Jason Kenney

[Golden Anniversary, November 20th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I received unanimous consent to introduce the motion.

[Golden Anniversary, November 20th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order.

[Golden Anniversary, November 20th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, there have been consultations among the parties, and I rise to seek the unanimous consent of the House to move the following motion:

That this House, on behalf of all Canadians, convey its warm greetings and best wishes to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh on the happy occasion of their Golden Wedding Anniversary.

[Golden Wedding Anniversary, November 19th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to extend on behalf of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition and all of the people of Canada greetings and best wishes to Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness Prince Philip on the occasion of their Golden Wedding Anniversary. They were married 50 years ago tomorrow.

It was the 11th year of the reign of King George VI. Britain was beset by economic problems. Monarchies and democracies in half of Europe had fallen under the hammer of Soviet communism. The empire, which Canada helped to defend through the dark days of the second world war, was coming apart.

At 11.15 on the morning of November 20, 1947, Princess Elizabeth, then 19 years old, set out from Buckingham Palace in the Irish state coach from Westminster Abbey where she was given in marriage by her father, the King, to 25-year old Royal Navy Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten.

The Leader of the Official Opposition, Winston Churchill, described the royal wedding of 1947 as “a flash of colour on the hard road we have to travel”.

I join with all Canadians in marking this bright moment in a year marked by tragedy for our royal family. God save the Queen.

[Taxation, November 18th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, we are glad to finally hear that admission. The problem is that Canadians are suffering because of a tax burden which is getting higher every year.

It is not a question of cutting taxes. It is a question of not raising taxes any more under bracket creep. When will the Minister of Finance or the Prime Minister stop this destructive tax on inflation, or will they continue to be known by Canadians as the bracket creeps?

[Taxation, November 18th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the tax department released its 1994-95 report which confirmed that in that year alone income taxes paid by the average taxpayer went up by 10%. That is largely because the government has kept in place Brian Mulroney's hidden tax grab called bracket creep, which the OECD says is hammering our economy.

Since the finance minister will not commit to broad based tax relief, will the Prime Minister commit to stop raising taxes through the hidden tax grab called bracket creep?

[Customs Act, November 18th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I have two questions for the minister with respect to this bill.

First, I asked during my remarks on the bill if the government had made an estimate as to the incremental cost to be incurred by the department in training these newly empowered customs agents to act as quasi-peace officers and furthermore what the cost of upgrading any facilities might be. I inferred from the parliamentary secretary's comments that there was not clear estimate of the costs and that there were some facilities in place.

It is reasonable of the opposition and of all Canadians to expect the government to have some sense of what the incremental cost of a legislative change is going to be. That question has not yet been answered either from the information provided by the minister's department or by him or the government speakers in debate on this bill. That is my first question.

The second question concerns the basis on which the minister decided these newly empowered customs agents will not be issued firearms to properly discharge their new responsibilities. Does he think that a customs agent can stop, detain and arrest a gun smuggler or a drug smuggler or a child abductor or a kidnapper with pepper spray and a baton? Why is he not prepared to give those customs agents what they need to protect themselves, to protect Canadians and to enforce our laws?

[Customs Act, November 18th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the official opposition to do something I thought I would never do in this House and have not done to this time, support a government bill. It is not easy to do but for a good cause we will sometimes support government bills. This is a well constructed and designed bill and a thoughtful approach to a problem we have in controlling criminal activity coming across our borders.

What Bill C-18 does, as the hon. parliamentary secretary outlined, is extend the ordinary powers of peace officers to detain and to arrest people who are either under criminal warrants or suspected of engaging in certain forms of criminal activity, principally impaired driving. This is something which is most sensible.

The notion that several thousand impaired drivers cross our borders each year but cannot be detained by our custom officers is a troubling one. There are many customs and entry ports in this country where we do not have full time regular peace officers, RCMP officers, staffing those ports. The customs agents are the only official representatives of our government and are the only eyes that are watching what kind of people cross those borders.

For these customs agents not to have the capacity to stop, detain and arrest people suspected of driving on to our highways impaired and endangering law abiding Canadian drivers I think is troubling. We are encouraged by Bill C-18's empowerment of those custom agents so that they can essentially act as a first response capability at our borders, a first response capability for criminals and for those suspected of impaired driving.

We understand that over the past year, according to estimates made by our customs officers, over 8,500 suspected impaired drivers have entered Canada. None of these people could be detained or stopped legally by customs agents for impaired driving. There are other reasons why they could be stopped, but not necessarily for that offence.

There have been an estimated 200 incidents of suspected child abduction where customs agents have not been empowered to stop the alleged abductors of children. There have been over 2,000 individuals subject to arrest warrants and more than 500 individuals in possession of suspected stolen property, mostly vehicles, again in instances where our customs agents have not been able to detain these people.

This is a sensible approach and one which we understand is supported by, among other groups, the customs union, Canadians Against Violence Everywhere Advocating its Termination, CAVEAT, and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, as well as various police forces. It seems to have a broad range of support both by those concerned about the potential for the overzealous use of peace officer force as well as the police officers themselves. They all seem to be in support of this bill.

However, we do have several questions which are not addressed in the information the government has provided with respect to Bill C-18 and which were not really explained adequately by the parliamentary secretary. Among other questions, the government clearly will incur costs to implement this bill, costs which will derive from the training of customs agents so that they will know how and under what circumstances they may exercise these new criminal law powers. What exactly are those costs for training those public servants in this respect?

There will also be costs associated with establishing new facilities, detention facilities at many ports of entrance. Again, we have seen no estimate of what costs are associated with that. I would therefore ask the hon. members opposite, perhaps the parliamentary secretary if she has an opportunity, to provide this House with information on what costs will be associated with this bill.

Another question we have is the question of how these officers will be empowered to enforce the law. We understand, as the hon. parliamentary secretary just admitted, that they will not be issued firearms. While we are giving them in this bill partial police officer powers, the power to arrest and detain, among other people, suspected gun smugglers and drug smugglers, we will be issuing them pepper spray and, I gather, batons to protect themselves and Canadians and to enforce the law against potentially violent law breakers.

It seems to me this raises a question about the safety of our customs officers and the seriousness that the government has in terms of empowering these officers to apply and enforce the law. My second question to the government would be why will it not issue these quasi-peace officers the tools that peace officers need to execute the law, to arrest and detain potentially violent and dangerous criminals.

I do not understand why the former minister of revenue, the current minister of Indian affairs, introduced substantially the same bill in the last Parliament. In justifying not issuing firearms to these officers she simply said that she did not feel it was appropriate. She did not really explain why. She just said “Under my watch they will not be armed. As far as guns, the message there changes the whole perspective of our border and the risk of increased violence is not acceptable to me”.

If these agents were properly empowered and issued firearms, the risk of violence would not, I think, come from them. The risk of violence comes from violent criminals who cross our borders. To suggest that peace officers who are issued the necessary tools to do their jobs somehow poses a threat of violence at our borders is, I think, a rather backward way of looking at it. It is those peace officers who use those tools who prevent violent criminals coming into Canada.

I would again ask for a more compelling justification for these peace officers' not being issued with the appropriate tools to do the job that most peace officers have.

We also wonder about the common practice at Customs Canada of employing student customs officers. When the question is asked “O Canada, who stands on guard for thee”, in too many cases the answer is poorly trained students at ports of entry in this country, not fully trained customs agents. These student officers are in some places such as Pearson airport. Some 80% of customs agents, the first line of defence Canada has in the protection and enforcements of its laws, are undertrained student agents and are not full-fledged customs officers.

We understand that in other jurisdictions such as the United States and the United Kingdom this simply is not the case. One hundred per cent of the customs agents representing those governments are fully trained, fully empowered, fully certified customs agents, and not quasi-customs agents.

I have another question for the government. Why does it continue to staff our borders with people who are not fully trained officers of the law? That is a reasonable question. These student agents will not have the powers given to full customs agents under Bill C-18. Quite understandably they will not have the certification or the training to exercise peace officers powers. Even though this is a good step forward, many thousands of our customs agents at many of our customs ports and ports of entry will not have the power to arrest or detain people under the Criminal Code.

If student agents are on duty at a particular port of entry and find somebody who may be suspected of criminal activity, a suspected child abductor, kidnapper, smuggler of contraband or an impaired driver, they can do nothing to arrest or detain those people. They had better hope that there is a full-fledged customs agent immediately available to them or a full-fledged peace officer. If there is not then there is no protection for Canadians and there is no discharging of Canadian law at those ports of entry. That is an important point to us.

I have another question. The revenue minister has not indicated whether or not there will be additional training or the extent to which there will be additional training for newly empowered customs officers. What kind of training will they receive? Will it be in a police college atmosphere? Will it be within the current customs college, or will they receive a kind of briefing? How do we know they will be properly trained to exercise the ultimate power of government, that is its police power? That question is not outlined.

I do not understand in a very sensible bill like this one why the government would not anticipate some of these questions and answer them. Perhaps it will in the course of this debate.

This is a worthwhile objective. It is a good and honest effort by the government to plug a loophole that too many criminals have taken advantage of to seek entry into the country. I would only ask why this kind of legislation was not passed years if not decades ago.

Why does it take so long for us to plug loopholes in terms of enforcing the criminal law in Canada? Why have we allowed 8,500 suspected impaired drivers to cross our borders in the past without having the power to stop them? How many innocent Canadians have died on Canadian roads because customs officers were not able to stop, detain or arrest suspected impaired drivers?

Those are good questions. They are not only directed to this government but to predecessor governments as well.

In conclusion, the position of the Reform Party with respect to impaired driving and the application of the criminal law is well known. We stand for a criminal law regime which can be enforced. We want our peace officers and officers of the government to be able to enforce laws and protect Canadians.

A couple of weeks ago our party introduced a motion in this place calling for stiffer penalties for impaired driving. Any effort which can potentially remove even one impaired driver from our roads and can make society even incrementally safer is one that my party will support.

[Amendment To The Constitution Of Canada (Quebec), November 17th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I commend the hon. member for his very thoughtful remarks. Although he was not a member of the committee it seems he has paid very close attention to the evidence presented to it.

Could the hon. member comment on the argument that predicates this application to extinguish subsections 1 through 4 of section 93. That argument is that in order to establish linguistic school boards in Quebec, in order to modernize the Quebec school system so that it more clearly reflects the pluralistic nature of Quebec society, it is necessary to repeal the application of section 93 to Quebec. The hon. member addressed this in his speech.

On further reflection I will quote from the judgment rendered by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1993 on the reference regarding the Quebec education act to further elucidate the point he made. In that judgment the learned justices said that what section 93 guarantees is the right to dissent per se, not the right to certain legal institutions through which it may be exercised, i.e. school boards.

They furthermore say that there is thus no objection to the principle of redistributing the patrimony of the existing school boards for Protestants and Catholics among the linguistic boards provided the new institutions and their establishment maintain the right to dissent and to denominational schools.

Finally they go on to say at page 39 of their judgment that the framers of the constitution were wise enough not to determine finally the form of institutions as it is those very institutions which must be capable of change in order to adapt to the varying social and economic conditions of society.

In other words, our highest court said that we do not have to maintain denominational school boards in order to establish linguistic school boards. We do not have to eliminate section 93 to establish linguistic school boards. We do not have to abolish these confessional rights in order to do what the Quebec government chooses to do.

Could the hon. member comment on this decision which was rendered at the request of the Quebec government. Does it support his contention that it can make the administrative changes it hopes to without extinguishing the confessional rights guaranteed in the constitution?

[Amendment To The Constitution Of Canada (Quebec), November 17th, 1997]

They are precedents.