John Duncan

[Government Expenditures, June 2nd, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals just do not get it. The federal government is spending over $48 million of the $68 million in federal sponsorship money in Quebec to respond to messaging from the Parti Quebecois.

Canadians are tired of Liberal big spending to promote Liberal status quo federalism. The government finds sponsorship spending easier than making real, necessary and overdue changes to the federation.

All Canadians want is fairness in government spending. However western Liberals, like the Winnipeg MP who chaired the Liberal task force into western alienation, want the money the Liberals use in Quebec to try to buy votes in the west. I have news for the government. Big spending will not buy Canadians in Quebec or in the west.

[Immigration And Refugee Protection Act, June 1st, 2000]

Yes, such an important riding. As a matter of fact, from a citizenship or immigration perspective, perhaps my riding was rather pivotal in bringing this issue to parliament because that is where the boats carrying the Chinese migrants landed last year.

What are Canadians looking for in our immigration act? That is the key question we should be asking. The official opposition has a very clear picture of what that is.

Canadians want an immigration system which will accommodate independent immigrants who will quickly add to our economy, which will welcome genuine refugees and which will reunite these people with their families as soon as possible. This government has failed to deliver what Canadians want in this new bill. That is a pretty simple equation, but it is a very important question.

The fabric of our country and the future of our country is dependent on people. We all know that. People are what make this place. We all came from somewhere. We are all basically immigrants from somewhere, or progeny of immigrants.

The minister is saying that the changes to the act we are debating today are the result of consultation. All I can say is that it is pretty selective choosing from that consultation. I cannot find in my heart or in my head where the changes being brought forward reflect the concerns of Canadians when it comes to our immigration system. Those concerns are many.

People are not concerned about the level of immigration; people are concerned about the components of immigration. People want assurances that we are bringing to Canada people who will benefit Canada in the long run and people who need the safe haven of Canada. We want to do good for the world, but we also want to look after the best interests of the future of our society and of Canada. That means we have to put some safeguards in place, and those safeguards are very important indeed.

As members of parliament we all work with immigration cases every day of the week. Our administrative staff work on immigration cases every day of the week. We also work with immigration officials. We know what the problems are in the system. We probably know the problems in the system better than almost any other group of Canadians as a collective.

A major question right now is how to take whole issue of people smuggling and turn it on its head. Canada, as we know, has become a target. There are two ways to do it. We can use the hammer and try to penalize the people smugglers or we can remove the incentive to smuggle people.

Canada is not particularly good at using the hammer. As a matter of fact, we are terrible. We have an international reputation for it. One way to describe the posture of successive governments in Canada when it comes to this kind of issue is to say that we are not warriors, but boy scouts

All things being equal, an incentive is always better than a penalty if the same results are achieved. It usually costs less and is much more effective. People do it because that is the natural course of events given the set of rules and the circumstances.

We are operating under a perverse system when it comes to immigration in Canada. The way our immigration act is construed and the way these changes have been made still lead us to the very same place where the likelihood of penalty that is meaningful to a people smuggler is almost nil and the likelihood of a major reward is infinitely large. The consequence of that is like a government subsidy. If something is subsidized, we get more of it. There is nothing here to tell me that we will reduce people smuggling as a consequence of this bill.

This is a status quo document that the minister is using as a public relations message in order to defend the Liberal love of the status quo while at the same time trying to sell to the public the fact that she is actually doing something when we know that this is not going to work.

We have a larger problem here. The United Nations has defined a refugee and we signed that convention. Canada, in its wisdom—and I am being facetious when I say Canada in its wisdom—has chosen not to follow the UN convention on refugees. If we had followed that convention, most of the people who have arrived and declared refugee status would not be refugees because they arrived through a safe country.

Part of the UN convention says that refugee status is declared at the first safe country of arrival. If Canada has refugees arriving in large numbers there can be only one reason: we are being targeted and it is symptomatic of a bigger problem.

The bigger problem we have is that we have the easiest, most vulnerable, most generous and easiest acceptance ratio of any western nation community. That is not doing us a favour.

What it is leading to is that we are not getting the average or better than average client refugee profile. There is a tendency, when creating a system such as ours with all those vulnerabilities, that we will end up with a lesser group. We will particularly end up with that element, a small element admittedly, but an element with criminal intent to a larger degree than countries with tougher standards. I think the Canadian public has again been sold a bill of goods. The changes in this bill will ensure that Canada remains the number one target for human traffickers and queue jumpers.

The 1985 Singh decision has led to all sorts of problems in the way we apply our immigration and refugee system. It is a prime example of how parliament has been usurped by the courts. Parliament has been complicit in allowing that to happen. It is time for the government to reverse that trend, that tendency and, in this case, that decision. That will allow us to fix our system and retain the sovereignty on immigration and refugee determination that Canadians deserve.

[Immigration And Refugee Protection Act, June 1st, 2000]

No, it is Vancouver Island North, Madam Speaker. I want to get it right, just to ensure that I am not put in the position of being told I have already spoken.

[Committees Of The House, June 1st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding that if the member for Selkirk—Interlake had simply stated that he was splitting his time, that indeed would be allowable in the House.

May I request that he simply make that statement at this time, that he would indeed be splitting his time with another alliance member?

[Migratory Birds Convention Act, May 30th, 2000]

The Minister of the Environment. In our system there is no check or balance whatsoever. In our system that constitutes ratification.

I have a basic fundamental problem with that, as does the opposition. However, that is the way it is. Our signature meant nothing until 1999 because it was not ratified by the other party. Now that it has been ratified by the other party, our signature is taken for granted. That is a fine way to do business. I am being facetious, of course.

The protocol entered into forced when the instruments of ratification were exchanged on October 7, 1999.

In 1997 a protocol on changes to the Mexico-U.S. migratory birds convention was also consented to by the U.S. senate. That has happened along the same timeframe.

What we are debating tonight is basically an amendment to the old 1916 migratory birds convention, which is a schedule or an appendix to the Migratory Birds Convention Act, 1994. That is what we are talking about.

Ours is called the Migratory Birds Convention Act. The American legislation is similar but different. I think theirs is called the migratory birds conservation act, for example. There certainly are major differences in how they deal with aboriginal peoples in our case or indigenous peoples in their case.

The new regulations include a whole new section, section 4, which basically talks about harvesting by aboriginal peoples. It says that migratory birds and their eggs “may be harvested throughout the year by aboriginal peoples of Canada having aboriginal or treaty rights”.

It further states that inedible byproducts may be sold but the birds and eggs so taken shall be offered for barter, exchange, trade or sale only within or between aboriginal communities as provided for in the relevant treaties, land claims agreements, self-government agreements or co-management agreements made with the aboriginal peoples of Canada.

That is one of the proposed sections in our amendment to the Migratory Birds Convention Act. I just want to point out that the old language did not use the term aboriginal. The old language, which is still in the regulations, does not talk about aboriginals. It talks about Indians and defines the word as having the same meaning as in the Indian Act. It talks about Inuk and defines it as meaning a person who is a direct descendant of a person who is or was of the race of aborigines commonly referred to as Eskimos and possesses at least one-quarter Inuk blood.

I am very familiar with the Indian Act. I am very familiar with all the definitions surrounding the terms Indian, Inuk, Inuit, Metis and several others. I was unaware until today that Canadian documentation anywhere referred to blood quotient, but indeed I find it in the regulations attached to the Migratory Birds Convention Act when it talks about Inuk. I was quite surprised to see that. It tends to be an American convention or way of doing things. I had not seen it in Canadian statutes or regulations at any time before. It was a bit of a surprise.

At least we have a pretty clear definition in the regulations. Where we have a problem now is that this new amendment states that migratory birds “may be harvested throughout the year by aboriginal peoples of Canada having aboriginal or treaty rights”.

That was probably imported from the constitution because similar language is used in section 35. However, if one wanted to define aboriginal it is simply not there. I looked. It is not defined anywhere in the act or the regulations. Neither are aboriginal rights defined. We all know what a treaty is. It either is or is not, but aboriginal rights are not defined either. This is totally open ended and I will relate some the ways it is open ended.

We may have one definition in Canada but we cannot constrain this agreement to Canada alone. This is a bilateral agreement. Let us talk about the Nisga'a treaty which we debated at some length in this place. It said that Nisga'a citizens had the right to trade or barter among themselves or with other aboriginal people any migratory birds harvested under this agreement.

I went to the glossary in the Nisga'a agreement. There is no glossary in the Nisga'a agreement. I went to the definitions. There are definitions in the Nisga'a agreement but they do not cover that part of the alphabet or do not cover aboriginal, aboriginal rights or aboriginal people. None of those words were defined. The only thing relied upon in the Nisga'a agreement once again is the Indian Act definition of Indian. That is how the Nisga'a define themselves in terms of whether or not they are eligible to become Nisga'a citizens. That does not help.

Why am I expressing a concern? One of my concerns is who are other aboriginal people. Are they confined to Canada? Are they confined to British Columbia in this case or are they not? Is it confined to status Indians and Inuit? Is it confined to status or non-status Inuit? Is it confined to status or non-status Metis and Inuit?

This is not good enough. Let us look at the American language and the following terminology:

The protocol establishes eligibility for the indigenous inhabitants of Alaska. Indigenous inhabitants are defined as permanent residents of a village within a subsistence harvest area, regardless of race. Subsistence harvest areas are established to include most village areas within the Alaska peninsula, Kodiak archipelago, the Aleutian Islands and areas north and west of the Alaska range. Areas that would generally not qualify include the Anchorage, Matinooska, Susitnu and Fairbanks North Star Burrows, the Quini peninsula roaded area, the Gulf of Alaska roaded area and southeast Alaska. Exceptions to these areas can made through a deliberative process which includes the management bodies established by the service.

It is pretty definitive. There is a lot of clarity. Is this important? I believe it is.

First, the primary goal of the whole treaty process is conservation. Conservation is achieved most successfully when it is rules based and everyone knows what the rules are and to whom the rules apply.

Second, we are now at the point where what was clearly aboriginal harvest for domestic use has been expanded by the amendment and by the terms of the Nisga'a agreement. It is clearly a new direction to include the sale or possible commercial exploitation of migratory birds.

Any sale of migratory birds will be in accordance with federal and provincial laws of general application and with any Nisga'a law in respect of the sale of migratory birds harvested under the agreement. Nisga'a citizens have the right to sell inedible byproducts including down of migratory birds harvested under the agreement. It does not even constrain that by saying they have that right to sell only to other aboriginals.

Given that we do not have a high level of historical exploitation, I am suggesting that this could lead in that direction. We ought to be concerned about the clarity of the language and the clarity of the language is simply not good enough.

I will go back a bit to the second major point I want to talk about. The Canada-U.S. treaty is impacted by the Mexico-U.S. treaty on migratory birds. We could look at that plus the fact that we want the agreement to deal with conservation of species. We also want the agreement to allow for the fact that some species listed under the migratory birds convention have become pests since 1916 or even since 1985.

Snow geese are one example. The nesting grounds in the Arctic were getting beat up. They were taking a major hit. It took quite an effort by the federal government to come up with a way to get around the constraints of the migratory birds convention and allow a targeted hunt of snow geese to prevent the habitat destruction.

We currently have a similar situation in the middle part of our country and the middle part of the U.S. I spoke with a congressman from Minnesota last week who said they have the same problem there with cormorants. Cormorants are a listed species. I understand one of the reasons has everything to do with the reverence attached to blackbirds by the people of Mexico. That kind of got translated into the Canada-U.S. agreement.

We should be able to deal much more quickly with that issue than we have done up till now. Cormorants are major fish eaters. They are cleaning out lake habitats in the spring and summer in the prairies and in the mid-west. They are becoming very much a pest. We need to do something in that regard.

Those are the points that I wanted to make. I very much want to say that I think we all agree with the intent of the migratory birds convention. It is the role of the opposition to point out some inadequacies. We have some shortcomings here. We have some inadequacies in the way we have handled this issue. Because these agreements are so difficult to amend, when we do it we should do it right. We should clarify our language very precisely. That simply has not happened.

I hope we do better next time. Who knows when the next time will be? There is no doubt that an agreement which dates back to 1916 has basically stood the test till now.

Probably it will not be that long again until the next episode, simply because the world is changing and we are much more attuned to the environment that surrounds us. There is a degree of management that has to happen. Species do require some management from time to time.

We look forward to seeing some productive changes to the Migratory Birds Convention Act in the future.

[Migratory Birds Convention Act, May 30th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I have looked at the Migratory Birds Convention Act and the amendments thereto, and I have boiled it down to three main messages that I would like to deliver tonight.

The first is, basically, that this take note debate tonight and the lack of a ratification process in Canada points out the inadequacies of our Canadian parliamentary practices and our system very clearly. Here we have a bilateral agreement with the United States and essentially this agreement comes into play when the U.S. ratifies it through its senate and then through presidential signature. In our case we do not have any checks or balances.

The second major message is that there is another bilateral treaty on migratory birds in North America. It is not the one between Canada and the U.S., it is the one between the U.S. and Mexico. That migratory birds convention treaty will have some ramifications on the Canada-U.S. treaty. I think we ought to recognize that and talk about it a bit.

The third message that I have is that the language which Canada has chosen to use in dealing with a very important amendment to the migratory birds convention, which is a schedule to the Migratory Birds Convention Act, that deals with aboriginal issues uses open ended language that will lead to open ended issues. It requires better clarity and better language in order to avoid creating the problems that will derive because, once again, Canada chooses to use a waffle in the language. It is very apparent when we read the U.S. legislation that enables the amendment that applies to indigenous peoples' issues in Alaska that they have done everything they can to narrowly define their terminology, and we have done everything we can to do just the opposite. Those are my three main messages.

The migratory birds convention was ratified by the U.S. and Canada in 1916. The parliamentary secretary described quite well why that came about. There were many vanishing species of birds as a consequence of things that were happening at the time. It is a pioneering document. It was an important international treaty. The main thing it did was to control the hunting of migratory birds, primarily by prohibiting hunting during closed seasons.

The other treaty I referred to between Mexico and the U.S. came along 20 years later, in 1936. The Canada-U.S. model was there to act as a prototype.

Since the inception of the migratory birds convention there have been problems in the U.S. and Canada where the act or the convention has not corresponded with the traditional hunting of birds by aboriginal or indigenous peoples and aboriginal people have been charged under the Migratory Birds Convention Act. This has been an ongoing conflict.

We would be the first ones to agree that amending the migratory birds convention, because it is an international treaty, is politically and procedurally difficult. Therefore, there have been no amendments to date.

Since at least the 1975 James Bay and northern Quebec agreement the federal government has been promising the aboriginal peoples that there would be amendments. In 1990 the Canadian Wildlife Service began meetings with governments, non-governmental organizations and aboriginal people. Finally, in December of 1995 this led to the U.S. and Canada signing a protocol to amend the migratory birds convention to allow traditional hunting by aboriginal people.

In 1997 the U.S. senate gave its advice and consent. That is what the U.S. senate is for. It is the elected senate. The President of the United States finally signed the protocol to allow its implementation in late 1999.

On the Canadian side we had the Minister of Canadian Heritage. I am not sure in what capacity she signed that document in 1995.

[Taxation, May 18th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, Canadian students must claim scholarships as income. A Canadian student lucky enough to receive a large scholarship is actually unlucky because he must pay tax to Revenue Canada on the value of the scholarship as if it were income.

Scholarships to American universities are often large because the tuition rates are high. Canadian students are being forced to pay income tax on money they never see because much of it is earmarked for tuition. This situation turns to farce when the student spends his whole summer working just to pay taxes. On the other hand, American students receive the tuition portion of their scholarship tax free.

This draconian tax policy is unfair to Canadian students, encourages the brain drain and penalizes bright students who are awarded the larger scholarships. This needs to be fixed.

[Natural Gas, May 12th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, it will be short and sweet. The motion that we have before us and the speech that the member for Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre gave relate to two different things. One is about incentives. The member was talking a lot to do with price controls and other things.

If I read into that, is the member saying that price controls and incentives are the same thing?

[Natural Gas, May 12th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would like to obtain unanimous consent to ask the member who just spoke a question.

[Natural Gas, May 12th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I would have greatly appreciated if that intercession had been when I had finished. I think that is the way Private Members' Business is normally run and operated.

Natural gas is an excellent fuel source and Canada is blessed with large reserves. It is important that we do it right in terms of how we develop, distribute, market and creatively manage our legacy.

I cannot support this private member's motion because it is without vision and it does not respect federal, provincial or territorial respective jurisdictions.