Joe Clark

[Parliament of Canada Act, March 12th, 2004]

Very briefly, Mr. Speaker.

[Parliament of Canada Act, March 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I accept and thank you for your correction as to procedural matters. I should have raised the issue at another point.

However, the matter I think is germane. There was an action taken and at the very least, I would ask the House to consider its implications. There was an action taken that presumed to achieve the agreement of all of the members of the House, but it was taken as the result only of consultations with House leaders who are authorized to speak in the name of members who belong to parties recognized as official parties in the House and who have House leaders.

There was no consultation in that process, a matter requiring the unanimous consent of the House, as I understand it. There was no consultation with a number of members of the House, myself included, who are not affiliated with parties recognized in the House.

I anticipate that a point will be made that I am raising this point with respect to this bill a day too late in the process, and I accept that. Nonetheless, there is an issue of principle here that relates to the rights of members of Parliament, particularly those of us who are designated as independents. I would like some guarantee that attention will be given to resolving this issue.

I am a member of the House of Commons duly elected here. There are others in my situation for whom House leaders do not speak. There cannot be unanimous consent without our consent. Therefore, a procedure must be found to ensure that this reality is respected and reflected.

[Parliament of Canada Act, March 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have no intention to prevent the introduction of this bill in the House of Commons, but I wonder by what process was there deemed to have been consent given to adoption at first reading.

Was it on the basis of consultation with House leaders? If that was the case, why was there not consultation with members of the House who are not affiliated with parties recognized by the House?

[Sponsorship Program, March 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the acting Prime Minister.

Michel Vennat and André Ouellet have been suspended as presidents of crown corporations. They were given to March 1 to explain themselves. I understand they met with the President of the Treasury Board. Mr. Ouellet, I understand, is coming to committee to testify.

I have two questions. First, is Michel Vennat coming to testify to Parliament? Second, on what fixed date will a decision be taken on whether these suspended officials will be fired?

[Points of Order, March 11th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, certainly if I were at fault in the matter I would admit that to the House and withdraw any statements that are not borne out by the facts.

We have also reviewed the tapes. There is no question in our review of the tapes that in the English version the interpreter used the words “administrative error” and the voice of the government House leader was heard in the background as he said, en français, “erreur administrative”.

This, Sir, should not be a dispute between the two of us. I believe the Chair has undertaken to look at the televised version of the tape and come to a conclusion himself.

I would, however, repeat and stand beside my very friendly advice to the government House leader that if he wants to make this House of Commons work, which is his duty, he should be careful to show courtesy to other members of this place.

[Sponsorship Program, March 11th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister.

Earlier in this question period, the Minister of Public Works declined to answer a question by noting that technically the government took office only on December 12, 2003. Is it the government's position that no one in the House is responsible for actions taken by the Liberal government in which the Minister of Public Works, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance and 13 other current ministers served?

[Haiti, March 10th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I believe that Canada's role rests precisely on our ability to work with various groups. What is lacking is leadership, the determination to have leadership that is lasting and not just temporary.

Of course, we must work with the authorities in place, and with our partners such as CARICOM and others. However, it is not France, the United States or another CARICOM member that can assume this leadership. Canada is the only country that can do so.

[Haiti, March 10th, 2004]

Mr. Chair, I very much believe that is the case. I believe that there is a range of new Canadian capacities that have not been reflected as much as they should be in esteemed institutions like the Department of Foreign Affairs, no matter how able the minister might have been at the time. I think our capacity in institution building is clearly one of those.

I was pleased to hear the Prime Minister in his address to the Speech from the Throne make reference to the use of high technology and Canadian biotechnology in particular in international development. I think that is the kind of new thinking that needs to be applied, and obviously it is relevant in this case.

The flag of alarm I want to raise is this. I do not think this is a case where we should be looking simply for an area where we should play a role, although I understand the Prime Minister put this in a larger context. My real concern is that unless Canada is prepared to frame that larger context and to provide the leadership in that larger context, it will not occur, and then we will be making our particular contribution to a venture that is doomed, that is not likely to succeed.

I believe that this is one of those events where there is an unusual opportunity and obligation for Canada that does not exist for other countries and that does not often or even always exist for us, but can well exist here.

[Haiti, March 10th, 2004]

Mr. Chair, may I begin by joining my friend from Prince George—Peace River in noting the Prime Minister's presence in a take note debate. That does not happen very often. I hope it is a practice that he will continue so long as he is in that position. I want, as one member of Parliament, to commend him for being here in a debate of this kind.

Part of what is so distressing about the situation in Haiti is that we have seen it before. Too many in the House have been engaged in trying to help the people of Haiti come to some resolution of problems that seem to be more and more endemic and more difficult.

I certainly was involved with those issues during the time it was my privilege to be secretary of state for External Affairs and again as someone involved with the Carter centre, when President Carter was seeking to play a constructive role in the region.

Of course, the questions are important as to what happened to President Aristide and how it happened. But if those questions are important, the more important question is: What is going to happen to Haiti now? What is going to be done about it that is a response in the long term and not simply another intervention that three or four years later, in unhappy hindsight, it turns out to have been yet another failure?

If there has been an involvement by Canada, if there is a suspicion of an involvement by Canada that was either improper or is regarded as improper by some of the countries upon which we have to count in the region, then let the facts be known. It is important in any event but it is important certainly in terms of our ability to work with our allies and our traditional friends in that region.

I do not at all take away from the concern that has been expressed in the House about those questions. It seems to me simply that they are not the most urgent questions that have to be faced now.

I had the privilege a month ago, at the invitation of the Minister of National Defence, to visit Kabul in Afghanistan, where Canadian troops are deployed. I was impressed again by the excellence of our troops, by the fact that they are of course stretched near the limit. They know that, the minister knows that and everyone in the House knows that.

There is, of course, a question of our military capacity. I for one am prepared to leave those decisions to the military experts to make. I can offer one observation. The Canadian troops I met in Kabul are the quintessential Canadian public servants. They want to serve their country. They want to serve the interests of their country. I do not think that one will hear them expressing an unusual concern about being sent on another mission, particularly if that mission has a result that turns out to be both constructive and durable.

However if there is an issue of military capacity, if there is an issue of how President Aristide came to depart Haiti, those are to the side. The real issue is the future of Haiti. The situation is tragic and what makes it more tragic is that it recurs and, frankly, as we look at the circumstances now in all of this uncertainty, there is no one with much confidence that we can do anything to stop it recurring in the future.

That is what we have to address as Canadians, because there is another sense in which the issue here is Canada. What do we do in the world? What difference do we make in the world? When do we step up and when do we step back? I know resources are tight and I also know, if it is any comfort to the government, that they are tighter now than when I had the honour to serve on the treasury benches.

There are real restrictions upon what a Government of Canada can do, but there is a sense in which resources are always tight and there is a sense, consequently, in which if one wants to do something, if something needs to be done, and particularly if we are the only people who can do it, that casts a new light upon the resources that are available to us.

I do not want to dwell on the past but I have had experience with some of these issues. I had experience decades ago now when thousands of people were afloat on the China Sea and Canada could have stepped back, and we did not step back. We embraced a larger number of boat people than I think any other country in the world, with the exception perhaps of Australia.

I recall at the time the great famines in Ethiopia, a country a long way away and not in our hemisphere, when Canada could have stepped back but it did not. It was not just the government that responded. In both of those cases, it was the government of the people of Canada which responded in imaginative and quite extraordinary ways.

I had the privilege to be involved in Canada's activities with respect to apartheid. Again, Canada could have stepped away but we did not step away.

Had we stepped away in any of those cases, there was no guarantee that anyone else would have stepped forward. Had no one else stepped forward, Rwanda and Burundi would not have been as exceptional as they now are in the record of the world.

Countries sometimes have to step forward when there is a particular call upon their capacities and their reputation.

This is an extremely difficult situation in Haiti. The issue for us really is not whether we will send a certain number of troops for a certain number of days. That is important. The fundamental issue for us is whether we are going to engage seriously in this issue or not. Are we going to assume that the normal processes and the normal understandings should be trotted out again and tried again, or are we going to try to find something new and something different?

In each of the cases I cited before, Canada was prepared to look for something new and something different. Because we were prepared to stretch the envelope, to try to entertain some changes, we were able to make some small contribution to make a difference.

There are some very fundamental questions that we have to ask here. I share the profound respect for the sovereignty of nations, which I think is felt by everyone in the House, but let us ask a question: What is sovereignty to Haiti? There is a larger question: What is sovereignty to most failed states? In the case of Haiti, what does sovereignty mean to the people in Haiti in terms of their immediate future? Are we going to allow a definition whereby our great concern for sovereignty means that countries and individuals who might step in will find an excuse to step back? If that is the definition we apply to that concept, then we serve badly the concept and we certainly serve badly the people of Haiti.

We have to look at a couple of possibilities. The word trusteeship, as used in the United Nations context, has a bad history. It is not a word that people normally embrace. It also has a fairly specific history that applied to the transition from colonial roles of countries before. What it did was posit a role for an international body in unusual circumstances that could not simply provide a step toward a democratic process but could also establish some kind of interim means by which other social developments could occur.

Those of us who have been involved in encouraging democratic developments know that often we can get a democratic system in place and often an election can occur. It happened in Haiti. Often the result is not the profound kind of change that we were looking for.

There should be an examination by Canada's excellent diplomats and our excellent legal authorities as to whether there are some opportunities in the existing range of instruments available to the United Nations to apply those anew.

I am reminded of the case of East Timor and the case of Australia where an action was taken authorized by the United Nations in very extraordinary circumstances, circumstances in which normal procedures had broken down and violence had recurred. There needed to be an intervention that had some success and a way was found using the auspices of the United Nations to find that way.

I do not have a solution to propose except that if there was a time for Canadian imagination and commitment, this is the time. This is our hemisphere. This is our language. In very many cases, this is our family, very precisely, in the case of many individuals here. There is a great danger now that countries will do enough to be present but not enough to change the desperate decline that has become the characteristic of Haiti. This is an issue where Canada may be the only country that can make a real difference. I hope that the government will look very imaginatively into ways in which that might happen.

[Points of Order, March 10th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the minister may characterize it as a ridiculous allegation. He cannot dismiss these two facts. One, in this House, he said the reason the rules were not followed was “une erreur administrative”. In Hansard , which reports the proceedings of this House, that phrase did not occur. That is a material difference.

Now he can tell us it was achieved by the tooth fairy, or by Groupaction, or by somebody else. The fact is somebody changed the record of Hansard .