Joe Comartin

[Criminal Code, May 31st, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today, like a number of other speakers, to acknowledge the work that the member of the Alliance for South Surrey—White Rock—Langley has put into the bill. It is one that I am happy to support.

When I first saw the bill it brought back to mind a trip that I had taken to the United Nations program in Nairobi, Kenya where there was a United Nations conference on biodiversity and a number of other issues. While we were there the delegation was taken to a national wildlife park which was adjacent to and almost a part of Nairobi. We were taken to this one site to see some of the wildlife.

There was a plaque there commemorating the burning of elephant tusks. This was the response of the Kenyan government to the international trade in ivory. It undermined in a significant way that trade by destroying a great deal of ivory. This was ivory which had been confiscated after the poachers had been apprehended. I am told, although I must say it is secondhand information, that it was just a huge pile. There were literally tonnes of tusks of ivory that were burned at that time.

When I saw the member's bill it brought back that image because at the time I thought how desperate that government must have been for it take that action. I then look at some of the arguments that we are hearing, particularly from the government, about the bill going too far and how it cannot support it.

It makes me wonder if we as a government ever want to find ourselves in that type of a situation. Obviously the answer is that we do not. Therefore, the House must take all necessary steps within our legislative, constitutional and criminal law framework to protect the wildlife in this country.

It is important that people understand the role that Canada must play in the protection of wildlife on the planet as a whole. We make the mistake, because of the familiarity of our own situation, of looking to Africa and saying that it has a lot of work to do to protect its wildlife because it is under such pressure. That of course is true. We may do the same thing if we look at Australia. The reality is that Canada is in a similar boat. The biodiversity that we have is among the greatest in the world. We have a stewardship responsibility to protect and enhance wildlife. Bill C-292 is a way of doing that.

Just within the last week or 10 days there was a rather in depth report which came out of the same United Nations office in Nairobi. Scientists were sending back information and having it compiled about the threat to wildlife around the world. Their estimate was that no matter what we do and how hard we push right now, today and into the future, we will lose 25% of all species across the globe.

There were something like 1,000 scientists around the globe who contributed to that study. These were the top environmentalists in the world on the issue of biodiversity and the whole issue of protecting the environment for our wildlife. No matter what we do we will lose 25%.

I come back to the bill and say it is a very small part. When I hear the government say it cannot even do that little bit, I ask where is our responsibility? Are we upholding our responsibility? Where is the stewardship role? Is Canada and the Canadian government responding properly to it?

We are not responding properly to it because all we have to do is look at what happened with Bill C-5, the species at risk legislation. It was promised by the government in one of its red books in 1993. There have been three incarnations of it and it is stalled in the House because the Liberals cannot get their act together.

The bill came back to the House significantly amended and reflected a great deal of hard work by members from all sides of the House. There was a serious attempt on the part of the minister and his department to gut it, to minimize it, and not to provide any protection at all for our wildlife.

We have been working for over nine years on that bill in one form or another and we still do not have it. We promised this at Rio in 1992. We have signed a number of protocols since then as a country, committing ourselves to protect the biodiversity of the planet, in Canada's case, and we have done an abysmal job of living up to those responsibilities.

It is a simple bill which says if a person were to trade, sell or kill wildlife for the purposes of profit, that person would face criminal charges. I probably would have said to the parliamentary secretary in law school that he is nitpicking on this issue of whether the bill should be a dual procedure offence. If he felt strongly about that, he should support it and send it to committee and move an amendment to include it both as a summary conviction offence and an indictable offence. It is a simple solution and not a basis to oppose the bill.

I take umbrage on the whole argument that it is a regulatory function and not a criminal matter. I totally reject that. The member may want to take a look at the supreme court decisions on Hydro-Québec and the more recent Hudson case in its analysis as to what it is prepared to allow. To suggest that it would be constitutionally unsupportable flies in the face of the logic, reasoning and basis for both those court decisions.

The Supreme Court of Canada is saying it would bend over backward on any legislation if it were to protect the environment and our wildlife. That is what the bill is about. It would go some distance to send a clear message, assuming the government would then take the second step to enforce it, to tell people who are prepared to traffic in animal and animal parts that we will not put up with it any more.

[Kyoto Protocol, May 31st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the member states of the European Union are ratifying the Kyoto protocol today, including G-8 members France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. That means that 70 countries, including 18 developed countries, will have ratified Kyoto. In addition, Japan, Russia and New Zealand are soon to follow.

Canada has long since given up any chance of taking a leadership role on the international stage on this issue but it is not too late to do the right thing. Will the Minister of the Environment today take the opportunity to join all these other countries and commit to ratifying Kyoto once and for all?

[Public Safety Act, 2002, May 30th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it is important that we appreciate the motion that has been allowed to proceed to this point. I just want to quote from it. It will have the effect, if carried through by vote of the House, of not giving second reading to Bill C-55. The motion states:

...it constitutes an autocratic power grab by the Liberal government at the expense of parliamentary oversight and the civil liberties of Canadians.

Quite frankly, I could not have said it better myself. In effect that is what the bill is all about.

As I said in the House yesterday when I made some other comments about the bill, it is really an unnecessary bill. When I was reviewing it, I could not help but think of the implementation of the War Measures Act back in 1970. I was in the third year of law school. I recall the effect its imposition had on civil liberties in the country at that time, specifically on some of the groups I was involved with. I recall the chill that it cast over this entire country regarding free expression of speech and the exercising of other civil liberties and the fear that it created.

As we know historically as a result of the imposition of the War Measures Act and all we have learned from it, to a very significant degree the invocation of that act and its imposition on the province of Quebec and on the rest of the country more generally clearly came out of a sense of panic by the government in power at that time. When I look at Bill C-55, I have exactly the same sense of what the reality is. What I want to say to the government is that September 11 was nine months ago. The panic should be over by now. We should be able to stand back, take a look at the bill and realize that there are all sorts of provisions in here that are generated only by panic and not by any meaningful legislative purpose. We do not need a repeat of 1970 in this country.

I will quote from an article that appeared under the name of Ken Rubin in the The Hill Times this Monday past, May 27. This is his analysis. I think we should acknowledge the work that Mr. Rubin has done over the years in ferreting out government miscues, mistakes and, yes, abuses. We should recognize the work that he has done to better the debate in the country around a number of those issues.

Mr. Rubin stated:

Ottawa misses the boat by obsessively dealing only with potential security safety risks rather than tackling actual lethal health and environment problems including how to deal with dangerous drugs and toxic wastes. The bill strings together a host of peripheral and unrelated measures like tighter explosives regulations and prevention of unauthorized use of Defence Department computer systems, but it does not deliver the legal tools needed for building an effective public safety emergency prevention plan to deal with post-Sept. 11 threats. The bill's usefulness is questionable.

I think that it summarizes in a one paragraph statement both the dangers that are in the bill and the usefulness of the bill.

I will come back to the motion by the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, which we are debating at this point. What he is saying to the government, and I would urge the House to support him in this regard, is this: pull the bill, do a review of it, and then bring back to the House those parts of it that do have a proper purpose, a proper function. He is telling the government to get off its panic seat and drop those parts that are clearly abusive of the civil rights and, potentially, the human rights in the country and of civil liberties in general.

This is an omnibus piece of legislation. It should not be. A number of these provisions in the bill should in fact be siphoned off into individual bills. If it were to be done that way, the provisions could be dealt with more appropriately by House committees. Some of the provisions that are required could in fact probably move through this House fairly quickly.

I will use as one example a portion of the bill that probably could be dealt with fairly quickly. That is the provision that deals with the port authorities in Canada. What it provides for is that the federal government, under the amendments it is proposing in that section, would be able to fund security measures for the port authorities. I know from my own experience with the authority in Windsor that in fact this is sorely needed. It does not have anywhere near the financial ability to provide the type of security that is warranted and needed in my area. That type of an amendment and provision, if siphoned off into a separate bill, should be able to move through the House very quickly. There are a number of other provisions like that.

Speaking from the position of an opposition party, there is absolutely no way that we can support the bill in its totality as it is. That is just not possible. That would be abrogating all the responsibility we have to Canadians because there are so many provisions in here where there is the potential for the bill to be used in an abusive fashion against Canadians. In its attempt to protect us, the bill in fact does just the opposite. It exposes us to potential gross abuses by government action, again, much as we saw in the province of Quebec in 1970 with the invocation of the War Measures Act and all those useless arrests and the denial of all the basic freedoms.

There is the old adage that if we do not learn from history we are going to repeat it. One would think that the government would have learned from that experience. One would think that out of respect for one of its former leaders who fought valiantly to get us a charter of rights the government would remember that. One would think that today, rather than dealing with a bill that takes away those rights in a variety of ways, we would be standing up in this House championing legislation that does not do that, that instead provides Canadians with security but does not take away their civil rights as this bill does.

[Public Safety Act, 2002, May 29th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, thank you for recognizing me while I was still not completely properly attired. I suggest that it is a Liberal plot that we are having to spend our time debating the bill in such intemperate weather. I also want to point out that if we had dealt with climate warming a number of years ago it may not have been quite so uncomfortable in here today. I never miss an opportunity to deal with that very important issue.

The bill we are discussing today is clearly an attempt on the part of the government to recover from a very disastrous response from the general public across the country to Bill C-42.

Bill C-42 was introduced shortly before we went home for the Christmas holidays. It was interesting to see the types of responses we were receiving from our constituents. I certainly know that was my experience. I am guessing that members of the government are receiving the same responses from their constituents to Bill C-55. The responses to Bill C-42 were that Bill C-42 was not acceptable to the Canadian public.

I have to say that the government's attempt to recover from its faux pas with Bill C-42 has not been very successful.

I must say that Bill C-55 goes some distance in addressing some concerns we have had over a number of years under various pieces of legislation but, after reviewing the bill, I see that there are still a number of excesses, especially in terms of security.

We have a crisis as a result of September 11 and we get a knee-jerk response that has not been properly thought out. A number of sectors that would be affected by the bill have not been properly consulted but the government goes ahead and says that there is a security problem. It often brings in this almost dictatorial type of response. It is an authoritarian response that is often not a methodology that will be successful but that will seriously impede the civil and human rights of Canadian citizens if the bill becomes law and attempts are made to implement it.

In a number of ways the New Democratic Party opposes the legislation. Certainly near the top of that list is the unprecedented powers that have been accorded to some of the ministers in government.

This is one of the areas where the government has tried to cover over the inadequacies and excesses of Bill C-42. I am sure other members of the House in the course of this debate have expressed concern over the declaration of what used to be a military zone, which has now been replaced by more neutral wording but which, in many respects, has the same effect.

The offensive part of that is that it would allow the minister of defence, without any other review and solely on his or her assessment of the situation and decision making, to decide what area will be a war zone. All the laws of the country will then be suspended in that area.

The government tried to cover that up by saying that it would only invoke that if it needed to protect its equipment. Frankly, if we were to analyze that explanation from an objective viewpoint we would see that it was plainly absurd.

Similarly, the bill would give the Minister of Transport a number of extraordinary powers in regard to the travelling public. Even if one could argue some justification for that, it is not, in a number of ways, possible to support that type of power. However even if one could argue the point in some other areas, it begs some other type of review, whether that be judicial or by a special committee.

We also have a number of other precedents within our legal and constitutional framework for those types of situations where a review could be established under the legislation thereby preventing any excessive use or abuse of the power. We see little or none of that in Bill C-55.

The powers that would be given to those ministers would clearly infringe the rights of Canadians. The bill still remains quite heavy-handed. It is not just the members of the New Democratic Party who are saying this. As I believe all members of the House know, the privacy commissioner went public with a letter to the Minister of Transport. It was very unusual for him to take that kind of position in the public venue. However his letter expressed deep concerns about the legislation. I want to quote part of the letter where he talked about the privacy and civil rights of Canadians. The letter states:

In summary, my concern is that its [the bill's] provisions could fundamentally and unnecessarily alter the balance between individuals and the state that exists and should exist in a free society such as Canada.

I know he used the words “fundamentally alter” but I think the more important words were “unnecessarily alter”. We know from some of the experiences we had with Bill C-36 that it was true about that legislation. However the government is now repeating the same errors.

There are already a number of criminal and quasi-criminal provisions in the criminal code and in other legislation that could deal with the points being dealt with in this legislation. These statutes could deal with them more appropriately because historically we have worked out any problems, as opposed to this bill which would expand powers significantly and, as we argue and as the privacy commissioner has argued, unnecessarily.

The government simply does not need the powers contained in the legislation that it has argued it needs. The potential for abuse is glaringly obvious when one analyzes the whole bill.

If we were to go back into history and look at the abuses of power, especially when the War Measures Act was brought in, we argue from the perspective of our party and we believe from the perspective of fully protecting civil and human rights, that we should almost give ourselves a slap on the side of the head and tell ourselves that we must not forget our history. The rampant abuse of power throughout history should caution us to not repeat the same mistakes.

Our party is adamantly opposed to the legislation in its present form. It needs to be withdrawn and sent into a consultation process. The problems that do exist require attention and the potential abuses that are contained in the bill need to done away with.

[Kyoto Protocol, May 22nd, 2002]

The facts are there, Mr. Speaker. It is twice as high as anybody else.

In light of the repeated promises to ratify Kyoto this year, what contingencies, if any, does the federal government have to put in place and to ratify Kyoto without the support of Alberta? Will the government commit today to doing so without provincial unanimity?

[Kyoto Protocol, May 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister of the Environment failed to reach a consensus with the provinces on meeting our Kyoto commitments. Without the commitment of Alberta, Canada's largest polluter--

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, May 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, It is quite clear that the health committee, after listening to some of the testimony the member referred to, I assume, drew the conclusion that donor anonymity is no longer justifiable, that the primary interest is that of the child and his or her right to know. I always felt very strongly about that during all the adoptions I handled over the years as a lawyer.

Interestingly, and I do not know how many people are aware of this, a number of countries in Europe have never had the provision for anonymity in the adoption process. We can find legislation from the 1910s and 1920s in various countries in Europe allowing for adoptions but never providing anonymity for the parents, without their societies breaking down and with them being able to do the number of adoptions we have done here. That experience should be the same in this case. I believe that is how the health committee came to its conclusions and I would say that I support those conclusions completely.

With regard to the patent law issue, study shows that the patent law was designed in the 1700s and 1800s. Steam engine technology, that type of technology, was beginning back then. Quite frankly, with the exception of some amendments, the legislation has not changed a lot. To use that type of legislation to regulate, control and provide some public infrastructure around human genetic material is impossible. We are so far beyond that with our science that we now need the law to catch up with it, but a different law. I do not think it is possible to change the Patent Act that way. We have to begin to think about this in an entirely different way. I think we are unable to amend the Patent Act or change it in some manner to allow for the legislative infrastructure we need around this type of material.

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, May 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I do not have an answer. It seems rather ridiculous that we have this type of situation.

I do not believe in the concept of commercialization of human genetic material. It simply should not be happening. I do not think the CIHR is really prohibiting it. In effect it is allowing for a mechanism to allow it to develop. I will not stand here and suggest that individuals who donate material should somehow benefit from the commercialization of that material. That is just abhorrent. I say no to the individual and to anybody else who wants to commercialize it.

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, May 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, like a number of other members who have spoken to the bill today, I am doing so with a good deal of reservation and trepidation because inevitably we see ourselves in an atmosphere of gross uncertainty. It is science fiction stuff. I think that is how we see this when we begin to address the ethical and the important public policy issues that are here. We have heard a number of speakers today refer to science fiction scenarios.

What worried me when I reviewed the bill was the lack of courage that I found or more specifically that I did not find in the bill. The point is that the work done by the health committee, and before that the Baird commission, took us further I believe as a society, as a country and as a government than the bill reflects.

The health committee and the commission addressed a number of issues. We heard from various members of the committee who sat through those hearings say that those issues were addressed and discussed extensively. Yes, in a number of cases they began to look toward resolutions that are not found in the bill.

I will come back to some of the areas in which the bill is lacking. Before I do that I want to express a great concern that I and I believe members of my whole party have in the shifting of decision making away from the House and the health committee, elected bodies, to the agency that is envisioned to be established under the bill and to regulations that will be established.

I want to deal initially with the agency in its composition. The provision in the bill simply allows for the establishment of a board of directors who will run the agency. There is some general language that the board of directors should represent various sectors.

One of the matters that was made very clear to the health committee, I understand from its deliberations and the testimony it heard, was the importance of recognizing that women have a much greater stake in the outcome of the debate and the policies that will flow from it. One would have thought that at the very least the board of directors would have been mandated in the legislation to be composed either primarily of women or at least an equal number of women on the board. That is not provided for at all.

There was a great deal of discussion in the health committee about the potential for some of the research and technology that would flow in this area to be discriminatory, particularly discriminatory for persons with disabilities. I would have thought that we would have looked for mandated representation on the board of directors from the people who suffer from various disabilities. There is no provision for that whatsoever.

Phenomenal ethical considerations will flow from the bill if it becomes law. They have been discussed extensively but probably still not sufficiently to come to a consensus on what the values of the country are on a number of these very important issues.

The provision for some input on an ongoing basis from the academic community that specializes in ethics would have been very important. They could have been representatives on the board or performed a consultative function to bring forward the issues that are evolving. The issues are not fixed and we do not know them all now. They will continue to grow as the technology and the research continue.

This is not to say that the academic community would dictate decisions around ethical considerations. They would simply assess, analyze and bring them before the board of directors who would make some very important decisions and recommendations in other areas regarding regulation.

Another issue that was raised in the minority report from our member was the issue of the very real potential for conflict of interest of people who sit on the board of directors but who may have involvement in research or in the private sector with ownership of some of this technology either at the time or potentially in the future. There are no guidelines with regard to conflict of interest. Because we are in such a new area it is hard at this time to envision all of the possibilities but there should have been some provision for that in the establishment of this agency.

We must appreciate what we are really doing with the bill if it really does become law. We are saying that a good deal of the decision making and discussion will be away from the elected body and will go to the agency, issues like conflict of interest which should have been addressed. This is another area where the bill is wanting.

Although the bill provides for a three year review, the provision states that it can either be a review by the House of Commons or by the Senate. We find it repugnant to have an unelected body conduct the review three years from now. If it comes to a conclusion that changes should be made or new laws passed we will simply get a recommendation. We are seeing too much of that and to see it actually in the bill that it could be the Senate doing the review rather than the House is repugnant to my party. We will oppose that on an ongoing basis.

I will now turn to some of the other areas the bill does not address. The bill contains no provision to prohibit the commercialization of human genetic material and no proposals to amend that under the Patent Act. In effect we are simply stepping back, which reflects the lack of courage in the bill, and, as we have seen so often from the government, allowing the marketplace to determine whether human genetic material will become patentable.

In some of the analogies we were making on the scientific issue I wondered if we were just opening the door to creating different forms of human life that can be owned? Are we turning the clock back to allow for slavery of a different human life form? It is not addressed in the bill. It would have been very easy to simply say that we would not allow for the ownership and commercialization of human genetic material.

To some degree it is already being determined since there was reference made to the Harvard mouse case. The interesting thing is that human genetic material was implanted into the mouse. We heard a number of examples today of other experiments going on at the present time using human genetic material.

The bill hides its head in the sand, ignores the issue and simply says that nothing will be done about it. The minority report written by our member on the health committee recommended the banning of any ownership of human genetic material. It went beyond that to what I found to be a laudable type of proposal. It stated that in all cases when human genetic material was being used it must be developed for the purposes of the general good of the public. That means it would be controlled by the public sector or at the very least by the non-profit charitable sector.

We saw some of that in the past but we have of course moved completely away from it. Insulin, which was developed by the Connaught Labs, is probably the best example that jumps to my mind.

What we are doing now is simply avoiding the whole issue and opening up the possibility and potential for different types of human life forms to be owned.

The health committee made the recommendation that the precautionary principle be incorporated as the guiding principle in the legislation. The definition it looked at using was the one proposed by the Royal Society of Canada. It essentially says to the person or group proposing or developing any new procedure or technology that the onus is on them to prove that it will not damage our society, and specifically in this case human health.

There is absolutely no reference to that type of concept or principle. The bill certainly does not use the term precautionary principle and makes absolutely no reference to it in any kind of a general way at all.

We are where we have been for some period of time. We saw all sorts of chemicals being dumped into our environment, where if the precautionary principle had been applied these chemicals would never have made it to the market. We are allowing that process to continue in the face of a very clear recommendation from the health committee that the precautionary principle be enshrined in the legislation.

When we talk about the reproduction of humans we cannot help but think of where else we would want to put that principle. It seems that it would be one of the very first priorities for this type of legislation but there is no reference to it whatsoever.

If that had been incorporated a number of the other issues that I already raised would at least have a framework, one could almost argue an ethical framework within which to function. How the agency and the government conducted themselves with regard to regulations would have been guided by that principle and certainly would have left Canada and individuals using these types of technologies in a much more secure position and would have ensured that they were not being taken advantage of. However that is not in the bill.

We have heard about and we recognize the need for legislation. We have heard a number of comments with regard to stem cell research, whether it be the embryo type of research or the adult stem cell research. We have heard from a variety of scientists and medical personnel about the potential for this type of research to advance medical science very dramatically and very significantly to aid in a number of areas, such as Alzheimer's, diabetes and Parkinson's. The list goes on. This research shows great promise, but again the worry is who will determine that it is good research, useful research and beneficial research and that the results will be beneficial for society, versus research that may in fact end in a result that is not responsive to the values of this country. The bill really does little or nothing to deal with that. The government has sidestepped it again. There is that lack of courage again.

As well I want to briefly address the Patent Act. It is quite clear that this is an area that needs further review. We do not know, and I say that with some sense of assurance, how to use the patent type of legislation in this area of human genetic material. We just do not know how to do that

What I feel very strongly about and can say again unequivocally is that when the Patent Act was designed there were clearly no prospects in view of having to deal with this type of new technology. It is woefully inadequate in dealing with human reproductive technology. As I said earlier, there should be an immediate ban on the use of human genetic material for patent purposes, but it should not stop there. We do need to know how to control the development of this technology. It is my own personal belief that the Patent Act will not do it. We will need a whole new and different approach, not just the framework. It is like trying to use a piece of legislation that developed and evolved over a century or two for something that is so dramatically new that it is not possible to do it. I think that is where we are at with patent legislation when it comes to this type of technology.

We have to take a whole new approach, one in which Canada could in fact be a leader, because we cannot do this just by ourselves. There are no prospects of any of that coming out of the legislation. This has just been shelved, pushed off to the side and ignored.

In conclusion, let me say that there are some very specific things that could be done to change the bill on a short term basis around the agency and the types of regulations that could be passed through the use of the precautionary principle. More important is what we should be doing after that. We should show some vision and some courage and move strongly into this area in the House of Commons and in the general society as the debate continues.

[Member for Windsor West, May 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise today to welcome the newly elected member for Windsor West to the House.

On Monday, May 13 the voters of Windsor West made a choice to recognize the new member's hard work, dedication and commitment to his community as a community activist, a city councillor and through his work with youth and persons with disabilities.

The hon. member has been a tireless advocate for his community. I know he will continue to be an outspoken advocate on behalf of the people of Windsor West.

The voters of Windsor West have chosen to put an end to 40 years of Liberal reign. They have sent the new member for Windsor West to Ottawa with a clear message for this government.

They want a government that defends our health system. They want a government that protects our environment with real action. They want a government that protects jobs in the automotive industry.

I congratulate the member on his victory and welcome him to the House. We look forward to working with him to ensure the message is heard.