Derek Lee

[Criminal Code, June 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Motion No. 1, my amendment to the bill. I am pleased to see that we have a fairly sanguine, healthy attendance here today. I am also pleased to see interest to this extent in private members' business.

The bill was adopted in principle by the House and was sent to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. The committee was very busy and had to delay its deliberations on this issue. Ultimately, with the approval of the member for Burnaby--Douglas, the matter came up in the justice committee and we had some time to deal with it. For reasons related to procedure and politics, the committee itself was not able to deal directly with clause-by-clause consideration of the bill, even though it is only a one clause bill.

There were some potential amendments that might have been considered, but the committee was not able to do that. The rules governing private members' business should be looked at for this reason. We found ourselves in a difficult position. Inevitably, there was no vote and no amendment at committee and the bill was deemed reported back to the House without a vote or without any effective deliberations, and here we are today.

I have moved an amendment which I believe will improve the bill. Currently, the sections 318 and 319 procedure exempts from hate crimes expressions of opinion based on a religious subject. As we all understand, sexual orientation is not in and of itself a religious subject. There are many differing views in our society on this subject, as has been pointed out today. Our objective here is to allow a lot of freedom in how we express ourselves in this country. Our charter is testament to that.

Some of our religious texts are quite old while others are quite new. We must admit that some of them have been quite negative on the subject of homosexuality. That view expressed in our religious texts is very real. Although many of these religious texts were written long ago, they are in fact today for many Canadians, living manifestations of their faith. We have to recognize that as well. Even though they might have been written 100 years ago, 1,000 years ago, or 2,000 years ago, those texts, whether it is the Bible or the Koran or other religious writings of other faiths, are very much living manifestations of current modern day faith.

People are living their faiths based on a religious text which sometimes is negative on the issue of homosexuality. I have received mail, e-mails, telephone calls, representations from my constituents and people from outside my constituency who have said that the provisions of this proposed amendment would effectively criminalize the Bible or the Koran. One can differ on that conclusion, but the fact that this amendment might do that was enough to cause this member and perhaps other members in the House, and we will see how we vote on this, to take steps to protect the charter based freedom of religious faith.

My amendment ensures in fairly clear words that a good faith expression of an opinion based on a religious text is not, and cannot be, seen as any type of a hate crime or an expression of hate. In my view the amendment will protect all religious texts which are subscribed to and adhered to by many Canadians.

Having said that as briefly as I could, I commend the amendment and the bill into the hands of members of the House.

[Criminal Code, June 6th, 2003]

moved:

That Bill C-250 be amended by adding after line 9 on page 1 the following new clause:

“2. (1) Paragraph 319(3)(b) of the Act is replaced by the following:

(b) if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text;”

[Statutory Instruments Act, June 4th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I want to indicate that there has been extensive consultations involving all parties in the House. The member for Surrey Central will be making a motion at this time based on those consultations.

[Canada-U.S. Relations, May 14th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Solicitor General. Could the government tell the House why Canada is participating in the U.S. led counterterrorism exercise called “TopOff2” that is taking place both in Canada and in the U.S.A. this week?

[Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, May 14th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, now that Toronto and Vancouver have overcome the challenge of the recent outbreak of the SARS virus, I want to recognize the contributions of so many in my own riding of Scarborough--Rouge River and the region.

First, there were those who fell victim to the virus, and their families. Then there are the hundreds of health care workers, some of whom got the disease and some of whom died serving our communities. Those doctors and nurses and other workers could have stood down but they did not, and they continue to work for us right through to today, knowing the risks and seeing some of their own fall victim to the virus.

There are also the many others across the community who have suffered losses. As a community in Toronto and York region, we have won the battle. We will recoup our losses. We have learned valuable lessons which will serve others and our people will reconstruct and re-engage economically. The Government of Canada has earmarked $100 million for this purpose and will work with other governments to ensure a clear and final victory for all of us.

[Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, April 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to join in this emergency debate tonight. First I want to recognize that there are Canadians out there who have been hurt. They have been hurt physically and they have been hurt financially. Their numbers in comparison to the 30 million in our country are fortunately relatively small, but they are real. They are not just in Scarborough or Markham, but that is the focus of where, as my colleague has just pointed out, the SARS outbreak began. I want to extend condolences to the families of those who have passed away and the families of those who have endured the difficulties associated with this disease.

In the beginning, this was a health care issue. It was that on day one and it grew from one case of the virus entering Canada. In the early days, most of us looked upon it as a simple health care issue and we asked health care professionals to deal with it. As they always do, they did. There never was a time when a person sick with SARS was not attended to. In the early days before we realized the virulence of the disease, how communicable it was and how long it could live outside the human body as a virus, health care workers jumped in and worked hard. Many health care workers succumbed to the virus. Some have died. We want to recognize that.

In the beginning it was quite appropriate to view it as a health care issue. At the time we even called upon health care professionals to deal with it. I remember daily press conferences given by health care professionals about a health care issue. The containment was not successful in the early days. It is now, but in the early days it was not. As one case grew to 250 or so, it was unreasonable for us to expect that health care workers could manage the entire file.

This thing grew beyond a health care issue and became a political issue, a communications issue, a financial issue, an economic issue, and an international issue. Yet we continued to give the file to health care professionals and ask them to manage it. This was wrong. This was wrong in the city of Toronto, it was wrong in the province of Ontario, and it was wrong for us to expect that health care professionals, as good, as well trained, as dedicated and professional as they were, could manage this whole file. In the end, we know that we were in error is asking them to carry the whole file.

The World Health Organization--again, health care workers--has made a decision, but we cannot ask health care workers to run our country or manage the globe. They are limited in their mandate and in their skills. The finest ever doctors are not necessarily the greatest communicators. I look upon this government, the Government of Ontario and the government of the City of Toronto to be communicators. Perhaps we as elected members were not there as soon as we should have been and in the way we should have been.

I look at the WHO decision of the last few days. It appears to have made a decision without all of the information, without objectivity and without a view of all of the other impacts, political, economic and international, that flow from the decision. It makes me very uncomfortable.

Now we know that this issue is bigger than just a health care issue and that we have to break out of the silos: federal, provincial, municipal, health care, employment insurance, Department of Foreign Affairs, Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, Immigration Canada and Transport Canada. We have to break out of the silos and have some leadership. I think we are beginning to see it. I certainly hope we are.

I live a few hundred metres from what my colleague has described as ground zero, Scarborough Grace Hospital in Scarborough. During most of this period I had a cold and I was coughing occasionally. I must say that I restrained my cough as much as I could. But I just had a cold. I am sure there were many other people who had colds over that period and were a little nervous about their condition. But an entire series of communities had to bear the brunt of this and we got through it.

There are not a lot of masks being worn in Scarborough and Markham. I live there and I see that, but when I see the issue on the television screen, I see masks. I see people wearing masks. On CNN, I saw on the television screen the little line,“Toronto gripped by fear”. That is wrong. What a slander. What a libel. My community was not gripped by fear. My community was getting on. We were getting on with our lives as best we could. Yes, there is less traffic in the malls. Yes, there are some businesses significantly affected in the short run by this. We are concerned. But this was yellow journalism. Some of my political supporters told me about a television crew taking newscam videos who brought along masks to give to the people so they could show masks on the television screen. What hypocrisy. I have been out to the malls. I have been out to the schools. My colleagues have too. There are no masks there: just people.

As I say, we are getting along with this. We are just looking for a bit more leadership. I am a little bit angry at the media. As they fan the panic, as they fake the panic, there are other communities around the world that have a greater problem with this than we do.

As we deal with it now, it is perhaps natural to want to reach out and blame somebody. This is a disease. It was not a conspiracy. It was a virus, a communicable disease. We did not plant it. No one planned the whole thing. We have to get a grip on this and understand what we are dealing with. Fortunately, our health care professionals have managed to deal with it in such a way that we think we are just about at the end of it. There is no point in trying to blame somebody for a disease showing up in our country. That is pointless. Let us simply deal with it. Turning on people in the House or out on the street is rather pointless. I think we ought to work together and focus on the positive things and work out of it.

We have work to do. We have to improve our communications. Tomorrow in Geneva there will be some decisions made. It is to be hoped they will be positive decisions that we as a country can build on. We have to break out of the health care silo. There are economic and financial implications. The tourism envelope is somewhat in tatters. Who knows how that will turn out? In terms of financial impact, there is pent up demand. Someone who was going to buy a car two weeks ago perhaps did not buy it two weeks ago. Hopefully they will buy the car two weeks from now. I hope the travel will begin again. Hopefully people will get into aircraft and come out to shop again. I was there on the weekend and I watched the traffic on the streets. People actually were out shopping again. We have managed to put this by us, I think. We are a big country, a big province and a big city. If New York City can get through 9/11, Toronto and Markham and Scarborough can easily get by the SARS challenge. Our people are fair-minded, they are tough and they are resilient. I know we will get through it just fine. Give us a bit of time, give us a bit of leadership and give us a bit of support and we will get through it.

Right now in Ottawa I know that the Prime Minister has made a number of significant communications. I know the health minister has too. The same thing has happened with the Ontario minister of health and the Ontario medical officer of health. Hundreds and hundreds of health care workers are all doing the right thing. I should also mention the Toronto medical officer of health and the medical officer of health for York Region. They have all done outstanding jobs in managing this very difficult file.

In the end, as I said, I carry a bit of resentment. Perhaps other Canadians do. Perhaps I am not all that happy with how the media handled this, but we are a free country and the media has free speech. Perhaps the media ought not to stick a microphone in front of me over the next few days because I might lash back verbally. However, I hope I am in a position in the days to come to congratulate all of the governments involved for the work they have done and will be doing over the next weeks to address the fallout and the implications, bring us back to normal and hopefully learn a few lessons.

[Foreign Affairs, March 31st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, between March 18 and 21 the sixth session of peace talks between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were held in Hakone, Japan.

Would the Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific update the House on the results of those most recent discussions and negotiations, and indicate how Canada is helping to bring peace to that region?

[Statutory Instruments Act, March 24th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to see a fair bit of support around the House for this private member's bill, Bill C-205. I hope that will carry us through the vote which ultimately will take place.

Remarks were made earlier in the House congratulating the member for introducing the bill. I also congratulate him but want to pay tribute to others before him who introduced bills similar to this one. It has been almost a tradition of joint chairs of the standing joint committee to introduce a bill of this nature to, in effect, remedially correct a small omission existing in the disallowance procedure, also referred to earlier by members.

I will abandon a lot of my formally prepared remarks because members have been good enough to recite the history, going back to the 1970s and the reform in 1986.

Essentially, the bill corrects an omission which was acknowledged even as the procedure was put into place in 1986. The disallowance procedure allows the House to disallow a regulation made by the governor in council and by a minister if the regulation does not comply with the law established by the House and the regulation delegated under procedures in law created by the House. If a minister or agency of government is delegated authority to make subordinate legislation, they must comply with the laws and the procedures put in place by the House. If not, they must correct it. In the end, if there is an impasse the House will disallow it.

The standing joint committee has done this work for almost 30 years, and 98% of the time the committee spends it time correcting errors in regulations. In many cases, the government itself will withdraw the regulation and make the corrections. A lot of work done on this is about as exciting as dry toast. In fact, the debate on the bill today will not appeal to many people because it is just that, a technical thing.

One member earlier suggested that the House did not have a disallowance procedure. We do have a procedure and we use it. The House has disallowed regulations nine or ten times over the last 10 years. The system does work but there is a piece of it that does not.

Approximately 90% of the regulations that are made are governed by the existing disallowance procedure. It is only a small segment of regulations made by agencies to which the House has delegated a power to make regulations. Examples are the CRTC, the Canadian Transport Commission and a few others. The reason the House does not and cannot disallow is that our authority to disallow is only enforceable in relation to ministers, the Prime Minister, the governor in council, and members present in the House. We can enforce in relation to them, and it works. However, for a technical reason, it is constitutional in nature. The orders and resolutions of the House cannot be enforced against citizens out there in the real world, such as an agency. Agencies do not sit in the House. Regulations made by those agencies under authority of the House sit in a no man's land, not subject to the full and final scrutiny of the House and the disallowance procedure.

We deal with defects in those regulations. We work with them all the time. We write them, deal with them and corrections are made but occasionally we have an impasse.

I have noticed that sometimes it takes a lot of extra time to hear back from agencies when the committee writes to them. Why? I am not sure why. However they know that at the end of the day the House is not in a position to disallow. The House cannot use the hammer or the nuclear option, as we sometimes describe it on the committee.

All the bill would do is remediate the missing 10% of the ambit of the net of the disallowance authority. To many people it may seem like a small thing. It is only about 10% of the volume that we do. In fact, I cannot recall a case where we actually did want to do a disallowance involving an agency. The point is that the procedures and authority that we have are incomplete. They were acknowledged as being incomplete by the justice minister in 1986 when the procedures were put in place. Anybody who sees the whole procedure understands it is incomplete. All the bill would do is complete it. We do that by placing the procedure into statute form.

By putting this in statute form, the bill would create a clock. It would provide a 30-plus day timeframe within which the bill would be deemed disallowed. The current disallowance procedure involves the House making an order to the minister, the governor in council or the Prime Minister, to revoke the instrument. In every case the government has done that when the House has ordered it. What the statute would do is directly revoke the instrument or allow the revocation of the instrument when the House makes its order, and there would be a 30-plus day period when the department could re-enact, replace or correct the revoked order. That seems like a reasonable procedure and, as colleagues have pointed out, that 30 day period exists. It does not exist in some jurisdictions, such as, I believe, Australia. The Province of Quebec has a similar procedure. In those cases, when the House does the disallowance, it is immediate and we end up with a timeframe when there is not a regulation in force.

We acknowledge in the House that there are times when it is just practically stupid to revoke a regulation and leave nothing in its place. It may cause inconvenience, extra costs and disorder. In every case, the committee takes these issues into consideration when it feels it has to move toward a disallowance. We realize the implications, and the authority of the House, through the committee, has been used very responsibly over the years.

It is not worth very much in terms of critical mass but I want to point out that about a year ago I wrote and published a pamphlet dealing with parliamentary reform. It was called “Backbench Exercises”. One of the 16 recommendations in the report was that the House remediate, fix, make complete this statutory disallowance power simply because it was an omission. It is a defect.

In the end, I can only submit that it is absolutely illogical for the House to have a procedure in existence involving disallowance, which it has already, that controls those to whom we delegate the authority to make subordinate law and not include all the regulations, all the subordinate instruments. It is an omission. All we are trying to put in place here is some remedial legislation, a statutory procedure, that would in effect make the whole disallowance procedure whole, complete, logical and effective.

I will of course be supporting the bill. There may be some need to fine tune it a bit at committee if it is adopted by the House, which I hope it will be, in the vote. I want to signal to those who care about this very dry, technical area that I will be working very aggressively on both sides of the House to do my very best to see that the legislation is put in place so that it will serve the House and Canadians in the future.

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, March 18th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I want to address some remarks to Motion No. 72 which deals with subclause 26(8) of the bill.

In listening to the debate today, it is clear that all parties are engaged on behalf of Canadians and that the issues contained in the bill are of great importance to Canadians. As we look down the road into the current new millennium, those issues are leveraged highly with risks and benefits for Canadians and for the human race. How we manage to organize ourselves in the field of cloning and human reproduction will almost certainly affect how the human race evolves.

Motion No. 72 deals with a section of the bill that attempts to deal with conflicts of interest for members of the board of the Assisted Human Reproduction Agency. As we know, that agency is formed for the purpose of issuing licences and dealing with licence applications for those who work in the field of in vitro fertilization and fertility clinics. This set of regulations is established to regulate that field so the interests of Canadians generally can be protected from activities that would not be in our national interest or in the interests of any one particular Canadian.

The original bill contained a provision that would deal with conflict of interest. Conflict of interest rules are put in place generally, as we all know, to prevent self-dealing by those who work in the public arena. Not only is it to prevent-self dealing but it is also to prevent the appearance of self-dealing because the appearance of self-dealing would undermine the integrity of the process, which in this case is the issuing of licences. Of course we want Canadians to have confidence in the integrity of all government processes.

The original bill contained a provision that stated that no member of the board of directors of this licence issuing authority could be an applicant for a licence or a licensee, or a director, or officer, or shareholder, or partner of a licensee or applicant for a licence. That sounds well enough and it goes a good distance to both preventing self-dealing and the appearance of self-dealing. However the health committee, which studied this, came to the conclusion that there was a category of individuals who might, as a director, part time or full time, of this agency come up against this issue of self-dealing or the appearance of self-dealing.

At committee amendments were moved and the committee adopted an amendment that would expand the ambit of the relationships which would prevent self-dealing or an appearance of self-dealing. The relationships were expanded by adding a section that stated:

No member of the board of directors shall, directly or indirectly, as owner, shareholder, director, officer, partner, or otherwise, have any pecuniary or proprietary interest in any business which operates in industries whose products or services are used in the reproductive technologies regulated or controlled by this Act.

This would of course extend to persons associated with pharmaceutical companies or biotech companies.

That amendment is well-intentioned and pushes out the net, the barrier, the protection and the conflict of interest guidelines to exclude persons whose companies, businesses or partners provide services into the reproductive technologies field.

There is an amendment now, I believe it is to Motion No. 72, which would roll back that provision, at least if not all the way, most of the way. I have concerns about that. I believe the committee is well-intentioned and that the provision is well-founded.

I know there have been discussions about the impact of this provision, this paragraph 26.8, on the ability of the government to obtain good, qualified and expert people to sit on the board. As I mentioned earlier, the two top executives on this government agency, the chair and the vice-chair, are full time positions. The other directors are part time.

One suggestions was, if we had conflict of interest guidelines that required board members to file full personal financial disclosure, that it would be a barrier to obtaining good people to come on the board. For a part time position, it is likely that people who are busy in their respective fields would not want to go to the trouble and bother of having to make a whole personal financial disclosure to allow them to become a director, which is in fact just a part time position.

However at the end of the day that decision making body would make its decisions with the part time members. Therefore the involvement of the part time member in decision making and the vote of the part time member in the decision making is not a part time vote and it is not a part time discussion. It is a full time vote and a full time discussion. A vote is a vote. There is no such thing as a part time vote. When they vote on the board of directors, when they make decisions and participate, it is important that Canadians and the people who work in the field see the board as independent and not influenced commercially by undue influence of their partners, the companies of which they are shareholders, their fellow executives or their fellow directors.

I for one believe that the state the bill is in now, as amended by the committee, adequately covers that. Even with the additional conflict of interest guidelines, the board and the agency will find their own way, will find qualified people to serve and they will serve with distinction and do a good job.

I will close by complimenting a number of members around the House for their assiduous work in all aspects of this bill. It is a tough bill.

When I came to the House in 1989, I remember saying that somewhere in this world there was somebody working in a closet laboratory who would ultimately generate a mutant of the human species. It was clear, at least to me and many other people then, that this would happen. Since then we have had Dolly the sheep and other things. We have been a little slow getting to it. The bill has been around for a few years. This is our attempt to put it to bed. I hope my comments on this amendment will be useful to the House.

[The Budget, February 19th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully and somewhat disappointedly to the hon. member in his characterization of the budget.

I realize he has to read his speech prepared by the research branch of the Canadian Alliance Party. I realize he has to parrot the tax and spend phrase. I hope he is referring to the tax reduction, spend prudently and balance the budget Liberals, then I can buy into what he is saying.

The member suggests that the spending is way out of hand. The fact is that next year's growth projected by the private sector is 5%. The growth in government spending is 3%. That does not sound like spending going way out of control.

I will challenge the member on one item of accuracy, if the member will take note of this. In his own words he said that the EI premiums would only drop by 2¢ to $1.98. About 30 second later in his speech, he said that the current rate was $2.10. That is not a 2¢ drop. That is a 12¢ drop.

Let me take his figure of $8 per employee. If it is an $8 saving per employee, it is a $10 saving for the employer. Add the $10 and the $8 and it is $18 and that is multiplied by every working individual in the country. Let us say there are over 10 million workers. That is a $180 million saving. Is that not correct? Is he not misleading us a little in the way he is characterizing the budget?