently. She says that this kind of thing is not likely to happen very often, but let me put a hypothesis out here, now that the mechanism has been identified.

What if some scoundrel out there decided to sue for libel every member of the New Democratic Party or the Bloc Québécois and named every member in the libel suit? Under this ruling, it seems to me that that might functionally disconnect the entire political caucus from participating in a particular debate or a vote. It was never the intention of our rules that this happen, yet if we look at the ruling, this in theory could occur again now that the mechanism and the unintended result has been spotted. I am pretty sure there are not too many members in the House who would wish that to be an eventuality. The rights and privileges of the member for West Nova are identical to the rights and privileges of every member in this House.

We are not just, here in this place, the complaints department for some government ministry. We are, in the words of Sir Edward Coke from the 17th century, the grand inquest of the nation, so we need to fix either the ruling or the rules, as the Ethics Commissioner has invited us to do, and I would be prepared to move a motion in that regard. In that light, I just wanted to bring four things to the House's attention, because it is contextual.

First, I want to ask the Speaker of the House to take notice of the following things. A motion should reaffirm our privileges of free speech and our right to vote.

Second, this particular report of the Ethics Commissioner will be deemed concurred in after 30 sitting days under subsection 28(10) of the code unless it is otherwise dealt with by the House. Therefore, I believe that the proposed speech and the voting restrictions on the member for West Nova should be suspended by the wording of a motion, if there is to be a motion and if it is to be adopted.

Third, the motion should amend the code to clarify its terms as the Ethics Commissioner has invited us to, for example, in restating what is comprised by the terms “private interest” or secondly, possibly modifying section 13 of the code which now states: “A Member shall not participate in debate on or vote on a question in which he or she has a private interest”. That could be modified to read “a member should not” as opposed to “shall not”. I am only placing it out there for consideration.

Fourth, we should invite the Ethics Commissioner, under subsection 28(13), to reconsider this matter making reference to any changes in the code adopted by the motion, the free speech benchmarks described in parliamentary law and affirming the confidence of the House in her work as a Commissioner of Ethics.

Finally, it is not clear to me now that the procedure and House affairs committee would be in a position to deal with this on an expeditious basis. This is simply part of the current context.

[Committees of the House, May 26th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the third report of the Standing Joint Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations in relation to its review of statutory instruments.

When the House adopted the Endangered Species Act and when it amended it, it imposed a very tight unobstructed timeline for a process to identify species at risk. An interpretation of the words of the statute by the Justice Department allows the interposition of what the committee felt was an unattended gap in the period of time within which a minister must act, an indefinite period of time.

The committee wishes to bring to the attention of both Houses of Parliament this interpretation. The committee also wishes to bring it to the attention of the Standing Committee on Environment in this House.

I also have the honour to present, in both official languages, the fourth report from the same committee. This is in relation to its review of statutory instruments.

In 1987 the committee recommended, and the government of the day accepted, that Indian band councils would be exempt from the application of the Statutory Instruments Act with respect to laws and rules adopted by Indian band councils. The recommendation was conditioned on the government also providing mechanisms to make those rules and laws adopted by Indian band councils available and known to those who would be governed by them. As things have evolved over the last 20 years, there has been no such mechanism put in place.

The committee wishes to bring to the attention of the House its recommendation that those mechanisms be put in place so those people governed pursuant to the Indian Act will be well aware of the laws which govern them.

Pursuant to Standing Order 109 the committee asks that the government provide a comprehensive reply to this report.

[Points of Order, May 14th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I have two points on this procedural issue. The first one deals with the procedural acceptability of the committee's report on this subject matter. If one were to look at the Standing Orders, one would see that the subject matter jurisdiction for ethics of members of Parliament is assigned to the procedure and House affairs committee and oddly enough, not to the access to information, privacy and ethics committee. That was a decision made by the House some time ago. In terms of pure subject matter, the ethics committee is actually not the primarily assigned committee to deal with the ethics of MPs and conflicts of interests of MPs.

However, I submit that there is another perspective on this and I am going to suggest that you, Mr. Speaker, consider that the committee, while not having a subject matter jurisdiction, may well have had a procedural jurisdiction in that one of its own members was, by reason of the decision of the ethics commissioner in the report introduced in the House, handicapped or obstructed in his work in the committee, which reported.

In a procedural way the committee itself said it had to do something about the failure to accord full rights and privileges to this member of Parliament, the member for West Nova. There may be some procedural mandate here in the hands of the committee, the colleagues on the committee, in reporting to the House the problem.

The fix of the problem, however, may not reside with the committee and I will leave that to you, Mr. Speaker, to figure out how we might do a fix if there is a fix. I submit that there was some procedural jurisdiction here that the committee has responded to and it is not so egregiously out of order perhaps as the government House leader suggests, although I do accept the jurisdictional subject matter point that he made primarily.

The last point I want to make is that I did give notice to the Chair of my intention to raise this as a matter of privilege as an individual member and under the circumstances the best thing for me to do is to await your decision on the procedural acceptability of the report from the committee. I am prepared to stand and deliver my remarks and submissions on this subject matter as a matter of privilege at your convenience, at the earliest convenient date for you, Mr. Speaker.