Gerald Keddy

[Canada Elections Act, February 17th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise to speak to Bill C-24. The member for Brandon—Souris was to speak on this bill, but it is my understanding that his plane is late so I will speak on his behalf.

This is a bill that has been much discussed among members of our caucus, our colleagues in this place, our peers, and certainly one that will continue to be discussed. In particular, the bill would address a number of issues to do with campaign and party financing relating to the electoral system we have in Canada. Probably most importantly, it would address the issues of how we actually report the funding of political campaigns.

The bill would require electoral district associations along with leadership and nomination contestants to disclose to the Chief Electoral Officer the amounts and names of everyone donating more than $200. They would also be required to disclose all expenses incurred. Currently only candidates and political parties are required to disclose donations received. The bill sets out the rules governing such reporting. It looks from the road as though we would have a more reliable system, hopefully a more accountable system and, one would assume, a more transparent system.

I am not the critic for this particular piece of legislation, however there is one question that I have been asking for which I have not received an answer from anyone. If there is someone on the government side with the answer to this question when I am finished my remarks and comments I would appreciate hearing it. My question is, how much of the system is financed by government already? That would include, of course, the amount that is given back by the government, the cost of auditing all the disparate accounts of the 301 members of Parliament in this place, the cost of running individual campaigns, the cost of auditing the books, and the actual amount of money that is given back.

We may be surprised if we had that information. I would have thought, in a fair, accurate and accountable system, that would have been the point that the Prime Minister would have made when he introduced this piece of legislation. There seems to be no willingness on the government to tell us how much is actually being paid now, although we would expect that if we had that information we would be better able to make a decision that we will have to make about this particular piece of legislation. It may be higher than we suspect; it may be lower than we suspect.

There are a couple of other issues. Aaron Freeman, in the Hill Times , writes about the campaign fundraising bill by the numbers. He says, “The sleeper issue is how it will increase the power of parties and not the power of members of Parliament”. I would think most of us in this place would want to have a finished product at the end of the day that actually gives more power to individual members of Parliament. Along with more power we would also expect more accountability and transparency.

Aaron Freeman makes a number of points, but two in particular are worth repeating. He writes:

Based on the 2000 election, the government calculates this will result in payments of $18.9 million a year. However, this figure ignores that our population increases each year. More importantly, it does not take into account that the last election's voter turnout of approximately 57% was a record low. If voter participation returns to the levels of the pre-Liberal era, and our population continues to expand at the current rate, we can expect to pay an additional $5 million to $10 million in public funds for parties in the coming years.

Some would say, and maybe correctly, that this is the price of democracy. I do not have an argument with that, but I do have a word of caution. If it is the price of democracy then we should know that up front during the debate. We should know the final cost at the end of the day and the full projections of where public funding for political campaigns is headed.

Freeman goes on to say that Bill C-24 would allow the donor to claim 75% of the first $400 instead of the current $200, determining the cost to taxpayers of the credit would be very complicated. The finance department would have difficulty figuring out the current credit costs and it would be hard to know how many donors would adjust their donation pattern in response to the new reforms.

The government estimates the added price tag at $3 million in non-election years and $6 million in election years. Quite a gap between $3 million and $6 million, of course, but again my question and point to my colleagues is that we really have some estimates that are based on record low voter turnouts. We do not know in any way, shape or form the actual cost of this piece of legislation to Canadian taxpayers at the end of the day.

I find that problematic. The idea that the taxpayers of Canada should finance political campaigns may be the right way to go. I am not saying it is not. I am saying I would like to see more information and accurate information laid on the table. All parliamentarians deserve that.

This bill would deal mainly with expenses and reporting of those expenses, nomination spending limits, surpluses and donation limits. The surplus and donation limits are worth going over again.

Currently, candidates for election must return any surplus to either their riding association or their party. Bill C-24 would require that surpluses incurred by leadership candidates also be transferred to the party or to a riding association. I think the horse is already out of the barn on that one because we have a number of leadership candidates out there, and maybe this is good judgment on behalf of the government, who are reported to have raised in excess of millions of dollars and no one knows where those leadership funds are. There are a number of them who are now ministers of the Crown and former ministers of the Crown who have left politics.

It would seem to me that either the government is speaking from knowledge that this was wrong to begin with and refused to change it, or it thinks that now it has had a number of plums and payouts to party faithful and that now all of a sudden it can change it for anyone else in the future, as it should never have been there to begin with, I might add.

Regarding donation limits, individuals would be banned from contributing more than $10,000 per year in total to a registered party and its electoral district associations, candidates and nomination contestants. I have listened to some of the questions being asked on this piece of legislation and this one seems to raise most of the issues. Perhaps this will get settled in committee; perhaps not. Perhaps we will say that although someone can only contribute up to $10,000 per year, if there are six members in a family, each of them could contribute $10,000 and therefore, although the family might be classified as one entity, it would actually be contributing six times the total allowable amount for a single person or a single entity as in the legal definition of the word.

Individuals would also be banned from contributing more than $10,000 to leadership contestants. Corporations, unions and associations would be banned from donating to any registered party or leadership contestant. However they would be able to contribute up to $1,000 in total per year to a party's candidates, nomination contestants and electoral district associations.

When I look at that, it begs a greater question that somehow corporations, unions and associations would be banned from donating to any registered party or leadership contestant, yet individuals would be able to donate up to $10,000. This question was raised by the member for Windsor--St.Clair. Why is a union or union office limited to a set amount? Whereas a corporation, which could pay bonuses to its employees and funnel the funds to leadership candidates or to a political party, are not? Maybe these issues are being addressed the same as the cost of this.

Exactly what is the cost to Canadian taxpayers now and what is the cost after the voter turnout is factored in, which was an alltime record low in the last election at 57%? If population increases at a scheduled rate and if voters start to turn out in numbers closer to what we could expect, at around the 70% mark, then that skews the figures on which this legislation is based.

The legislation also deals with reimbursement of election expenses. The annual allowance to political parties would be equal to roughly $1.50 per vote received by the party in the previous general election. To qualify, the party must have received either 2% of the votes cast nationally or 5% of the votes cast in the riding where the party ran a candidate. In the past that amount was 15% of the total votes received for the party to receive its share of its election expenses.

The point remains, we have changed the numbers and I do not see an accurate accounting of everything being factored onto one page. This should be a fairly simple operation. We should get a two page handout showing the cost of the last campaign, the cost of the next campaign and how it affects the riding associations and individual members of Parliament.

There seems to be a number of areas in the legislation where it spends as much time explaining a few simplistic things and as it does avoiding some difficult issues like trust funds and what happens to cabinet ministers in the Liberal government who run for the leadership and amass $2.5 million or $2.6 million in some of the trust accounts. Quite frankly we do not know where they are. One would expect that some of those accounts would be promissory notes, so if they run for leader they will receive $10,000 now and $50,000 later or $5,000 now and $10,000 coming later.

We do know a number of leadership hopefuls from the Liberal benches are no longer leadership hopefuls and they have not passed in their trust accounts. I assume many of them must have them in their pockets. The only way we can know differently is to have them tell us. No one is certainly offering that information. We can only assume that the individual leadership hopefuls still have the bulk of those funds in their own accounts.

Certainly, if this type of legislation does anything to prevent that type of abuse by public officials, then I absolutely support this part of the bill. This is the type of legislation at which we should be looking.

I really wish I had better faith in the government's managerial skills. I do not think we could discuss a single issue in the House, whether it is the upcoming budget tomorrow, if there is anything left in the budget that has not been leaked. We will find that out in 24 hours or less. Let us take a look at the track record. We are not certain this eliminates the trust funds and the ability to fundraise the way the leadership contestants have in the past.

We have not seen any issue that the government has handled with fiduciary responsibility to the Canadian citizens and taxpayers. We have not seen those issues come back to us with proper accounting. We have five million SIN cards, social insurance numbers, that are unaccounted. We have an $800 million cost overrun in a long gun registry and there is no guarantee it will work.

[National Security, February 17th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, Transport Canada posted some 5,000 confidential documents on a non-encrypted database open to hackers. These files included secret documents on airport security, national security as well as cabinet discussions.

How can the minister stand in the House and ensure the safety and security of Canadian travellers and travel?

[Supply, February 13th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is with some trepidation that I enter into the debate today. After listening to my colleagues and to some of the questions being asked, I would hope that at this stage in our democracy we would not be trying to give some type of personal ID with all sorts of biometrics on it to every Canadian citizen. Surely we have gone beyond that stage in democracy, because that is not democracy at all.

The first question Canadians should ask themselves is: who will manage the system? Will it be the same managers who are in power today? It has been said time and again that the cost of the gun registry would be $2 million but it has been allowed to go to $1 billion. Will it be the same people who cannot even manage the social insurance numbers in this country, a card that is carried by nearly every Canadian over 18 years of age. Let us look at their record. It is absolutely dismal.

HRDC's social insurance numbers were mentioned in the 1998 Auditor General's report and in October 2002 a news release stated:

The Auditor General is concerned that the identity and citizenship status of applicants were not checked adequately for the majority of SINs issued since 1998.

For five years the Liberals have not been able to keep track of their social insurance numbers and now they want to bring in a card that will contain all kinds of personal information that will track every Canadian. This is the same gang who could not even keep track of codfish and now they want to keep track of people.

This the same group that includes a minister of fisheries who would not allow us to put a black box on the 500 or 600 trawlers offshore. He said we could not do it because he could not keep track of them and yet this group wants to keep track of 33 million Canadians. I do not think so.

The Auditor General went on to say that in her view HRDC's current policies and practices did not meet the intent of the Employment Insurance Act and regulations because the department was not doing enough to properly identify applicants for social insurance numbers. That is just one piece of identification.

There is inadequate control over the 900 series social insurance numbers that are issued to people who are not Canadians or permanent residents. Although most of these people are expected to be in Canada temporarily, these SINs have no expiry date. The Liberals could not even put an expiry date on a social insurance number for a temporary resident, but now they want to have some type of brand on every man, woman and child in the country. They think they can manage that but they could not even manage a partial attempt at identification.

This gets better. There are still problems with the integrity of the information in the social insurance register. This particular group of government managers identified a problem in 1998, a huge problem for Canadians because there were all kinds of social insurance number frauds going on.

In 2002 there were still problems with the integrity of the information in the social insurance register. This is mind-boggling. For example, the number of usable social insurance numbers for people over 20 exceeds the actual population in that age group by five million. We are not talking 10,000, 50,000 or 500,000. We are talking about five million. There are five million more social insurance cards out there than there are people in the age group for which they were issued. These things are worth money. We could open a bank account. We could check into some else's bank account. All kinds of information can be found through a social insurance number. If we had someone's social insurance number we could commit all kinds of identity fraud.

The same group that has allowed five million extra social insurance numbers out there, and has done nothing since 1998 to stop that rampant abuse, now wants to issue a national identity card. It would like Canadians to have a fingerprint or a retina check on the card, possibly their driver's licence, and all kinds of other personal information, such as medical records.

We have the abuse and theft of social insurance numbers, we have some 12,000 individual Canadians who have their personal identity stolen every year, and now we want to put all of that information into one card. What would it be worth to the criminal elements of this country? What would it be worth to people who buy and sell this type of information every day and use it for illegal purposes? It would be worth a lot of money. It would be worth more than social insurance numbers, SINs that the government cannot even keep track of.

There is no integrity of data in the social insurance system for social insurance numbers. There is no integrity of data in the gun registry. There is no integrity of data in anything that gang touches.

What would the Liberals call this card? Someone a minute ago jokingly called it the “maple leaf card” and that we would be able to get into the lounge at the airport. I think it is a little more serious than that.

I do not believe I am standing in this place having a debate on whether to brand Canadians like cattle. I do not think that is the answer. However I will say that just about any group in Canada has done a better job at keeping track of information than the government has. Somehow or another we have lost all common sense.

The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration wants a personal identity card and we have had thousands of IMM 1000s stolen, the refugee status cards. They are out there for sale on the open market. There is something drastically wrong here.

George Radwanski, who is supposedly protecting the privacy of Canadians, has stated:

Personal information is central to privacy-in fact, I define privacy as the right to control access to one's person and to information about oneself.

Surely it is the duty of parliamentarians to make sure that access to information on individual Canadians is severely restricted.

This is about management. Canadians need to ask themselves whether they want this gang to manage their personal information when it could not manage anything else. Let us be honest here. We can read all the polls we want. How many Canadians really trust that their information is secure? Who in this House does not know someone who has had their identity stolen? We would have a small circle of friends if we did not know someone who had their identity stolen. It is a terrible experience. It takes them years to clear their names.

If we want to do something to help Canadians, let us help the 12,000 per year who have their identities stolen, whose bank accounts are emptied, who have bills run up in their names, whose Visa cards are charged to the limit, whose driver's licences are stolen and who have insurance claims against them. They fight for years to clear their names. Let us help those people. Let us find a quick solution to that one. We should take a baby step because we are not ready to take a giant step like this.

People do not trust the Internet and they do not trust the government to handle information. Ekos Research Associates recently found that only 32% of daily users of the Internet, people who describe themselves as very comfortable with life online, are willing to register personal information on the Internet sites they visit. Among casual users the figure drops to 11%.

I can say that I do not mind shopping online but I will not give my credit card number online. I will give it over the telephone but I will not give it online. That is all there is to it.

If we were to take that a step further, those low comfort levels with privacy on the Internet translate into real consequences for electronic commerce because Ekos found that only 22% of Canadians were willing to give their credit card numbers online. Among confirmed Internet users, the figure rose to only 31%. Even among daily users of the Internet, it was still only slightly more than half.

What do we need a personal identity card for? We have several pieces of ID now. I am also not convinced that we should roll them all into one. I see no reason for that. There may be a few pieces of ID that could be rolled into one so more information is on one card. That might be a reasonable, responsible step. One would not expect that from this government, but it is a reasonable, responsible step.

If people travel outside the country they obtain and use a passport. If they travel inside the country they do not need a passport. Therefore we do not need a personal identity card that could become extremely valuable on the black market and that could contain more information than the majority of Canadians would want to give out.

If I am giving information to the motor vehicle branch in Nova Scotia, then it does not need to know the rest of my personal information. It absolutely does not need to know it. My medical information, my medical file, my allergies and all of that does not need to be on my driver's licence.

I cannot imagine how we have taken this leap of faith with a government that has not been able to manage any file it has touched. We have tens of billions of dollars in foundations that have been set up by this government and we cannot get access to information.

If the government wants personal information on individual Canadians, then it should open up the files on the foundations that it established and allow us access so we can look at them. It should open the files to the Auditor General so we know whether or not proper accounting practices are being used. It should open them up so we know who sits as chair and who sits as members on the board besides the minister of that particular department.

If we want to become an open, free and democratic society, there are all kinds of information out there to which I am sure my colleagues and I would like to have access.

The government should not tell us on one hand that there are over $22 billion or $23 billion in foundations, $10 billion or $12 billion in the last few years, but that it is not willing to give out any of that information. This is arm's length from politics, arm's length from access to information and arm's length from the Auditor General and proper accounting practices.

On the other hand, every detail of information about an individual Canadian is needed. I am surprised the Liberals have not started to burn books. That is generally the route that countries take. This is absolutely scandalous.

If the government is intent on this, then it should show us a reasonable, rational plan, for example, that it wants to take back all social insurance numbers because there are five million more social insurance numbers than there are Canadians. The government wants to take all of them back and issue a new card. It wants to include in that card one or two more items. Perhaps the government could issue some type of pharmacare card. I am sure that tomorrow the government will come up with a pharmacare plan for Canadians so they can actually afford to buy the drugs they need. I am certain that information could be piggy-backed from one government department to another.

I cannot imagine how the government will manage a system involving one single identity card for every individual Canadian. I said at the start of my speech that the government cannot keep track of cod fish which is very true. It cannot keep track of the rest of the fish stocks either. We proposed in the House and at committee a number of times that the government should keep track of fishing boats. There has never been any attempt to do that.

With the GPS equipment that is available today, with global positioning on every trawler offshore, we would know in a second where every fishing boat was. We would know where the foreign trawlers were. We would know if they were fishing in the wrong zone. We would know if they were mis-reporting. If the government wants to keep track of something it should be keeping track of that.

The government should tell NAFO that there should be positioning equipment on every foreign trawler fishing in Canadian water and on the high seas in the Canadian zones. That would be something important to keep track of. The government would know whether trawlers were fishing in 4X or 3Ps. The government would know whether they were on the Flemish Cap, the nose and tail of the Grand Banks or St. Pierre and Miquelon. The government would know where the boats were. If trawlers reported their catch from one area instead of another, the government would obviously know the fish were not caught there.

There are a couple of hundred trawlers that the government refuses to keep track of. However there are 33 million Canadians and the government wants to keep track of them. I do not understand this. I am trying to understand the rationale.

If Liberals want us to trust them, and Canadians surely will never do that again, then they should start a little slower. Take smaller steps. Fix the social insurance number fraud. Benefits are going to people who are dead and it is costing hundreds of millions of dollars. There are five million extra social insurance cards out there. The government should fix that problem, take care of it.

The government wants to keep track of things. If it wants to do something about Canada's standing in the world and protect the east coast and west coast fish stocks and keep track of information, then it should do it.

I am sure Canadians would support the government if it wanted to fix the gun registry. The government has not even begun to do that. It needs $15 million immediately. What Canadians have not been told is that amount only helps the database for another three, four or five months and after that, it is back to square one and a wasted $1 billion.

There are a number of areas in which the government could improve on the information gathering and improve on the value per dollar that Canadians are receiving for their tax dollars. Nothing will be improved by bringing in a national ID card.

Is there a way to improve our Canadian passport? Maybe there is. Convince me. Show me that something else is needed on the passport. I think most Canadians would consider that. However I do not see the reason for a national ID card. I think it is like gun control was in the beginning, it is smoke and mirrors to take the public's mind off the real issues of incompetence and poor management.

[Firearms Registry, February 12th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, after the Auditor General's scathing report on the failed gun registry, the government hired KPMG to investigate spending improprieties. Then, to further sanitize and whitewash nearly $800 million of wasted taxpayer money, it hired Ray Hession to investigate the registry, and especially the EDS database, which has cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars.

However there are two glaring problems with the Hession report. First, it was buried by tabling it on the same day that Colin Powell was speaking at the UN and the premiers were in Ottawa discussing health care. This was no accident.

Second, and even worse, we now know that Hession was a lobbyist for EDS from 1996 until 2000. The Liberals hired the same person who helped sell them the failed database to investigate the same database. The fox was literally guarding the chickens.

[Canada Elections Act, February 11th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to the right hon. member for Calgary Centre. I also listened to the member for Palliser when the original discussion about trust funds was brought forward.

The issue of trust funds is certainly one that is not dealt with in this package, or at least to my knowledge, and a number of individual Liberal backbenchers who are not even ministers of the crown have substantial trust funds of at least a few hundred thousand dollars. There also are riding associations that have a couple of hundred thousand dollars in their accounts and trust funds.

Certainly there was a former minister of industry in this House, whom I think we can name now, from Newfoundland, who was reputed to have $2.5 million in his trust fund when he left politics. Some of that would have been promises that would have been met had he actually run for the leadership, but much of that would have been cash in the form of cheques and cash from fundraisers.

I have no idea where the transparency is on any of the trust funds. The member for LaSalle—Émard, if we read the press clippings, is reputed to have $8 million ready to fight a campaign just for the leadership of the Liberal Party.

I really do not see any provisions in the bill to limit these trust accounts. These trust accounts are no more than retirement packages for many members. Somehow or another, if we are going to really do something about parliamentary reform and the financing of political parties, then we also have to do something about financial reform in the financing of the retirement packages of individual members of Parliament.

[Canada Elections Act, February 11th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I noticed that the member from the NDP referenced the 1988 election and the per cent of the vote at that time, but I thought he might have referenced the 2000 election, which actually had the same result. There were different numbers for all the parties involved, but again there was a majority government with 40% of the vote in the country and roughly 60% of the vote going to other parties.

My question is with regard to the $10,000 donation per individual and the $1,000 donation per corporation. I do not see that this prevents the same type of fundraising between elections that we have always had and that all the political parties participate in. I am talking about fundraising involving a dinner and the cost of a plate at that dinner being $250, $500 or $1,000 for individuals who want to buy a plate or a table. Those major fundraisers would not be precluded. Individual parties will still have to do some fundraising between elections.

Although I am certain that the premise of the bill is a good thing, I am not certain about all the details. I would like a comment from the member.

[Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, February 11th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister of National Revenue stated that CCRA's 5,000 auditors, 1,000 investigators and a special enforcement unit of 175 officers are doing their job and doing it well for Canadians. Nothing could be farther from the truth and that minister and her predecessor know it.

When I receive constituents' calls about CCRA, I tell them immediately to record their phone calls, the only department I say that for. It is absolutely important because CCRA will lie and present it as evidence. It is the only department that when I put in an application for information, I make sure that I actually have it returned. It is the only department of this House where there is absolutely no control by the minister and no inspection by the minister. It has run rampant. It runs over the rights of Canadians on a daily basis.

[Foreign Affairs, February 10th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, today the House has been debating Canada's position in the world and whether the government will take a position on Iraq. Certainly we have seen no leadership whatsoever from the government on the Iraqi question. We have seen no leadership from the government on any issue affecting foreign affairs with which Canada has to deal.

What we have seen after nearly 10 years of government, is a diminished position for Canada as a world player, as a country that is taken seriously. What we have seen after nearly 10 years of disastrous leadership and a lacklustre, difficult and poor understanding of the ability to negotiate with our foreign trading partners and our foreign NATO partners, is a government that does not know where it is headed, does not know why it is headed in that direction and does not know which position--

[Statutory Instruments Act, January 31st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the bill on behalf of the Progressive Conservative Party. Bill C-205 amends the Statutory Instruments Act.

Everywhere we look in legislation we see far too much red tape and far too many regulations brought in after the fact by ministerial decree. If in any way, shape or form the bill could help to reduce that overburden of unnecessary and burdensome regulations, then it certainly has nothing but support from the Progressive Conservative Party.

The view of the Progressive Conservative Party is that the government should work toward the co-operative elimination of excessive regulations, overlap, duplication and waste in the allocation of responsibilities among the federal, provincial and territorial governments.

Canada is probably the most overgoverned, overregulated and overlegislated country in the world. Worse than that, we create new legislation without reviewing the old legislation. It causes a multitude of problems for individuals, for small businesses, for industry and even for overlapping government departments, from the municipal to the provincial to the federal.

On top of our excessive dependence on regulations, we also pass bills without sunset clauses. Never is there a bill passed in the House in which there is a sunset clause. Apparently the government thinks that when a bill is passed by the House, it goes on forever.

Surely the majority of the bills that are passed in the House should contain a sunset clause, which would mean the bill would come up for review in five or 10 years. Perhaps in the case of the long gun registry the legislation should have come back for review after three months. Maybe then only $900 million would have been wasted instead of $1 billion.

There are many pieces of legislation that have been passed by this House which have never been looked at again and where regulations have been added which have caused an unnecessary burden on taxpayers. I have a favourite example, but it is not my favourite issue, of how wrong-headed the government has been in its excessive dependence on regulations and its abuse of regulations.

I would dare say the majority of members in the House are not aware of the fact that under the new CCRA regulations, if a person challenges Canada Customs and Revenue Agency after an audit and actually happens to win the challenge, there is nothing in the regulations that prevents CCRA from charging the person again under another section of the law. It can continue to do that until it wears the taxpayer down. Whether the taxpayer is innocent or not, the person will simply give up and pay the penalty, whatever it may be.

Certainly, if a person has been charged by CCRA in violation of back payment of taxes or whatever the issue may be and the person has challenged it, ended up at a court hearing and has actually been exonerated, that should be the end of it, but not with that agency. It simply makes a lateral move under a different regulation and the person is charged all over again, along with penalties, back taxes and everything that goes with it. It is ludicrous.

Looking at regulations per se, we all know that regulations cover just about all areas of our lives and impact on us daily. Especially on the fiscal side there is a hidden form of taxation oftentimes, which raises the cost of doing business and we end up paying a higher price for goods and services. Perhaps the government is using unnecessary regulations to jack up the price of goods and services and collecting a little more GST. It is not beyond the realm of the possible for that to be the case.

In light of the effect that unnecessary regulations have on the economy of the country and on the lives of our citizens, it does make good sense that all new regulations be scrutinized by a standing committee of the House. I applaud the fact that we have members of Parliament who are willing to sit on and are interested in those types of committees.

It is not the type of committee that everyone would want to sit on. I think it would be fairly detailed and may cause people to get bogged down once in a while, but it is an absolute necessity in a democracy to have some type of watchdog on government legislation and, therefore, the regulations that come in behind it.

There is no better place for it. I disagree vehemently with the member of the government who said that the government already did the checks and balances. There is no better set of checks and balances than a committee of the House that is actually empowered, has teeth, and can do the job. There is no reason that it cannot be done in a non-partisan way. To say any different than that I think is to cast aspersions against the independence of members of Parliament.

One other thing I would suggest with regard to the bill is that a Progressive Conservative government would ensure that all proposed regulations were put on a departmental website prior to being posted in the Canada Gazette. What would be wrong with that? Most people have access to the Internet today and are able to pull up a government website.

If farmers were expecting new regulations to come down from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that would have a direct impact on the way they did business and perhaps more than likely increase the costs of being able to do business, then it would be good for those farmers to know ahead of time and actually be able to contact a member of Parliament or a member of the government and lobby those members to minimize the impact these regulations would have. They could use that information to convince the politicians that the regulations were not needed to begin with because a whole list of regulations already existed that did the same thing. There have been regulations on the books forever and no one ever thinks to look at them.

I wish to congratulate the member for Surrey Central because this is an important piece of legislation. I congratulate him on the fact that he was able to make this a votable item. I would certainly hope and actually expect all members of Parliament to look at this piece of legislation in a non-partisan way and recognize its value. It should be referred to committee, debated and amendments made if needed. It should be recognized for its value and worth, and hopefully it can be a contribution to this place.

[Foreign Affairs, January 31st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, on the news last night Canada's foreign affairs minister was seen arguing with Colin Powell, Canada's ally and neighbour. Meanwhile, for two years a Canadian citizen, Bill Sampson, has been held in a Saudi Arabian jail. He is being beaten, tortured and sleep deprived.

The minister does not mind being seen standing up to the Americans. Will he now stand up to Saudi Arabia and bring Bill Sampson home?