Garry Breitkreuz

[Supply, December 5th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I have a very brief question.

The hon. member has spent a lot of time defending the government's unemployment scheme. I would submit there would not be any need for this debate if he would answer one simple question: Why does the government not return this program to its original mandate of being an insurance program, as it was in 1940 when it was started?

Liberal members defend this by saying that history says they are supposed to do all this and be involved in this area. That is not true. The original intent of this was to be a true insurance program. The government has strayed from this, which is why the Bloc is asking these questions. That is why the Bloc has these concerns. That is why many provinces have these concerns.

The member used the phrase "we are going to serve the needs of the people", and the hon. Minister of Human Resources Development in defending it said "we are going to reduce the risk".

The auditor general says this unemployment insurance program the way it is presently structured is increasing the risk. Why do the Liberals not do the proper thing and put it back to a true insurance program? They admit that by decreasing the premiums five cents they will create something like 20,000 jobs. I do not know how they know this, but that is what they say. If that is the case, why do they not put it back to a true insurance program and reduce the unemployment rate by 1.5 per cent to 3 per cent? That is hundreds of thousands of jobs.

It is totally inexcusable for the government to go off on all kinds of tangents and create more aspects for the program rather than do the right thing. I do not know how the hon. member could ever defend the fact that it is not becoming again a true insurance program.

[Supply, December 5th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the experience the minister displays in his career in politics is very obvious. He is a very good speaker and I compliment him on that. I am sure he would do very well selling air conditioning units at the north pole.

As I listened to him there were several glaring contradictions. I have a series of questions related to these. He makes the same mistake as the Bloc when he appeals to history for what he is doing. Back in 1941 the government was given permission to run an unemployment insurance program. It is no longer a true insurance program.

My question is a very obvious one. Why does he appeal to this mandate back in 1941 to support what he is presently doing, making this a grand federal scheme that does not include only insurance? Why does he not return this to a true insurance program and only that?

Is there a long range plan behind all this? It is obvious this is simply tinkering. Is there some direction? Are we going to go beyond this?

The minister's press releases said a five-cent reduction in the premiums will create 20,000 jobs approximately. If that is true, 20,000 jobs with the unemployment we have is a drop in the bucket. If we can create jobs by tinkering with it only five cents, what is stopping the minister from reducing the premiums even more and creating more jobs? That is a very obvious question and a contradiction as far as I am concerned in what the minister is saying. If he wants to really create jobs why is he not doing more?

There is doublespeak. He says we are putting money in the hands of the individuals for empowerment. Why is he taking it out in the first place? The federal government charges a big handling fee whenever it takes money and does whatever it wants with it. Bureaucrats do not work for free.

I have several other questions. Perhaps throughout the day I will have a chance to ask them. I have asked three key questions we need answered now.

[Supply, December 5th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I have a few brief questions for my colleague from Mercier.

It becomes very obvious to me as I listen to Bloc members that they are only interested in Quebec. Because of that I question the fact that they should even be the official opposition in this matter, but that is simply an aside. We have to take into account the concerns of all Canadians. I have a very difficult time seeing how the concerns she has expressed differ in any way from the concerns all Canadians have. Therefore, I cannot support this motion as it presently stands.

We all want jobs. She states that Quebec wants a vibrant economy and jobs. Is that not true for all of Canada? Should we not be moving toward a policy that addresses this across the nation? She says there is a culture in Quebec. Do we not have a culture in the rest of Canada? Yes we do. That also has to be taken into account.

Why is Quebec asking only for control over the educational aspects of this and not control over the rest of the program? I cannot understand why Bloc members are only picking and choosing some of the things they want. I find that very difficult to understand. Perhaps the member can clarify for me her party's position on this.

I realize that education is a provincial matter. I agree with the member that the provinces should be looking after the training programs because those are truly educational aspects of the program. If that is the case, why not reduce the premiums to the point where they do not include the educational aspect? The government has admitted that by reducing the premiums a lot of jobs would be created. Why is the member not working on that aspect of reducing the premiums and letting the Government of Quebec tax its own people for the educational aspects of this program?

[Hiv-Aids, November 30th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it logically follows then if the solicitor general is not willing to make HIV and AIDS testing compulsory, that the government and the minister will be liable for damages when other prisoners and guards contract HIV or AIDS while under his care.

[Hiv-Aids, November 30th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, when we toured the Saskatchewan penitentiary in Prince Albert the guards expressed concern that neither the guards nor the prisoners were aware of inmates who were HIV positive. They did not even know which inmates had AIDS.

Can the Solicitor General of Canada tell us when he will protect the lives of guards and prisoners by making HIV-AIDS testing mandatory for all prisoners?

[Same Sex Couples, November 30th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal cabinet is giving rights to same sex couples that members of the House have not approved and the public do not support.

I rise today to condemn a Liberal Treasury Board directive leaked last week which extends a number of spousal benefits to homosexual and lesbian partners who are not formally recognized as being legally married.

During the debate and a free vote on Motion No. 264 in the House last September members refused to grant legal recognition of same sex couples, defeating the motion decisively. Treasury Board officials have defied the will of members of the House by giving homosexual and lesbian couples the same rights as legally married men and women.

On behalf of the majority of my constituents, the majority of Canadians and the majority of MPs in the House I demand the Liberal government bring any extension of government benefits to same sex couple relationships to the House for a free vote.

[Petitions, November 30th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, the petition I am presenting today comes from the constituents of Yorkton-Melville. It states: "We, the undersigned citizens of Canada, wish to draw to the attention of the House of Commons and the Senate of Canada that a very vocal minority of citizens are requesting Parliament to institute a dual marketing system for wheat and barley.

Therefore, your petitioners request that Parliament continue to give the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly powers in marketing wheat and barley and also request that Parliament expand further the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly powers to include all grains and oilseeds".

[Aboriginal Land Claims Commission, November 28th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for The Battlefords-Meadow Lake in my home province for bringing this motion forward.

It is always a pleasure to speak to issues involving Indian people. I spent two years on an Indian reserve at Wollaston Lake in northern Saskatchewan, so I have a pretty clear idea of what barriers exist for the aboriginal people living in and around these communities. My constituency of Yorkton-Melville has five Indian reserves which I represent in the House. Therefore I have more than just a passing interest in the subject of Indian land claims.

The motion we are debating asks the government to "consider the advisability of establishing a new, independent aboriginal land claims commission as recommended in the 1994-95 annual report of the Indian Claims Commission". I read the annual report referred to in the motion and the commission's recommendation No. 1 states: "Canada and the First Nations should develop and implement a new claims policy and process that does not involve the present circumstances wherein Canada judges claims against itself".

The last time I spoke in the House on Indian land claims was during the debate on Bill C-33 regarding the Yukon land claims in June 1994.

The Reform Party is way ahead of the government in the area of aboriginal affairs policy. I would like to bring everyone up to date on the progress we have made.

In June 1994 I was one of several Reform MPs who had the privilege of participating in the Reform Party's aboriginal affairs task force. We met with many native people and even made a trip to Norway House in northern Manitoba. Mainly the concerns were about self-government, mismanagement of band funds, patronage and nepotism, and land claims.

In October of this year the leader of the Reform Party and Reform's aboriginal affairs critics released the party's aboriginal affairs task force report. The report was prepared following many public meetings held all across the country, but mainly in western Canada. Our task force met with native and non-native people. We were disappointed that for the most part Indian leaders boycotted the Reform Party's meetings.

Now, after the release of our 14-point plan, the aboriginal leaders are complaining that we did not consult them. Every band in western Canada was invited to the meetings and the vast majority of Indian leaders refused our invitation.

I am sorry that I do not have time to outline the Reform Party's complete 14-point plan in the House today, but here is what our task force report said about land claims:

Point number one: Indian treaties will be fully honoured according to their original intent and in keeping with court interpretation.

Point number four: Land claim agreements and self-government agreements will be negotiated under the principle of equality for and among all persons. Settlement of land claims will be negotiated publicly. All settlements will outline specific terms, be final and conclude within a specific time frame. Final settlements will be affordable to Canada and the provinces.

Point number five: Individuals residing on settlement lands will have the freedom to opt for private ownership of their entitlements.

Point number six: Property owners forced to defend their property rights as a result of the aboriginal land claims will be compensated for the defence of the claim.

A few weeks ago I was on a CBC Saskatchewan radio phone-in show discussing and debating the merits of our proposed aboriginal affairs policy. After I got home, I got a call from a woman, a native elder from a nearby community. She was positively excited about our ideas. She said that she wanted to start getting a petition signed supporting our new approach.

Here is how her petition reads: "We, the undersigned citizens of Canada, who also happen to be of Indian ancestry, draw attention of the House to the following: That we oppose in principle the government's approach to self-government and land claim settlements which would entrench forever a top down, paternalistic, race based system of government for Indian people run by bureaucrats, band leaders and tribal council leaders for the primary benefit of the bureaucrats, band leaders and tribal council leaders, not necessarily the individual members of the band; furthermore that we support in principle the Reform approach for self-government and land claim settlements which would give each individual Indian person real choices about how we want our money to be paid to us, how we want our benefits, entitlements and services to be delivered to us and whether we want our land to be owned and managed by the band or owned and managed by ourselves privately. Therefore your Indian petitioners request that Parliament move and support legislation which will protect the treaty rights, equality rights, democratic rights and property rights of each individual Indian band member, thereby giving us the right to opt for private ownership of a share of any land entitlements and the right to opt to receive our money and benefits directly from the government or through the Indian self-government".

Is it not very interesting that that comes from the native people themselves? This petition is being circulated by an Indian elder among aboriginal people in my constituency. It is clear we cannot continue the way we have been.

It is clear from everything I have seen during the two years I lived and worked on an Indian reserve in northern Saskatchewan that more money is not the solution. In fact more handouts simply perpetuate the problem. Whenever handouts, compensation or any benefits are given to anyone in society without that person being held accountable and responsible, it will eventually harm the one receiving it. That harm will spread like a cancer to the rest of society.

It does not matter whether the person or group receiving the handout is native or non-native, welfare has failed wherever it has been tried. Now native communities and native people are feeling the full effects of receiving handouts with no accountability, handouts given with no clear stated objectives and handouts given with no means by which to measure progress. The Reform Party's recommendations are made with the sincere intent to correct the colossal mistakes of years past.

Now we come to the motion we are debating this evening. Our task force was silent on the process by which land claims would be settled. It follows that we need to establish some kind of an independent commission to accomplish this goal. After reading the annual report of the current Indian claims commission it is clear that the current system is not very effective. There seems to be a lot of overlap and duplication which creates much bureaucracy and a colossal waste of money with little being accomplished.

The other aspect we must consider is the overall direction the Liberal government is headed in using the current settlement process which ultimately confers special status, special entitlements and creates separate enclaves based solely on race. It is not a policy and process based on equality; this is a policy of apartheid.

Before an independent aboriginal land claims commission could be effective, the negotiating principles have to change. We would argue that the principles espoused by the Reform Party's aboriginal affairs task force are a good place to start. As long as the negotiating principles can be changed so our starting point is accepted by all Canadians, then I would have to agree with the Indian claims commission recommendation.

It does not make much sense for the department of Indian affairs to be negotiating agreements and then also to be the final arbiter for the Government of Canada. I have to agree there is an obvious conflict of interest. Therefore, it is obvious we need some kind of independent process.

What choices do we have for an independent land claims process? We have an independent aboriginal land claims commission which I suppose would replace the current Indian claims commission as proposed in the motion we are debating today. We have a treaty ombudsman as recommended by Mel Smith, Q.C., a constitutional expert, in his recent book, Our Home or Native Land? , or we have the court system.

Until we have reconstructed our fundamental negotiating principles for dealing with land claims and until these fundamental negotiating principles have the support of the majority of people in Canada, I do not think it is possible to say which option is the preferred one.

This having been said, I would like to give my qualified support to the motion put forward today by my hon. friend from The Battlefords-Meadow Lake. After all his motion just says that this House "consider the advisability of". If this House considers the advisability of replacing the current land claims commission with an independent body, just maybe we will be able to have a full

public debate about the terms of reference of this new independent aboriginal land claims commission.

[Supply, November 22nd, 1995]

moved:

That this House condemn the government for failing to make progress in reforming the criminal justice system in terms of introducing measures to ensure that the rights of the victim are protected and that these rights supersede the rights of the criminal and in terms of changing the name of the week of November 19 to 26 from Prisoners' Week to Victims' Rights Week.

Madam Speaker, I will be dividing my time. It is an honour and a privilege to lead off the debate on this Reform motion.

On March 17, 1994 I had the pleasure of participating in our first debate in the House on victims' rights. The example I will use comes from my home province of Saskatchewan. It illustrates the government's preoccupation with criminals' rights rather than

victims' rights. It is the case of Gregory Fischer, a convicted cop killer. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 25 years.

Fischer had just applied for early release under the Liberal government's faint hope clause, section 745 of the Criminal Code. Mrs. Marie King-Forest, the wife of RCMP Constable Brian King, had to fight hard for her right to be heard at these hearings. She had the support and sympathy of many friends, the police, the public, the media and many MPs in the House.

How did the Liberal government respond to this one victim's lonely struggle? What was her family's reward for reliving the nightmare of her husband's mindless murder by two cold-blooded killers? The Liberal government rewarded Mrs. King-Forest with a small change to Bill C-41, giving victims the right to introduce a victim impact statement in the judicial hearings that decide to release these killers early. The court rewarded Mrs. King-Forest's efforts by cutting two years off Gregory Fischer's sentence. That is Liberal justice.

The Liberals are poised once again to drag Mrs. King-Forest through the same ordeal because now Darrel Crook, her husband's other murderer, is applying for early release under the same Liberal loophole in the Criminal Code.

If the Liberals had accepted our amendment during the debate on Bill C-41, section 745 of the Criminal Code would have been repealed and Mr. Crooks and the hundreds of other killers who were serving life sentences with no chance of parole would have served their full sentences. If our amendment had been accepted, Mrs. King-Forest and her family would not have to endure another senseless judicial hearing.

Under a Reform government, when the court says no chance of parole for 25 years, that is exactly what the heartless criminal will get. If do-gooders are concerned about killers' rehabilitation, let them play their games after the full sentence has been served. Certainty in sentencing, protecting society and giving the relatives of the victims some peace and closure are more important than letting a killer back on the streets a couple of years early.

Everything our party has done with respect to the criminal justice issue has been governed by our fundamental principle that the rights of the victim should supersede the rights of the criminal.

During the debate on Bill C-37, the Young Offenders Act, we proposed changes that would better protect victims rights. We proposed changes that would place more emphasis on victim compensation as part of the sentencing. We proposed that the parents of young offenders be held legally responsible for the crimes committed by their children, if it could be demonstrated that the parents failed to exercise reasonable parental control. Under these proposals parents would be required to compensate victims for property crimes committed by their children.

Unfortunately, the Liberals ignored our advice and recommendations. They voted against our amendments and against giving victims more rights than the criminals.

During the debate on Bill C-41, the sentencing bill, Reformers proposed changes that would ensure victims were protected. We proposed that victims be given the right to express their views on whether the use of alternate measures were appropriate for the crime against them. We proposed measures which would ensure sentencing would be proportionate to the gravity of the criminal conduct and to the actual harm done to the victim. We proposed changes which would give victims the right to give verbal victim impact statements.

As stated previously, we proposed the repeal of section 745 of the Criminal Code, which would ensure killers stayed in jail for the full term of their sentence. For Reformers, life means life. Unfortunately, the Liberals ignored our advice and recommendations and voted against our amendments and against giving victims more rights than criminals.

During debate on Bill C-45, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, Reformers proposed changes that would give victims more rights. We proposed amendments that would ensure victims received direct financial compensation from the offender's income while incarcerated. We also proposed that violent criminals be denied parole and statutory release thereby protecting the rights of victims to life, liberty and security of the person.

We proposed that criminals who commit criminal acts while on parole or conditional release be sent back to serve the full sentence of their crime and then the full term of the sentence of their second offence. Two plus two is four consecutive sentences, not concurrent.

To protect victims of child sexual abuse, we proposed a child sex offender registry and that this registry be made available to police investigating a child sexual offence. We proposed that all persons convicted of sexual assault would serve the full term of their sentence. Once again, the Liberal Party ignored our advice and recommendations and voted against our amendments and against giving victims more rights than the criminals.

Reformers have gone to great lengths to introduce and enhance victims rights every chance we get, but the Liberals simply ignore them. They do not seem to get it. They seem locked in the Liberal thinking of the 1970s. Liberal ideas are socialist concepts that have failed and failed miserably. Reformers give their ideas freely because they have come from the common sense of the common people.

The Liberals across the aisle seem to ignore these ideas at their own peril. In the next election common sense will prevail and common people will only re-elect members who best represent

their views in the House. That means voting the constituents' wishes and not the Liberal cabinet's wishes.

When criminals are arrested, the police read them their rights. Victims are never informed that they have rights. They are treated just like another piece of evidence. If a criminal has rights then so must the victim and if the victims have rights, should they not also be entitled to know what those rights are?

I have been working on a list of victims rights since the day I arrived on the Hill. Here is what I have come up with so far. I do not know if I will be able to finish the list, but this will give an idea.

Victims have the right to be informed of their rights, to be informed of services available, to be informed about the investigation, to be informed about the court proceedings. They have the right to receive notice of any hearing and have a right to receive notice of the release of an offender.

Victims have the right to legal counsel, the right to be heard by the crown before the trial, a right to be heard in the judicial process, a right to have their case prosecuted and a right to prompt disposition of prosecution. They have the right to restitution from the offender, and a right to prompt return of private property. Victims have a right to privacy, a right to protection from intimidation and a right to defend themselves, family and property. Victims have a right to exercise all of these rights.

Now that we have an idea what victims rights are, it is time for the federal government to start codifying these rights and working with the provinces to build legislative guarantees and administrative mechanisms to ensure that victims can properly exercise these rights.

There is a cruel irony that we are having this debate this week, for November 19 to 26, 1995 has been proclaimed by the Liberal government to be prisoners week. The Liberal prisoners week clearly demonstrates where this government's priorities are.

Do members know that there is no week of the year, not even a single day of the year dedicated to the victims of crime? We have a week dedicated to prisoners, but not one for their victims.

The federal government has proclaimed a week for brotherhood and sisterhood, a week for waste reduction, a week for international archives, a week for dental hygiene, a week for disarmament and on on the list goes. There is a week for earth and a week for professional secretaries but there is no week for victims of crime. It is time to correct this colossal oversight. I urge members of the House to support our motion to declare this week victims rights week.

[Gun Control, November 22nd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the senators held hearings in western Canada on Bill C-68 giving many Canadians the only chance they had to be heard.

The senators heard testimony from retired town councillor Jim Barker in Dauphin, Manitoba. He estimated that by the year 2003 the town of Dauphin will have to hire two more RCMP constables and two police clerks to handle the additional workload to implement the Liberal government's flawed firearm registration scheme.

Barker testified: "The ratepayers of this town will have to budget a minimum expenditure increase of $200,000 per year. It is interesting to note that if these costs are at or near average, then the total cost to the lower levels of government in Canada for firearms registration would be around $540 million per year".

This new evidence had never been heard by Parliament before and justified the senators' decision to take their hearings on the road. Why is it that senators in Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada did not give their citizens the same opportunity to be heard as voters in the west?