Jim Abbott

[Telecommunications, September 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, over the last two weeks there was a very serious lobbying effort by the heritage minister and her department on behalf of the cable companies with respect to the private member's bill that was before this House.

Does she deny that there was this lobbying effort? We need a simple answer, yes or no.

[Cablevision Industry, September 24th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry the answer was so quick I did not catch it. I do know that yesterday she did say that she believed in the spirit of it. Clearly, by saying that she was only in favour of the spirit of it, she did not make a commitment to it.

My supplemental is very simple: Was her Canadian heritage department actively lobbying to support negative option billing last weekend, yes or no?

[Cablevision Industry, September 24th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it seems that the cable monopoly and the Canadian heritage department think negative option billing is a good thing. The people of Canada on the other hand have a distinctly different opinion.

Could the Minister of Canadian Heritage tell us what is her stand on negative option billing?

[Copyright Act, September 24th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, first it was the CBC, then the unity fiasco and now we have a copyright frenzy.

The Minister of Canadian Heritage displays a complete lack of understanding of her department. Parliamentary committee hearings on Bill C-32, an act to amend the Copyright Act, are beginning. The committee is to have the legislation back in the House in only eight weeks. All I want to know is, where is the fire?

This legislation is perhaps the largest undertaking this department has introduced and the Minister of Canadian Heritage is running a hurry-up offence in order to pass it. Phase II of copyright sat on the government's plate for almost two years, yet the minister wants Bill C-32 jammed through the committee in just eight weeks.

This is another example which clearly indicates the Minister of Canadian Heritage does not have a clue of the issues facing her department. The committee has received over 150 requests from Canadians to appear, yet because of the government's self-imposed time line, less than 60 submissions will be heard.

Canadians want to be heard. They should be heard. Why do we have a Liberal copyright frenzy?

[Criminal Code, September 24th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, one of the sad parts about this whole debate is the fact that the Liberals appear to have completely forgotten about the victims and the victim's families. There is a lot of talk about the rehabilitation and release of the convicted murderer. There is a lot of talk about the rights of the criminals. I have gone through Hansard and I have not come up with anything that has been said by a Liberal in this debate that deals with the issue of the victim's families in any substantive way. It is for the living that we speak.

I was interested in the speech of the member for Kingston and the Islands last evening. He said: "In my opinion the bill goes counter to the principles governing the treatment of offenders and that is why I am against this bill". He said earlier in his intervention that in fact he was planning on voting against the bill.

What about the treatment of the victim's families, not what about the offender? Further he said:

I would like to go back to the four principles of sentencing that I talked about. I mentioned first, the protection of the public; second, the punishment of the offender; third, the rehabilitation of the offender; and fourth, the deterrence to others. I believe those are the four principles on which any sentencing bill ought to be judged.

His comment makes my point does it not? His comment is: How are we treating the offender? It has been said many many times by

my colleagues that we are not talking about a crime of passion. What we are talking about here is premeditated first degree murder. We are not talking about an incident that just happened to happen. We are talking about the most vile offence that one human being can commit on another human being.

It is therefore strange that while the Liberal government, the justice minister and indeed the whole party would be spending time on Bill C-45, which is an anaemic response to the demand of Canadians for the repeal of section 745 of the Criminal Code, they spend no time talking about victims or victims' rights. It was the Reform Party that brought to this floor under the very careful guidance of my colleague from Fraser Valley West, a motion to which the justice minister agreed by the way, that the House was going to consider a victims bill of rights. That has not happened. Quite frankly, I think it will probably be a sunshiny day for bikinis in the Arctic on December 25 before we ever see the victims bill of rights in the House.

The member for Kingston and the Islands also said in his speech last night: "On the other hand, there are a large number of persons who have committed murder who pose no danger, who are remorseful and who wish they had never done it and, in my view, ought to be released and become contributing members of our society again".

Is that not wonderful. People have intentionally and willfully taken the life of another human being and have left behind them the shattered lives of their victims' families. The shattered lives of mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, relatives. Their lives will never, ever be the same again. Their lives have been so twisted and distorted by this heinous crime, yet the member says, and I will read it again because it is just so, so outstanding. "On the other hand, there are a large number of persons who have committed murder, who pose no danger, who are remorseful and who wish they had never done it and, in my view, ought to be released and become contributing members of our society again".

I ask members opposite: What are we doing here? Why are we spending this amount of time on a meagre repeal of some parts of section 745 and spending no time looking after the victims' families? Why are we doing this? I would love to have an answer from any Liberal member. Why do we spend so much time mollycoddling the criminal and ignoring the victim? Why do we do that? Any answers? I would love to have an answer to that question because I do not think there is one.

Last evening the government whip also displayed an attitude toward the Reform Party, which has attempted to bring the concerns of the people of Canada to the floor of the House, that is really an example of how many if not most of the Liberals feel toward our representations. I will quote him now referring to the Reform Party: "They think they have a monopoly on the truth. Canadians know what they are all about. It is a game of fear and hatred that they are trying to promote, Canadians one against the other. That is wrong".

Those are not only spiteful words. Those are words of distortion. I have said so many times in the House and I will say it again. There is more common sense in the average coffee shop in Canada than we will ever have in the House of Commons.

When the comments of concerned Canadians are spoken on this floor in plain 25-cent English words, for the government whip to stand and say: "Oh, it is hatred. They are trying to pit Canadian against Canadian", no we are trying to represent the views and the wishes of the people in Canada's coffee shops. We are trying to represent the views of the people in the living rooms and kitchens of Canada. We are not falling over, the way the justice minister has fallen over to the people in his justice department and doing all of the things that are politically correct. We are trying to correct something in this nation and get the focus where it should be. The focus again is that we must return to consideration and respect for the citizens of Canada and not just the criminals.

This is a bill that is going to pass. It will pass because that is the wish of the Prime Minister and that is the wish of the justice minister.

It will not pass as a result of the wish of the majority of people in Canada. The Liberals have the arrogance and the audacity to come to this Chamber and say: "We know what is best for the people of Canada, so we are going to turn, we are going to twist and we are going to give a little puffery and a little image and we are going to make it appear as though we are actually responding to the current concerns of the people of Canada".

Time will tell. There was a time when the people of Canada were prepared to buy into the big old parties, buy into the Liberals and the Conservatives, which is where the old thing of "Liberal-Tory, same old story" came from. They are the same old story.

We had wonderful prognosticators like Dalton Camp on television last night saying: "People want to have choices, but they want to have a narrow band of choices". There are the Liberals here and there are their kissing cousins, the Conservatives, there. They want to be able to make those choices within that narrow band. The problem for many of the Liberals, particularly for the government whip, is that we offer choices outside the narrow band of this cosy little club. We offer choices that people in coffee shops are asking for. We offer choices to Canadians in ordinary plain English.

This bill is inadequate. This bill will pass, unfortunately. This bill will be a minuscule improvement, but when the Reform Party forms the government in Canada we will make this bill right.

[The Cbc, September 23rd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, speaking of integrity, I really wonder why this minister not only at the CBC but with national parks, indeed throughout the heritage department, announced cuts way back in February and has a sword of Damocles over thousands of people in the employ of the CBC and national parks throughout the entire department. The reality is there was an election promise of funding.

Was the $400 million cut an example of a Liberal double cross or just the minister's incompetence and lack of commitment?

[The Cbc, September 23rd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, speaking of the CBC, the Reform Party has a very clear vision of a publicly funded CBC radio and a privately funded or a privatized CBC television. The massive cuts this minister undertook at the CBC last week shows she has absolutely no vision for the future of the CBC. That lack of vision has created across the board cuts that threaten both radio and television.

Will she admit to the House that she again has broken a Liberal election promise with respect to the CBC funding?

[Broadcasting Act, September 23rd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, when this bill first came to the House, I referred to it as being a band-aid or a small piece of trim on a far larger problem. My opinion remains the same.

Our problem is that government after government, Liberal or Conservative, keep on moving forward and never really solve the real problems with respect to Canadian content, with respect to the CRTC, with respect to the CBC. I therefore recommended to my colleagues in the Reform Party that we begrudgingly support the bill.

It was rather interesting that the result of the vote on the bill at second reading was that 147 of the members of the House voted in favour of it and only 25 voted against it.

I listened with interest to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage and I quote from his speech of last week.

-I am pleased to rise today to speak on the hon. member's bill, and would like to take advantage of the same opportunity to congratulate him on the effort he has put into it.

I, and I believe most of the other members of this House, share the objective sought by the hon. member for Sarnia-Lambtom in introducing this bill. We all agree that Canadians must be able to fully express their opinion on the programs they receive in their homes. We all wish to ensure that that Canadian consumers receive the programs they want at a reasonable price.

He goes on to say very specifically:

I congratulate the hon. member for his initiative.

To suggest that statement was somewhat less than genuine might be best put if I read what he went on to say. He said:

This bill would, unintentionally, restrict Canada's capacity to guarantee Canadian content and the availability of French programming outside of Quebec. As a francophone from outside Quebec, I believe that access by the regions outside Quebec to French programs is essential-

It would be impossible for me to support such a bill that would take away the flexibility of the Canadian government. That would also go for Canadian content. It would also go for the rural regions. It would have a negative impact right across Canada.

It is clear the MPs are against negative optioning. The new president of the CRTC has indicated that she prefers the positive option. The cable companies have indicated that they are against and they do not intend to use it.

Why do we have laws? With due respect to the shareholders and the management of the cable companies, I suggest that when they went ahead and used negative option billing and received a resounding rebuke from the people of Canada should be enough of a warning to us as members of Parliament that we should be taking steps to protect the members of the Canadian public from such activity as was undertaken by the cable companies. I suggest that this was totally disingenuous on the part of the parliamentary secretary, who after all was speaking for the heritage minister and the heritage department when he said: "I congratulate this member on his wonderful bill but I am not going to support it". It was significantly disingenuous.

Then we read in the Globe and Mail over the weekend about some of the background that has now become public.

Mr. Bureau argues that passage of the bill would effectively kill the chances for success of any new French-language speciality service.

Astral has a stake in two speciality channels that were approved this month by the CRTC: the Comedy Network and Teletoon, an animation station that will be broadcast in English and French-

"To put it simply, new French services just won't be able to survive."

The bill has other opponents, including the CRTC and heritage minister Sheila Copps, who say it could hamper the commission's ability to require cable distributors to offer services that it feels should be available to all in the national interest.

The front benches of the government have suddenly woken up to the fact that as opposed to the steps that they have consistently taken time and time again to bring in their own vision of what Canada is all about, this bill will give Canadian consumers freedom and opportunity which the government would prefer they not have. In other words, those 23 speciality channels which the CRTC just licensed, without a form of negative option billing, probably will never make it to air or certainly some of them will not.

The most blatant form of negative option billing was the one that was undertaken in January of last year. Members will recall that new channels were tacked on and a bill arrived in the mail box of the householder. This was rather sneaky because when many people receive a bill they simply pay it. Many people would have taken a look at that bill and because there was only $1, $2 or $3 added to the bill, would have ignored the extra charges and paid it.

I do not believe that any cable company, either in Quebec, Ontario or any other province, would have the audacity to do that kind of blatant negative option billing.

What I believe could happen and I know this is the reason why the heritage department and the heritage minister is so opposed to this is that the cable companies could be offering different packages. With new technology they can now come up with different bundles or groups of offerings of channels.

If I want to receive a particular channel then along with it comes all of this other material. If these channels are so good why are they not prepared to stand on their own? Why will cable companies not say it will cost you 75 cents to see French cartoons? Why would they not say it will cost you 50 cents to see speciality programming whatever the speciality programming is?

I suggest the reason for that is because there is money involved and where money is involved there is influence. I am rather interested in the number of people who have been working the Liberal backbenches on this one. The list of lobbyists who have worked opposing the bill reads like a who's who in the Liberal Party.

For example, the former minister of communications, Francis Fox, Liberal strategist, Michael Robinson who appears Thursday morning on CTV, the former CRTC guru, André Bureau, who I just finished reading, worked on the Liberal MPs to oppose this bill.

I suggest to the backbench Liberals that they might want to give very serious consideration and ask themselves if it is more important that they fall in line with the very encrusted Liberal hierarchy and the front bench, or should they be making representations in this House on behalf of all Canadians?

This bill has been something of a sleeper. I commend the member who brought it to the House. I sincerely commend him because he took action on behalf of the people in his constituency, on behalf of the people in Ontario and indeed, by extension, on behalf of all people who receive cable in their homes. He brought forward this bill that is going to stand in the way of the kind of manipulation that there has been, not only by the cable companies but indeed by the heritage ministry, of what is good and what is not good, what is Canadian and what is not.

This Canadiana idea and keeping it under control I suggest is the core of what is behind the front bench going against this.

I ask Liberal members: When we had a vote in this House of Commons of 147 to 25, how in the world can any of them even contemplate changing their vote? This is truly going to be a time of counting, a time when we are going to see those who have the backbone to stand up to the front bench.

[Criminal Code, September 17th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, this debate is a very interesting one because Canadians must be wondering why in the world this government, with the demand that there is on the part of rational, reasonable, thoughtful Canadians, would be coming forth with this half measure.

They must be wondering what is on the mind of the justice minister, indeed what is on the mind of the Liberal members of this House.

What we are talking about here are people who are incarcerated as a result of first degree murder. This is not something that happens. This is not just an event that took place. First degree murder is the premeditated, cold blooded taking of a life. When we give them a 25 year sentence, we give the victim's families and friends an opportunity perhaps to put small bits and pieces of their lives back together over that 25 year period.

The Liberals consistently refuse to acknowledge that in the equation when a life has been taken, indeed there are family, friends and communities that grieve over that life that is taken.

All of us in this House as individuals have been hit with some form of personal tragedy, whether it is the passing of our parents, the tragic accident involving our children or something of that nature. There is a tremendous amount of pressure that comes into our lives individually at that time.

It is beyond comprehension that this justice minister, this Prime Minister and indeed the Liberal members would not realize there has to be a time of healing for the people, for the victims' families, for the victims' friends, for the victims' community.

I ask myself why would the justice minister, why would the Liberals respond in this way? Why would they come forward with these half measures?

Clearly it must be as a response to the bleeding hearts. It must be as a response to those who say we should let these people get on with their lives. It would be nice if the victims could get on with their lives.

I reflect the remarks of my colleague who preceded me in asking why are there no Liberal speakers. Why are there no Liberal speakers defending this weak-kneed, half measure by the justice minister? I suggest the reason is that they want to be able to stand up and say: "We supported the hon. member for York South-Weston. We supported his measure to repeal section 745".

Let it be very clear that any such claim is nothing more than a lie. The Liberal members of the House, in supporting this half measure, are in no way reflecting the views, the wishes, the desires, the attitudes and the direction in which the people of Canada want to go on this particular issue.

If we ultimately take away a 25 year sentence for a premeditated, cold blooded murder, what is the ultimate standard in our society for people who take the lives of others?

Section 745 still exists. The justice minister is simply trying to sugar coat it. Nothing less than the full elimination of this section will be acceptable to the people of Canada. Ninety-eight per cent of the delegates to the Reform convention voted for the full elimination of section 745. Victims of Violence, the Canadian Police Association and the majority of Canadians support the elimination of section 745.

If we as members of Parliament are not reflecting the views, the wishes, the desires, the determinations and the direction in which the people of Canada want to go, what are we doing here? We are not just here to fill seats. We are not just here to follow the Liberal bleeding heart agenda. We are supposed to be here to respect and respond to the wishes and the desires of the people of Canada. This bill in no way does that.

Bill C-45 still provides a glimmer of hope for murderers to get early release before serving a full sentence without the eligibility of parole for 25 years. As I mentioned, what we are really talking about here is the issue of the families and the friends of the victims of people who determined they were going to take another person's life in a fully premeditated manner. That is the ultimate in what we can do to another human being.

I wonder how many of the victims were provided with a glimmer of hope, the glimmer of hope that the bleeding heart Liberals want to give to the murderers.

It has been mentioned many times but I must say it again. Why is it that we can take away the possibility of appeal if a person has murdered two or more people in a premeditated manner whereas we will not for only one murder? Is this a bargain sale on lives? Where is the thought process of the minister and the Liberals in the

House? I do not understand why the justice minister, for example, has not simply gone to a system of seeing to it that murderers are given consecutive life sentences. That would simplify the whole matter. By going to consecutive life sentences Clifford Olson would have received 11 times 25 years and he would not be in a position to go after the victims' families again after only 15 years of trying to put their lives back together.

It has already been stated that the 1976 Liberal government was responsible for the elimination of capital punishment and the creation of section 745. And so we have gone back to the future. We have gone back 20 years to a time when the Liberals really believed this was going to work. I believe we have to go to the victims' families. We have to ask the victims' families if this has worked.

Our party, under the capable direction of the member for Fraser Valley West on this issue, has had this House agree to a motion that there should be a victims bill of rights. In all reality I do not believe we are ever going to see that. As long as this government continues to hold down its members and say "yes you will vote this way", and as long as this government is driven by its particular agenda, I do not believe we are ever going to see a victims bill of rights.

What about the future? What hope is there? On this issue, I read the following into the record on May 9, 1994: "Last weekend on Saturday I, along with about 350 other people in my constituency, attended the funeral of eight-year old Stephanie Graves who was attacked and shot in the Kimberley area". I read the following poem about her. It was read at her funeral by her class:

I like your eyes I like your nose I like your mouth, your ears, your hands, your toes. I like your face It's really you I like the things you say and do. There's not a single soul who sees the skies The way you see them, through your eyes And aren't you glad? You should be glad There's no one, no one exactly like you.

It is for the victims like Stephanie Graves and their families that we stand on this issue and say the weak-kneed Liberal approach is inadequate and will not cut it.

[Petitions, September 17th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, in response to concerns about the fee structure in our national parks, I am pleased to present the following two petitions: "We, the undersigned citizens of Canada, believe our national parks belong to all Canadians with a first priority to ensure that costs for Canadians and their families to use and enjoy the parks remain affordable". The petitioners wish to draw this to the attention to the House.

The petitioners ask that the standard fee for going into a park should be $2 for a passenger vehicle or $25 annually.