Gary Goodyear

[Petitions, October 26th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition comes from my constituents as well. The petitioners are concerned that the justice minister will change section 83 of the Criminal Code and make all martial arts illegal. Imagine that? They are obviously concerned about this, and this petition is in response to that.

[Petitions, October 26th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great honour that I rise today in the House to present two petitions from my constituents in Cambridge.

The first will be of interest to my colleague, the member for Macleod. He recently has made a bold and decisive decision which states that when we are on that side of the House, we will be in the government of course and we will not impose a 30% surtax on imported bicycles.

My constituents ask the government to do exactly what my colleague has recommended.

I commend him for making a decision and my constituents for articulating that in this petition.

[Cambridge Memorial Hospital, October 24th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House today to pay tribute to the Cambridge Memorial Hospital and a small group of elected officials who are fighting to get justice for this hospital and all its hard-working, dedicated staff.

Despite the fact that the hospital is a prime example of an efficient public health care facility, the provincial Liberal government has reneged on a promised $70 million of funding. This is a disaster for the entire Waterloo region. Many people are upset about the political games being played by Liberals with this issue.

This issue is about saving lives and improving the health care of thousands of people. It is not about political posturing and vote buying.

I urge members to join with me and encourage everybody to leave this issue to the elected people on the task force and to stop trying to score points at the expense of lives in Cambridge.

[Criminal Code, October 17th, 2005]

The pizza is getting cold.

[Criminal Code, October 17th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the member a question about this bill and some of the multi-faceted approaches to fighting crime that the member talks about.

The member spoke about sex crimes, particularly those involving young women who are lured into the sex trade. I have a question for the member, who is so concerned about sex crimes, the sex trade and this human trafficking issue, and let me say now that the House should be concerned about those things.

If the member is so concerned about the crimes against these people and if her party claims to be so concerned, how could the member and her party possibly not vote for raising the age of consent from 14 to 16 years of age? That is not about puppy love, as we have heard. This is another way in which young women are picked on and abused. How could we not support adding another measure of security for these people?

[Workplace Psychological Harassment Prevention Act, September 30th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I would inform the hon. member that my background is in health care. I can assure the hon. member that stress and harassment are one and the same.

If we do not do our jobs here in the House, we risk adding to the problem. Let us imagine for a moment the psychological stress, the harassment that causes stress, that we would cause for an accused individual, who may or may not be justifiably accused of psychological harassment, if we do not identify the clear and objective parameters that define psychological harassment. In an attempt to protect one worker from being harassed, we cannot permit the risk of another worker being harassed simply because we failed to do our full job.

I admire the member's efforts. I support the work of the member in attempting to improve the protection of Canadian workers, but I regret that until we are fully able to study this abstract issue, to fully understand the effect of such legislation on a national level, I cannot in good conscience leave employers and fellow employees open for target practice simply because we did not take the time to do the job we were elected to do.

[Workplace Psychological Harassment Prevention Act, September 30th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to speak to this private member's bill.

First I would like to inform the House that I feel very strongly that psychological harassment anywhere, in the workplace or at home, is harmful and should not be tolerated.

Parliament has a duty to identify weaknesses, cracks in our various systems, debate the options to plug those cracks, shore up those weak areas and find protection for all Canadians. In that, I support the intent of the bill, but I cannot support the bill in its present state. To be effective in protecting workers, the bill requires further amendment, I believe, and far more study. As it is, it falls short of what I believe is ultimately a very worthy objective for us in the House to achieve. We are not there yet with this bill.

As well, I cannot support the bill at this time. The bill is virtually a carbon copy, a cut and paste piece of legislation, of what has been implemented in the province of Quebec. That legislation is young. As such, there has not been sufficient time for full input. Further, I am concerned by the idea that a piece of legislation which may or may not be working for a province would, by simple extension, work for a nation.

This private member's bill needs more time for input. In fact, I have a concern that the entire issue of psychological harassment is a much more complex issue than private member's legislation can deal with.

Stress and harassment are difficult to define. Many would agree that they have wide-ranging definitions and can be subject to individual personalities. What is harassment to one person may be jovial play to another. What causes one person stress in the workplace may not for another. Even timing or a particular day can influence one's interpretation.

In fact, stress can be both positive and negative. This fact alone suggests that the issue needs substantial debate from a variety of stakeholders before it should be ruled into law. I do not believe this can happen in the context of a private member's bill. This issue is a valuable one and a worthy one and, as such, we are obligated to address it here in the House formally and fully.

With respect to the issue of what defines harassment, my son and I have a unique and genuine relationship. We have built decks together, we have renovated and landscaped and have done many other work-related projects together. My son continually poking me or tough-talking me while I work is fun; in fact, on some level it is relationship building. Yet an hour later, it may not be that much fun. For me, the same act with the same intent can be received differently simply due to the passage of time or another circumstance, perhaps the pressing nature of my work that day or that particular evening.

How do we define or identify stress? Violence is a physical stress. That of course is a form of harassment that is reasonably easy to identify. If we hit someone or bruise them or cause them to bleed, that is reasonably easy to identify and quantify and, as such, it reasonably easy to teach people to stop it. Chemical stress, which is the exposure to negative agents, is also easy to identify, with respect, of course, to which agents one would be exposed to. As such, we can teach employers and employees to protect each other against exposure.

Stress in the form of sexual harassment or on a broader but no less serious front is much harder to identify, much more difficult to quantify and, as such, much more difficult to teach how to avoid. If we cannot offer employers and employees, and of course our courts, better parameters—and we cannot do that at this point in time—then we risk causing more harm than good.

There are obvious kinds of psychological harassment, such as yelling, swearing, teasing someone or criticizing them with respect to their appearance or dress. Of course these are obvious, but what about the less obvious forms of so-called psychological harassment?

Let me offer a very simple example of just how harassment and stress can cause completely different reactions and yet come from exactly the same stimulus. Let us picture a doctor who walks into each of three treatment rooms and says exactly the same thing to three separate patients.

In room one is a 14 year old female whose father, a hard-working construction man, waits in the waiting room for his daughter. In room two is a 28 year old female who has been married for just three years. Her young husband waits anxiously with the girl's father. In room three is a 78 year old female diabetic who is without a father or a husband.

The doctor walks in and says, “Congratulations, you're pregnant”. The 14 year old bursts into tears and, knowing she will have to tell her father, her anxiety peaks. The 28 year old jumps for joy at the news, runs into the waiting room and tells her waiting husband. The poor woman in room three falls off the table and succumbs to a heart attack.

I do not mean to make light of a very serious issue. I only give a light-hearted example of how difficult it is to identify what constitutes stress and, by extension, what will constitute harassment. It would be very difficult to assign parameters without full, complete and certainly further study. If we do not do our jobs here in the House, we risk adding to the problem.

Let us imagine for a moment—

[Taxation, September 30th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, school boards in Quebec and Ontario, including one that covers my riding of Cambridge, took the Liberal government to court to prove that they should be exempt from GST and the cost of transporting our children. The courts agreed and a final settlement was reached, but then the Minister of Finance retroactively changed the law, and now refuses to respect the courts.

When will the minister stop manipulating the law to suit government greed and start putting children ahead of surpluses?

[Civil Marriage Act, June 28th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member has made some statements regarding documents that she has that seem to prove that this government cannot protect the rights of freedom. I cannot imagine anyone in the House not wanting to get to the truth. I would like to ask the member to table those documents.

[Civil Marriage Act, June 28th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member who has been up a number of times on this issue. Frankly, he has a number of good things to say and I appreciate his comments.

We have had lots of experience in Canada, the United States and a number of countries around the world with people who sit around tables through the day, maybe five or 10 people, and think up ways to change society, kind of a societal engineering group. These experiments have, for the most part, been devastating to society.

I will acknowledge that I too cannot support this issue for a whole bunch of reasons. We need a lot more debate on this. We need to think about this a lot harder.

The member and I get criticized on this being a human rights issue. I believe we agree that it is not that. How does the member feel about extending Parliament to debate this issue rather than debate what is clearly a human rights violation by the member's own party? The courts recently ruled that the waiting times in our health care system are a violation of Canadian rights. Why are we not spending this time debating those crucial issues?