House of Commons photo

Crucial Fact

  • His favourite word was aboriginal.

Last in Parliament October 2015, as Conservative MP for Vancouver Island North (B.C.)

Lost his last election, in 2015, with 28% of the vote.

Statements in the House

Supply September 29th, 1994

Madam Speaker, I would like to recognize the very important role that the member opposite has played in establishing that subcommittee. He has been the driving force. I must say I have had a crash course in CSIS since notification that this motion was coming forward.

I would like to see permanence of that standing subcommittee through legislative authority. I would also like to see the standing subcommittee have a very real role in the appointments to SIRC. In other words they should have a vetting role as opposed to just an interview role.

I would certainly be open to any other constructive suggestions the member might have.

Supply September 29th, 1994

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague from Crowfoot.

It is a pleasure to rise today to contribute to the debate on the security of our country. I am aware that by its very nature and its inception in 1984, CSIS and much of its work must be kept secret. The lives of individuals involved in CSIS work, contacts and ultimately all Canadians would be at risk if the wrong information got into the wrong hands. However this does not and should not preclude parliamentarians on behalf of all Canadians from discussing this secret agency, its work, mandate, activities, and the manner in which we review the scope of activity, namely through the Security Intelligence Review Committee otherwise known as SIRC.

The work of CSIS in protecting the interests and security of Canadians is not in question. Canada being such an open society must be as vigilant as ever to the threat of subversive action. We must be conscious and sensitive to Canada becoming a proxy battlefield between immigrant groups who want to continue their hostilities on our soil. Remembering that Canada has the highest rate of immigration in the western world and therefore has extra exposure in that regard, we must be vigilant.

While it is important to acknowledge these potential threats and reaffirm our support for CSIS, it does not mean that CSIS is ultra vires or some untouchable CIA type derivative. Accountability still remains the hallmark of the nature of this country, its public servants, politicians and those on the public payroll.

Canada is one of the few western democracies to give its security service an explicit statutory charter. It provides a defined mandate for the operations of the agency. It interposes a system of judicially defined authorized warrants in the agency's use of intrusive investigation techniques. It establishes monitoring and review bodies. These purport to ensure that the agency does not indeed act outside the limits of its mandate.

Therefore the question is: Is it doing so? It became obvious during the four years of existence of the McDonald commission in the late 1970s that illegalities and improprieties were rampant in the security service branch of the RCMP. The principal recommendations of that report called for an entirely civilian security agency. This agency was to be politically accountable and subject to strict review. The report concluded that law enforcement and security work are incompatible.

Accordingly, Bill C-157 which was introduced in May 1983 was put into effect in order to form this new security agency. However, it died on the order paper after much debate, committee review and public criticism. During the next session of the 32nd Parliament Bill C-9 was introduced and incorporated virtually all of the proposed changes and amendments as prescribed during the Bill C-157 debate. This was proclaimed in August 1984.

The act assigns the management and control of CSIS to the director, a cabinet appointee. The Solicitor General is given an active supervisory role. Originally the bill had adopted a model similar to Australian legislation which would not have given the minister any operational role whatsoever. This was ostensibly to ensure that CSIS could not be used for partisan purposes. The act now provides that the minister has an override and must approve all warrant applications. The act also establishes the office of Inspector General and the Security Intelligence Review Committee. The Inspector General is to monitor CSIS operations and to report to the deputy Solicitor General and to SIRC on the legality and propriety of these operations.

SIRC is a committee composed of five Privy Councillors appointed after consultation by the Prime Minister with opposition leaders in the House of Commons. It is to conduct a review of CSIS operations and to report to the minister and Parliament on them. It also has a variety of investigative duties; deals with complaints and acts as an appeal board with respect to security assessments and security influenced decisions under the Citizenship and Immigration Act.

During its 10 years CSIS has had growing pains. The House of Commons set up a special committee in 1989 to review the CSIS act and the Security Offences Act. The committee had 117 recommendations. Its report called "In Flux but not in Crisis" generally concluded that the system was sound and any reform should be based on the continuance and extension of already established institutions.

The government's response set out its belief that legislative changes in the CSIS act and the Security Offences Act were not needed. Further it was unwilling to contemplate structural changes.

In February 1991 a debate was held on an opposition motion that the House of Commons concur in the committee's report which recommended a parliamentary subcommittee on national security. The subcommittee held its first meeting in June 1991.

On May 3, 1994 this same standing committee on justice and legal affairs re-established the subcommittee on national security which is the committee currently looking into the Bristow affair. The motion was a close vote and almost did not happen.

Let me now turn to the formation of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, euphemistically known as SIRC. In 1984 the then newly installed Tory government announced the initial membership of SIRC. In order to meet the requirements as prescribed in the act as a condition to sit on SIRC, two individuals had to be sworn in as Privy Councillors on the day of their appointments. The politics had begun, the die was cast and suspicions were raised. Naturally, due to the Privy Council appointment requirements, four of the first five appointees were ex-cabinet ministers and the fifth a well placed Quebec City lawyer.

Today we have five politically appointed partisan individuals on the review committee; three from the Tories, one from the Liberals and one from the NDP. This was a Mulroneyism.

What is its function? The security committee is to act as the eyes and ears of the public and Parliament on CSIS. The committee is intended to be independent of the government and its operations but responsible to the Parliament of Canada. The CSIS act provides that its members are appointed by the Governor General in Council after consultation with the leaders of all parties having more than 12 members in the House of Commons.

Is it independent? Is it another politically charged patronage agency made up primarily of Tory cronies? Is it conducting constructive and an apolitical review of CSIS and its activities? We need to know and perhaps the only way is to investigate the investigators.

We do not want to emulate the travesties perpetrated by our neighbours who have created monsters in the form of the CIA. If we are not vigilant and take the time to review agencies like CSIS after 10 years of work, it is easy to lose control of their function and scope of activity.

Under the legislation SIRC does not have access to cabinet documents. For this reason I suggest that the requirement that members of SIRC have Privy Council designation or past cabinet experience is unnecessary and should be abolished. Instead have individuals cleared by the RCMP and if they meet the top security clearance available they fit.

Why would one require a PC designation when one does not have access to cabinet documents? This change would lend itself to appointing independent members and not has been cabinet members.

I would also like to recommend changes to the length of appointments to SIRC. Currently the five-year appointment allows a former administration to protect itself from a new administration. At the present time we have the first of the Tory appointments to SIRC expiring in December 1996 and the latest one in 1998. All may survive this administration, assuming the next election is held before December 1996. Four or five will survive if the election is held before November 1997.

At the same time the Liberal committee appointee, Michel Robert, the same individual who worked Saturdays and has a non-tendered $249,000 contract from the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, ensures that the current administration has one of its cronies who can keep track of things. It is a joke and nothing more than political patronage that surely does not lend itself to independent review of CSIS operations.

What we need is legislative permanence being granted the parliamentary subcommittee on security and legislative authority as well. This will at least meet the original recommendation of the 1991 review of national security and give us a body whose investigative powers include the ability to investigate cabinet, which SIRC cannot.

Supply September 29th, 1994

Madam Speaker, is not a Reform member the next speaker?

Yukon First Nations Land Claims Settlement Act June 21st, 1994

moved:

Motion No. 1

That Bill C-33 be amended by deleting Clause 5.

Mr. Speaker, as mentioned, Motion No. 1 deals with the provision for future Yukon land claim agreements to be ratified by order in council and not by Parliament.

Of course it is common for legislation to delegate to the governor in council the responsibility to implement broad legislative principles to provide the details so to speak. We have no problem with that.

Parliament should be concerned with broad matters of social policy and not the minutiae of implementation. The normal rule relating to the promulgation of regulations and other forms of subordinate legislation are very telling. Subordinate legislation is invalid unless it is specifically authorized by the act. Regulations which go beyond the scope of a provision are invalid, what the legal system calls ultra vires.

The basic ideas is that Parliament, not government, makes law and policy. Subordinate bodies may be delegated the task of implementing this law and with it the underlying social policy objectives sought to be accomplished by Parliament.

Bills C-33 and C-34 through the clever expediency of providing for final and transboundary agreements skirt around the convention and good sense of the ordinary rules of delegation to subordinate bodies. These agreements, most of which have not been negotiated and therefore are unavailable for parliamentary scrutiny and which may be amended in any event, even if existing, prevail over the provisions of Bills C-33 and C-34.

Moreover, land claim agreements and most of these have not been negotiated, can go beyond the act and its provisions may be enacted as law by the governor in council.

The result is that without Parliament's involvement, laws of great import may be formulated. For example, an agreement could provide or be amended to provide a limitation of liability for a First Nation or one of its citizens for any misconduct, default of debt, even breach of fiduciary obligation or fraud.

If this type of provision is not presently permitted, this can be altered through the amendment of the relevant agreement. There is nothing in these bills that precludes this sort of amendment.

Yukon First Nations Self-Government Act June 21st, 1994

These agreements, most of which have not been negotiated and therefore are unavailable for Parliament's scrutiny and which may be amended in any event even if existing prevail over the provisions of Bill C-34, have not been negotiated, go beyond the act and its provisions may be enacted by

law by the governor in council. There is nothing in Bill C-34 which precludes this sort of amendment.

In our view the combined effects of all this is that the legislation has invested parliamentary powers in the First Nations, bureaucrats and the executive branch of government. Surely this is an improper delegation of legislative powers, what the Supreme Court in re Grey, 1918, 57SCR. 157, 165, 171 and 176 referred to as an unlawful and therefore invalid abdication, abandonment or surrender of Parliament's power.

The Constitution of Canada contemplates that legislation be enacted by representative houses of assembly, not by bureaucrats negotiating with First Nations and not even elected members of government executing their executive and administrative functions.

Accordingly, I am concerned that what Parliament is engaged in here is an abuse of power which undermines the integrity of the parliamentary process. Minimally we collectively need more time to think through the consequences of what we are doing. After all we are not faced with a national emergency that requires the best possible but nevertheless instant response of Parliament.

Mr. Speaker, I move:

That the debate be now adjourned.

Yukon First Nations Self-Government Act June 21st, 1994

Just for clarification, am I not restricted to 10 minutes on Motion No. 1?

Yukon First Nations Self-Government Act June 21st, 1994

Mr. Speaker, assuming I have more time on Motion No. 1, I will carry on.

Yukon First Nations Self-Government Act June 21st, 1994

Mr. Speaker, Motion No. 1 talks about deleting clause 5 of Bill C-34. This provision in the bill speaks volumes about the Liberal government commitment to governing with integrity. We have seen that again in spades tonight.

I quote from its famous red ink book: "People are irritated with governments that do not consult them or disregard their views or that try to conduct key parts of the public business behind closed doors. Open government will be the watchword of the Liberal program".

This is not my main beef. My main beef is that this bill displays a serious lack of parliamentary accountability and scrutiny. It is a blank cheque for the government through order in council to make or ratify all future agreements in Yukon.

In our view, Parliament has a responsibility to the people of Canada to carefully consider and pass judgment on any initiative within its legislative agenda, but particularly in matters as important as aboriginal self-government. Self-government is a critical policy initiative which deserves the highest level of care that Parliament can muster. As I noted earlier, this would be evident to any impartial observer.

The legislative journey of Bill C-34 appears to involve undue haste for even a conventional piece of legislation. However, this bill is anything but conventional. It is extraordinary because in it Parliament delegates its fundamental responsibilities to the executive and bureaucratic branches of government. This delegation takes place in the context of critically important questions of what place will our aboriginal nations take within our federal state.

Parliament is being asked to breach its constitutional role in and responsibility to enact legislation in the public forum of Parliament. What is being sought is approval for a process legislatively to which the Government of Canada and its bureaucrats in negotiation with First Nations developed fundamental legislation in private. Thus, what Parliament is being asked to do and do extraordinarily quickly is engage in radical constitutional irresponsibility.

With respect to the 10 bands which have not yet entered into self-government and have not negotiated final agreements and transboundary agreements, let us remember that these agreements are integral parts of this legislative package. Parliament is being asked to approve legislation it has not seen and will never see. Not only do these agreements I just mentioned have the status of legislation, but according to the act they enjoy paramountcy over the self-government act. Even the existing agreements which are part of this package can in the future be amended in very fundamental ways.

Truly astonishing, anti-democratic and totally unconventional, the legislation provides that the self-government agreement and amendments thereto may go beyond the subject areas dealt with by the act. These agreements can be brought into effect upon the coming into force of the act. This gives the self-government agreement some legislative status. As long as there is no conflict between Bill C-34 and the provisions in the self-government agreement, these provisions are valid.

Moreover, they can be brought into force without the scrutiny and indeed even the knowledge of Parliament as law by the governor in council making orders and regulations to implement self-government.

This time allocation has placed me in a situation where I have a lot of information I cannot get.

I want to speak to Motion No. 2.

Existing clause 9, the delegation provision is such that a First Nation can delegate its law-making power-

Excise Tax Act June 21st, 1994

Mr. Speaker, once again speaking as someone who might be a proponent of the bill, my hon. colleague who has been a smoker for 25 years, does he believe that Canadian smokers will only smoke Canadian cigarettes if there is a large price differential? Does my colleague not have concerns about other damage to society which might occur if the ill-gotten gains of cigarette smuggling were to find their natural investment path in other criminal activity?

Excise Tax Act June 21st, 1994

Mr. Speaker, I have a brief comment. I could speak to illicit some comment here as a proponent of the bill. Does my hon. colleague here really believe that our borders are such that we can keep a profitable small package such as cigarettes out of circulation?

Further to that, without dropping taxes, would we not be using our policing resources to maintain an artificially high price in order to sustain smuggler profits?