John McKay

[Modernization Of The Standing Orders Of The House Of Commons, May 1st, 2001]

Mr. Chairman, I thank the hon. member for his concise question. I think the government is moving incrementally along the path of parliamentary reform, but the essential problem is that no ministers, no members of government, can ever convince themselves that parliamentary reform is in their own interest.

Because members cannot convince themselves that it is in their own interest, there is no great enthusiasm to do what they need to do. If this system works, and it seems to work very well from the government's standpoint, why bother with change?

Ministers and the government in general need to rethink their position. My view is that good opposition makes good government. My view is that opposition comes not only from over there but back here. In our caucus a lot of the most significant opposition to government initiatives come from its own members. They refine legislative initiatives as much as they can.

I think certain ministers have seen the light, have reacted positively to suggestions from both sides of the House and are prepared to strengthen legislation. Let me take a controversial example of that.

In the last parliament the Minister of Justice, prior to dissolution, amended the youth justice bill based upon testimony before the committee. She introduced voluminous amendments which have now found their way into Bill C-7. Frankly I thought that was quite courageous on her part. The consequence regrettably was that she has been stonewalled by certain members of the opposition and it is very difficult.

Do I think the Minister of Justice will be persuaded in the future to amend her own bills after listening to testimony on the justice committee? I think I will have a tough sell. In that respect, if in fact we open those kinds of things there has to be a corollary that members of the opposition and our own backbenchers have to behave in some sort of responsible fashion. It has to be recognized at some point that debate finishes.

I cannot answer the question with great precision, but I offer as a response that government and government ministers need to be convinced that this is in their own interests. I think ultimately they can be convinced.

[Modernization Of The Standing Orders Of The House Of Commons, May 1st, 2001]

Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his wonderful lead into the comment that I would like to offer to the debate. This is an excellent form of debate. It gives us an opportunity to talk somewhat more frankly than we might otherwise speak.

I would like to offer comments on three areas: personal behaviour of members; caucus reform; and parliamentary reform. There is not really a great deal of difference between caucus reform and parliamentary reform.

On the issue of personal behaviour, I find it of some embarrassment to go home on a regular basis and talk about what has happened here, particularly given people's experience with parliament which is question period, which really has nothing to do with questions and even less to do with answers.

The analogy I use when I talk to people in schools, whether it is high schools, universities or public schools, is that if we had to judge the education system by recess, we would probably question the value of our taxpayer dollar. Similarly, if we had to judge question period, we would question the value of our taxpayer dollar. Regrettably that is what colours the public's perception of what we do here.

I am a relatively new MP. I have been here almost four years. I expect that my experience was somewhat similar to others. It is a little like getting married. I really did not know what I was doing. No amount of preparation actually prepared me for this experience. The books are not of any particular usefulness.

I make a point of trying to explain to constituents what I actually do. I had that experience last Sunday afternoon. We are all prone to meet with constituents. There was a group of about 50 or 75 people. I went through my agenda for the last three weeks and explained what it I did, the interactions I had with people and what the issues were. Over the course of half an hour to 45 minutes I did not lose a soul in that conversation. They were quite fascinated by what an MP does outside this Chamber and particularly outside of question period.

I developed a series of points that really are random and somewhat haphazard, but that I think would move us from the point of personal behaviour as we interact with each other to points of caucus reform to points of parliamentary reform, which I hope would be helpful.

I think members, as points of communications with constituents, should publish their agendas and tell people what they are doing. They should explain the issues that are of concern to them.

It strikes me as quite strange that parliament is not particularly proactive in explaining itself to the Canadian public. The counter distinction is amazing when we think about it. The Prime Minister's office literally has dozens of people who do nothing but promote the Prime Minister in a variety of areas, and justifiably so. Ministers literally have dozens of people in their offices who do nothing but promote the agenda of the minister and promote the minister.

The same cannot be said for either parliament as an institution or members of parliament who have little opportunities to communicate. The irony is that unless a member does something outrageous there is no way that he or she will have any attention.

I suppose it is somewhat naive to say that members should not take cheap shots but we are all going to do it. I just throw that out to put it on the record.

Members should be serious about their compensation. I practised law for 22 years. I never noticed that anyone who came into my office was overwhelming in his or her enthusiasm to pay me a retainer. However I learned rather quickly that if I did not ask for compensation for a retainer, which was commiserate with my abilities and skills in a particular area, then I would certainly not get that retainer.

It strikes me as strangely ironic that members are so shy about dealing with their own compensation. I cannot imagine what hockey player, teacher or doctor would work for 50% or 25% of what they are actually worth and still take all the same bumps and bruises. I find that strangely ironic among politicians.

In particular, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation puts out a little pamphlet on a regular basis and dumps all over us. I cannot quite fathom why we put up with that sort of nonsense, but we apparently do. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is not the only vehicle that diminishes the role of MPs.

MPs have to start thinking in terms of growing democracy. We have a group that calls itself the civil society. The civil society has aggregated to itself the position of defending democracy. This is hugely ironic, given that not one or very few of the members of the so-called civil society representing so-called groups that may or may not appreciate the representation have ever voted for any of these people. None of these people have ever run in a municipal, provincial or a federal election. Yet they apparently defend democracy.

It is somewhat trite civic law to say that there are three branches in any government: the legislative branch, the judicial branch and the administrative branch. This debate occurs in a larger context and there is a huge pincer movement by the judicial branch and the executive branch. We live in an age of executive federalism with all its royal prerogatives, and I am using this pejoratively. Those royal prerogatives are being used on a somewhat aggressive basis and have real consequences for members who aspire to having careers in this place.

Similarly the judiciary has been handed an enormous instrument to involve itself in issues of society, namely the charter. I notice that the judiciary is not overly shy about exercising the charter in areas where it feels it should. As a consequence, we have these two very robust and aggressive aspects of government, namely executive federalism and the judiciary, squeezing the legislators and squeezing this place. I respectfully submit that is the context for this debate. I think it is time for push back.

On the issue of caucus discipline and parliamentary reform members need to think through the degrees of discipline. Clearly budget bills are of great significance for this side of the House. Clearly items that we ran on in platforms are of great significance for the House. After that issues of discipline I think diminish.

I had the occasion to be in Mongolia recently. Mongolia has 76 members in its legislature, 72 of whom are with the government party. It has electronic voting. As we sat there I was watching the government lose votes. That was somewhat ironic. Here are we, a mature democracy, apparently explaining to Mongolia, a relatively new democracy, how to exercise its democratic rights.

Private members' time should be reorganized so that there is a reasonable chance that private members' bills will see the light of day. There has been some discussion about that.

Committee hearings should be opened up so that we have draft bills at a much earlier stage and that we have white papers, brown papers and green papers; it does not really much matter. There is nothing more irritating as a member of a committee than to listen to staff members from a department saying that they have consulted with all the stakeholders. Really. Who are these stakeholders and so what?

In terms of earlier notice on opposition day motions, I like to speak to those motions from time to time, but I do not find out about them until 9 or 9.30 on the morning of the debate. Frankly I do not have a great deal of time to think, and I am up on my feet 10 to 15 minutes later responding to the motion.

On shortened deadlines for government responses, I do not see why the government needs 150 days to respond to a committee report or whatever.

I would not be overly embarrassed if the House was closed down for a few weeks every year during sittings and we just did committee work, either committee of the whole or standing committees. It would not bother me in the least.

We could get through a lot of stuff and make spending and estimate debates meaningful. We should either have one committee that looks after it all or have each committee develop some level of expertise so that we can hold the department's feet to the fire.

We should give the House leader time to debate and speak to the issue of time allocation. We have used time allocation from time to time. Opposition members might know that, but the House leader has no opportunity to speak to it on debate.

We need to create an MP culture which empowers MPs. MPs frankly need to go to MP school. They need to know that they cannot be removed from committee by the whip only, that it actually has to be by a vote of the House. They are secure. They need to know that, for instance, they can designate five people in their place and those people are the first up. Therefore a whip cannot load a committee with more obedient MPs than others.

Committees have, as does the House, virtually unlimited power of subpoena which we do not exercise. We can vote for reductions in departmental bills, and we do not exercise that.

I offer these thoughts as a potpourri of things which can be done. I am not overly persuaded that a lot of standing orders need to be amended. I think, rather, that MPs need to realize there are a great number of things they can do. Whether it is singly or in smaller groups, they can make impacts such as my colleague to my left did who I think had a double-double last week with significant pieces of legislation.

We are debating this motion because we love this place. There is sort of a bizarre way in which it all works. As Churchill said, parliamentary democracy or democracy in general is one of the worst of all forms of government until we look at the alternatives. That is the context of this debate.

[Supply, April 24th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I do not take issue with the hon. member's speech in some respects. I appreciate that he has identified some of the frustrations around chapter 11 and around recognition of the devolution of sovereignty in terms of going to free trade panels or some other dispute resolution mechanisms.

What he has not addressed is the central issue of large multinational corporations investing in nations and then having the rules, laws and regulations changed after the fact. This could be any corporation or business, large or small, that has invested in a nation be it Canada or any other nation in the hemisphere. They recognize there is some vulnerability in this investment and some form of legal regime, rules, laws and regulations.

Could the hon. member address the issue of how a capital investment, large or small, could be brought into one of these agreements whereby there would be some comfort to the investor, yet still address some of the issues that he has legitimately raised?

[Supply, April 24th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, Mr. Hadfield is up beyond the clouds where transparency is as good as it ever gets for any of us. I listened to the transmission this morning on the CBC and he was looking down on Earth while fixing the Canadarm. He could see an amazing distance, clouds or no clouds.

As to the issue of Quebec being at the table, Quebec is necessarily at every table because it is well represented by the federal government. We are a sovereign nation. We have 10 provinces as far as I know. Every debate about sovereignty has been lost by the side opposite. Quebec will be represented there by the federal government and seems to be doing very well, thank you very much.

[Supply, April 24th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, the question by the hon. member is well taken. Chapter 11 has been somewhat problematic in both the FTAA and the NAFTA. Sovereign nations are starting to face the reality of the sovereignty they gave up to get that deal. The Prime Minister has acknowledged that chapter 11 is somewhat problematic for us. In the event a free trade agreement is entered into in the hemisphere, chapter 11 or the successor version of it will likely get a great deal more attention from the government.

One of the major frustrations in dealing with the Americans is that their trade rules apply for the initial period of the trade dispute and then we go to a dispute resolution mechanism, which is where we all wanted to be in the first place. However the result of that mechanism is like an interim injunction. It is all over once we have our interim injunction and the permanent injunction is somewhat useless after the fact.

I therefore agree in some respects with the hon. member that the clause must be looked at carefully and that other mechanisms can be used. I look forward to her contribution in that respect.

[Supply, April 24th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I am somewhat hesitant to engage in this debate as it seems to be something of a daunting task.

Like most members, I do not have any professional expertise in the area and I have not studied trade issues at a university. Frankly, at times my understanding of these issues is something of a newspaper understanding, but like many Canadians I can get myself exercised about countervails, softwood lumber, P.E.I. potatoes and rail against American protectionism.

I can work myself up into quite a lather about American trading practices. I could even give a bit of an historical view on how trade has affected this nation.

Nothing seems to animate Canadians more than debate about trade. Going back to Prime Minister Macdonald, he had quite some trade debates in his time, as did Laurier, Mackenzie and Prime Minister Mulroney. Even our current Prime Minister has a few political scars about the issues of trade in this country.

Why do Canadians get so animated about trade debates? I would suggest that trade is in some respects more than merely economic relations that it goes to the very essence and viability of our nation. No country in the world is more dependent upon trade than we are. Something in the order of 40% of our gross domestic product is directly related to trade. Compare that with our major trading partner, the Americans, where 20% of their gross domestic product is related to trade. Our trade with the U.S. is a billion dollars a day, and 80% of all our trade is with the U.S. The old saying goes that when America catches a cold we get pneumonia. Seemingly try as we might to diversify, we still seem to go to our old trading partners, particularly the United States.

Canadians are uniquely positioned to know how vulnerable we are on trade. Therefore our trade vulnerability makes our sovereignty vulnerability even more open to us. Sovereignty vulnerability in my view goes to the essence of who we are as a nation. The irony is that the more we trade, the more we plant our flag worldwide and the more Canadian we feel. Is that not an unique irony? Ironically, in some respects we also give up a great deal of our sovereignty.

What is it that Chris Hadfield is doing as we speak? He is planting a Canadian on the next frontier, the Canadarm. How did he get there? He got there basically because of a trade deal. Canadians in the family of nations are responsible for 2% to 3% of the overall cost of putting up the space station. As a result we get to play in our area of expertise. Our area of expertise is robotics and in some respects it is a quintessential Canadian trade deal. We establish a niche, make it very important and expand from there. Meanwhile we brand our product so that literally everyone in the universe knows that the Canadian astronaut up there is exercising Canadian expertise and planting it in the best advertising position in the world.

It is a Canadian style trade deal because we are not big enough to do a meaningful space program on our own. We end up giving away some of our sovereignty, our means to be independent and on our own, in order to take part in something that is larger and that we could not do on our own.

I submit that the summit of the Americas reflects that kind of tradeoff. At one level it is merely a trade deal. I have it, someone wants it, what is the price? At a more profound level it is a sovereignty tradeoff. What level of national sovereignty are we prepared to give away in order to get a trade deal from someone else?

I do not think my speech is the most insightful in the world but generally they do not turn the lights out on me at the same time.

Chapter 11 is at its essence a simple tradeoff. If I, the hated multinational corporation, for which, by the way, all our sons and daughters want to work at very good rates of salary, am to invest $100 million in a country I want to know what its rules and laws and regulations are. I do not want Mr. or Mrs. sovereign nation to change its rules or laws after the fact to make my investment worthless. At its core chapter 11 is that simple.

How much sovereignty is a nation prepared to give up? How much sovereignty, i.e. the right to make rules, regulations and laws unilaterally within a jurisdiction, is Canada or any other nation prepared to accede to a trade panel or to courts in a foreign jurisdiction? The answer is a lot and nothing, simultaneously in contradiction.

There is a rule in tax law that the taxpayer is expected to arrange his or her affairs to maximize the benefit to himself or herself and to minimize his or her tax liability. The courts recognize that rule. Revenue Canada has volumes of rules and regulations that would choke a horse in order to minimize that taxpayer intent.

When a sovereign nation enters into a trade deal the question is: What is it losing? If a nation is powerful like the U.S. and gets to change the rules ex post facto, the answer is not much. For a large nation such as Japan which can culturally frustrate virtually any trade deal, the answer again is not much. However leaders like Mr. Fox from Mexico or the prime minister of Costa Rica or Chile must make a bit of a Faustian bargain and hope the access they secure to the market is worth the sovereignty they must inevitably give up.

The lights have gone on so my speech must be very insightful at this point.

This is where it gets tricky because smaller nations, even nations such as Canada, have a lot of sovereignty to lose. I sometimes wonder whether those from the so-called civil society have appreciated that the more elements which are raised, i.e. environment, labour, working conditions, et cetera, the more difficult the equation becomes. It is particularly difficult if, as with many small nations with minimal democratic traditions, one has virtually nothing to give.

The commitment by the 34 leaders in the hemisphere to strengthen democracy has significance beyond the appreciation of both sides of the debate. It is something of a Trojan horse clause. Can one imagine APEC entering into a similar clause? Virtually half the nations in APEC are dictatorships or quasi-dictatorships. The situation is similar for the Organization of African States. I cannot imagine that hemisphere entering into an agreement where a democracy clause is a significant part of the deal.

Trade deals only work in democracies where the rule of law prevails. Therein lies the irony. As nations mature in their democracy, trade increases. When trade increases and democracy matures, sovereignty is a fact. It is quite ironic that Canadians have become a nation of flag wavers in lockstep with trade deals which apparently devolve significant elements of their sovereignty.

It is clear to me that the status quo will not prevail. A deal or deals will be made, be they bilateral or multilateral. The process contemplated by the motion will happen regardless of the will of government. The genie is out of the bottle and cannot be put back in. My only hesitation is that the debate should be informed and that government should reserve unto itself some strategic room to negotiate in the best interests of the nation.

Some interests will be contradictory, such as softwood. The Atlantic position is different from B.C.'s position, B.C.'s position is different from Quebec's position, and Quebec's position is different from Ontario's position. If we go into negotiations divided we will get the worst of all possible worlds.

It has been said that heaven is British government and French food. If this debate is poorly managed we might well get the reverse, French government and British food, and that would just be hell.

[Foreign Affairs, April 2nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I know that asking a relevant question is normally the purview of the official opposition. Given its fixation du jour, I thought I would be allowed to ask a question which is relevant to Canadians and to my constituents.

Sri Lanka has been in the grip of a bloody civil war for almost the past two decades. After years of mutual acrimony, the government of Sri Lanka and the Tamil tigers appear to be approaching a retrenchment primarily through the government of Norway.

In light of this, could the Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific tell the House Canada's policy with respect to this important peace initiative?

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, March 26th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I believe the hon. member is referring to the presumptive offences, an area that is actually a fairly significant change in the bill. Now crown attorneys and defence attorneys will not argue as to whether a case should be tried or not tried in adult court. The crown will simply ask for an adult sentence at the end of the presentation of the evidence.

The interesting anomaly was raised in evidence as to whether this would in effect, if there were an imposition of an adult sentence, result in the reduction of incarceration time, the time actually in incarceration, and a period of supervision. There was that anomaly.

I do not have a good answer for the hon. member's inquiry. I think it is a legitimate issue to raise. That was an area about which we all had some questions. It was rather a pity that the last committee did not get down to debating significant issues such as the hon. member raises. I am hoping that we do have the opportunity at the committee to raise that particular issue and arrive at a reasonable solution.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, March 26th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I will mention at the outset that I will be splitting my time.

This debate by and large generates more heat than light and has, over the past seven years of these last three parliaments, generated a great deal of heat. I do not know how much light we actually came to over the course of those three parliaments, but this occupied the 35th parliament. The justice committee reported in May 1997 on this issue and that formed the basis for the 36th parliament's Bill C-68.

In the course of dealing with Bill C-68, parliament was prorogued and that bill became Bill C-3. In the course of dealing with Bill C-3, we in the justice committee had extensive hearings, as did the previous justice committee, hearings that were nationwide. In the course of those hearings, we heard from pretty well every corner of the country and from every interested jurisdiction. Bill C-3 has now become Bill C-7 and we are now in the 37th parliament and back to debating this issue.

While I have some discomfort at times about time allocation, there comes a time when time should be allocated. I believe this is one of those occasions where we finally have to deal with the evidence we have heard, the testimony we have heard and the manner in which the government has put it forward in a bill after extensive hearings.

May I say that at the point where we were just about to get down to clause by clause in the justice committee, the Bloc Quebecois decided that would be a good time to filibuster. The Bloc took up something in the order of 27 hours of the committee's time on a filibuster which ultimately had to be returned to the House, with the net result that the bill was not heard and not dealt with prior to the election in November 2000.

I submit that we are not going to make everybody happy. There are times at which government just has to be government. Parliament does its thing and expresses its view because, after all, this is a talking shop. We do talk and we do advise, but ultimately it is the government that makes decisions.

I want to commend the Minister of Justice on her willingness to listen to evidence and to change significant portions of the bill based upon the evidence she heard at committee.

The first change is in the area of the preamble and principles of the bill. Members will notice that clause 3 has been changed. Again, this is as a direct result of what she heard at committee.

The first statement of principle will now read as follows:

(a) the youth criminal justice system is intended to

(i) prevent crime by addressing the circumstances underlying a young person's offending behaviour,

(ii) rehabilitate young persons who commit offences and reintegrate them into society, and

(iii) ensure that a young person is subject to meaningful consequences for his or her offence—

As I say, a number of people before the committee said that we had the principles in the preamble as a declaration of principle and that was not correct. The Minister of Justice listened and the Minister of Justice has put that into the bill.

Second, the importance of timely intervention is recognized in the principles. In some respects that may be stating the obvious, but in testimony after testimony we heard that a youth would commit an offence in May of one year and not be dealt with until a year or 18 months later. At the best of times one has difficulty bringing together the consequences of one's activity with the punishment, and the result is that the youth loses all appreciation for the justice system, so the importance of timely intervention is right in the declaration of principle. Again, the minister changed this.

There is another change. A reference to the needs and level of development of the youth has been added to the principles. Subparagraph 3(1)(c)(iii) reads:

(iii) be meaningful for the individual young person given his or her needs and level of development and, where appropriate, involve the parents, the extended family—

and so on.

Those are significant additions and, again, are based upon evidence we heard. Again I have to commend the Minister of Justice. She listened to the testimony. The changes were made in the bill.

When she attempts to come before the committee members opposite filibuster. I cannot quite see how that is being a responsible parliamentarian. Members are forever saying that they have no impact on legislation. Frankly, the justice committee did have an impact on this legislation. Frankly, the justice committee spent a lot of time listening to the evidence. Frankly, the minister reacted with significant amendments. Yet members opposite say that we have to debate this some more and that members opposite are irrelevant and do not have any impact on legislation.

With reference to the interests of victims, that was probably a flaw in the previous bill and has been referred to in the preamble of the bill where it has been incorporated by reference. It states:

Canadian society should have a youth criminal justice system that commands respect, takes into account the interests of victims, fosters responsibility and ensures accountability—

I do not know what else can be said in terms of how to incorporate those kinds of principles into a bill.

We heard a great deal of testimony about how Canada treats its youth when they come in contact with the law. What became clear in the course of listening to our evidence was that we overrely on incarceration, particularly on incarceration for aboriginal youth. I can recall the testimony of one youth justice of the Northwest Territories who gave a rather sad commentary on our youth justice system. He said that one of the reasons he puts aboriginal youth in jail is that he knows they have no real alternatives, that they either go back on the street to dysfunctional families or go back on the street to no families at all. As a consequence, he saw it as his only option to put kids in jail. That is a pretty sad commentary on our situation.

Canadians would be interested to know that we incarcerate youth at twice the American rate. That is a pretty shocking statistic and is frankly something I had not heard prior to becoming a parliamentarian. That contrasts quite distinctly with the fact that Americans incarcerate adults at four times the rate Canadians do.

The other point of interest that came up in testimony had to do with learning disabilities. It became clear that a disproportionate number of youth offenders have learning disabilities. The low estimate was something in the order of 35%. The higher estimate was something in the order of 80%. More than one out of every two young offenders cannot read. In this society, people who cannot read will likely be marginalized. If they are marginalized, they are likely going to be hanging out with people they should not be hanging out with and doing things they should not be doing. The consequence is that they will be involved in conflicts with the law.

We also heard that young offenders drop out of school at twice the rate of their peers. At some level this is not really news and at another level it is a profound recognition of societal failure, which brings us into conflict between the needs of criminal justice and the needs of social justice. That is a kind of philosophical divide that we all straddle in some manner or another.

One of the pieces of testimony that really caught my attention was that of professor Allan Leishfield of the University of Western Ontario.

I know he is not from Queen's, Mr. Speaker, but he still probably has something to say in this area.

He states:

There is simply not enough evidence to support the notion that incapacitation through incarceration of relatively large numbers of youth is an effective way to promote community safety. The second is partly drawn from the first and that is that the cost of providing custody for large numbers of youth is considerable and not justified given the poor outcomes recorded in the vast majority of the programs that rely on incapacitation.

Members opposite should know that it costs about $106,000 a year to keep a youth in jail, whereas referrals to other non-custodial situations cost somewhere in the order of about $9,500.

When something is costly and is not working, there is something wrong. When we are faced with that situation we have to look at other alternatives.

I respectfully submit that this bill has looked at other alternatives, that this has been completely and thoroughly debated by members opposite, and that it is time to deal with the issues that criminal justice presents to all of us.

[Supply, March 15th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I would use the phrase of a certain hon. member, namely, I reject the premise of the question.

If on April 2 there are countervail duties or anti-dumping charges then on April 3 we will have a lawsuit. If that is the way it is, that is the way it is. I cannot simply extract a negotiated agreement because I wish to extract a negotiated agreement.

As I said in the thrust of my speech, for Canadians free trade means free trade. It does not mean anything else other than free trade.