Keith Martin

[International Actions Against Terrorism, October 15th, 2001]

Mr. Chairman, it is a pleasure to speak to this particular issue. It has been over a month since September 11 and it is time that we discussed a number of issues that were largely overlooked in this situation.

The bombing taking place now in Afghanistan is perhaps the simplest of all the aspects in the war against terrorism. A much more complex challenge though is what we are faced with today. It is the challenge of how we combat urban terrorism.

The killings in New York City in actuality were a form of urban terrorism. We know that Osama bin Laden has been training up to 11,000 people in training camps in the Middle East and Afghanistan in particular, to spread throughout the world and kill people.

We know this from Ahmed Ressam who lived in Montreal for four years. We know this from those who were responsible for the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. We know these people were inserted into these countries to lie low as moles for months if not years until the call came, the call from Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda to engage in a holy jihad and kill innocent civilians in their objective, which is to drive western influence from the Middle East.

We must make no mistake about the fact that this is a war against individuals who have chosen not to sit at the negotiating table but to blow it up. Therefore there is no negotiating with these individuals and a military option is the only option.

However, in combating the scourge of urban terrorism we must be intelligent. It will be a long and complex battle and it will require our police forces, CSIS and the international community of mutuals.

A bill was introduced today and the bill must have the following components. It must involve powers for the RCMP and CSIS in terms of surveillance, in terms of being able to monitor Internet and telephone communications, and in terms of search and seizure provisions.

It will be a balancing act not only between our individual rights under the charter but also the right for us to be secure. It will be a difficult challenge but it is one that we must face. We will work with the Minister of Justice to accomplish this objective.

We also need to cut the financial underpinnings from those organizations, more than 27 of which operate in Canada today, that are responsible for raising and sending money to not only Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the organizations that support them but to a wide variety of other terrorist organizations that have found Canada a haven for raising funds for terrorist activities abroad. We must give the financial institutions the tools to not only freeze but also seize the financial assets of these particular organizations.

We also need to secure our borders by ensuring that people coming to this country are true refugees and true immigrants and that those who are terrorists and criminals are kept out.

What is appalling is that individuals are allowed to fly into our airports and claim refugee status without any form of identification. They should be sent back to their country of origin. These individuals obviously got on a plane with identification but got off without it. Somewhere between boarding the plane and leaving it they destroyed their identification papers. Under those circumstances they should be sent home. They are not true refugees. They are economic refugees or other people trying to get into the country.

In another vein, we have an incredible opportunity. In my view we have not had an opportunity like this since World War II to bring peace and security to the international community.

In the building of the coalition that we are engaged in today who would have thought that we would be working with Pakistan, who would have thought that 1,000 American rangers would be deposited in Uzbekistan? We have the possibility of bringing together Russia and the west, Arab countries and the west, the CIS countries in the southern part of Russia and the west, Pakistan and the west, and to build bridges between Pakistan and India to try to resolve the conflict over Kashmir which is a deadly and potentially lethal one because both are nuclear capable.

We could do this by modelling it after World War II. After World War II the international community had a choice. It could have acted punitively against Germany but it chose to implement the Marshall plan which brought longstanding peace and security to Europe and enabled Germany to become a peaceful neighbour and a participant in the world.

We need to do that now. In doing so we would not have to deal with people like Osama bin Laden where only the military option is required. We would be able to deal with the masses of hopeless unemployed, usually men in the Middle East, where Osama bin Laden finds his shock troops. By improving the economic situation on the ground for these individuals it would prevent them from looking toward bin Laden and to look toward more peaceful ways in which to exercise their basic rights.

It would also involve the international community trying to offset the virulent propaganda that has fed these individuals from childhood. We know that one of the first things that happens in conflicts is that negative, hateful propaganda is used to turn a group of people against another. That is what has happened in these areas and what Osama bin Laden and his supporters did. They went into areas with a fertile ground of unemployed, hopeless individuals who only knew conflict and fed them a virulent message of hateful propaganda.

We must change that and the only way to change it is to introduce the truth about what the west has done, how it has helped Muslims and the marsh Arabs in southern Iraq, how it has tried to save the Kurds in northern Iraq, the Muslims in Kosovo and Bosnia, and its efforts to bring peace to the Sudan. We must let everyone know about these efforts that the west has supported.

We need to use new tools and build the bridges of diplomacy. There is also an enormous opportunity for rapprochement in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine.

As an international community we must tell the Palestinian authorities and the PLO that they must not allow Hamas and the Islamic jihad to engage in killings. It poisons the peace process. They must clean out the Palestinian authority of the corruption that exists within it.

On the other hand, the west, especially the U.S., must tell the Israelis that they must remove their settlements from Palestinian held territories, that they must acknowledge the presence of a Palestinian state that is independent and that they must work quickly toward the formation of borders for a free Palestinian state in the Middle East.

We must do that today. If we do not do that we cannot secure a long term peace in that area in the future. To secure that peace we would require a number of different economic and political avenues and diplomatic initiatives. Here at home we would require support for the military, the RCMP and CSIS. We would also need to give the financial institutions the tools to undercut and remove the financial underpinnings that support terrorist organizations.

This will be a long drawn out battle. It will not be won tomorrow. The most difficult aspect of the battle will not be the so-called war in Afghanistan. Our challenge will be to weed out the octopus of terrorist cells that exist all over the world. It will be difficult but by working with our neighbours and international security organizations we will be able to do it. There will be killings and there will be death but unfortunately that is the fact of life that we have today.

It is unfortunate that it has taken two years for the government to act. It knew this was going to happen and it knew these terrorist cells were operating. The writing was on the wall and it chose to ignore it.

Similarly, as my colleagues across the way in the House have mentioned, we need to support our military. Cuts and political indifference to the military have not enabled us to participate in the manner that we should.

In closing, we need to increase our military manpower to a minimum of 60,000. We need to increase the number of effective troops on the sharp edge and give them the equipment they need to do the job and to offset the rust out in our equipment that is occurring today.

In closing, I know all of us join in saying a prayer for our men and women in uniform half a world away. We wish them Godspeed. We pray that they will be protected. We will work hard to protect them, as well as the civilians in Canada, from being in harm's way.

[Income Tax Act, October 5th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, death, taxes and traffic congestion are three things that we can be certain of in life and in the brilliance of Bill C-209 it deals with all three of them.

I congratulate the hon. member for Jonquière on this good idea.

The bill is very good and provides guidance and direction to the government where it has failed in dealing with more innovative ways in which we can reduce our greenhouse gases and dependence on fossil fuels. The bill would allow tax reductions for users of public transportation services in Canada.

There is a cost for our failure to deal with alternative fuels as we have not looked at ways to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on fossil fuels. Some 16,000 Canadians die prematurely every year from poor air quality. The increase in asthma and other pulmonary related disorders among children has increased by a whopping 23% between 1980 and 1990. This has a huge cost upon our health care system.

Health care costs resulting from automobile use alone were reportedly over $1 billion a year. Motor vehicles are the principal source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 32% of the total amount.

The bill is important because it would lessen our dependence on cars. It is an innovative way to ensure that people would use alternative methods, particularly public transportation. We are one of the very few western democracies that do not have a national public transportation plan. There is no co-ordination within our country on how to lessen the dependence of the movement of people on our roads. The bill provides that option.

There are many economic benefits apart from the health ones. It lessens our dependence on using roads. Therefore it lessens the considerable costs that we have in terms of rebuilding our transportation arteries. It is a very significant deficit as members from across the country will attest. Almost all of us have some very serious significant problems in all of our ridings with respect to the transportation arteries in our country.

There has not been enough money applied to transportation arteries by the government. One source of revenue is gas taxes. The Canadian public would be surprised, in fact shocked, to know that only 4.5% of the revenues derived from gas taxes goes toward the improvement of transportation arteries. By comparison, some 90% of the money that is taken from gas taxes in the U.S. goes toward the improvement of transportation arteries.

We are no paragon of virtue in terms of public transportation. Perhaps, then, we ought to look not only within the bill but at the experiences within Europe. There were similar activities in Europe and the costs of private transportation use decreased. Private transportation use declined and public transportation increased dramatically.

My friend in the government made some assertions on the costs to the public purse of employing the bill. I take issue with that. I agree with him that there are certain costs. However those costs would be offset by the benefits not only in terms of health care but in terms of new construction on our arteries and greenhouse gas emissions which have a profound impact on agriculture. Greenhouse gas emissions and weather changes have had a profound impact on agriculture and on our gross domestic product. Therein lies some very strong economic evidence to support Bill C-209.

Canadians have done some very good work in looking at innovative ways to use our tax structure as a tool for environmental improvements. The tax structure could encourage the use of alternative fuels and alternative methods of utilizing energy. Those who use electrical power, solar power, or who have cars that do not use fossil fuels but rather combinations of methanol, ethanol and other substances that lessen emissions, should receive a tax credit.

Researchers who investigate other forms of energy use should also receive a tax credit. Perhaps gas taxes could be targeted toward the exploration, research and development of alternative fuels. There are quite a few researchers doing innovative work in a number of universities across Canada. Some excellent work on new types of electric fuel cells that hopefully will lessen our demand on fossil fuels is being carried out at the University of Victoria.

Bill C-209 could be a jumping off point into some very innovative and positive ways which the government could encourage the use of alternative fuels and alternative uses of energy.

Water is another area where there is abuse. The cost of water to us does not represent its true value. There are opportunities within our tax structure to encourage alternative uses of water and alternative methods to save water through the type of toilets we use. There are certain types of low flow toilets that decrease the amount of water use considerably.

There are alternative methods to water use within agriculture. Farmers have implemented very innovative ways, copied from Israel and Texas. They use low flow forms of agricultural irrigation that minimizes water use with maximal benefit. Those farmers, industries and consumers that are using alternative fuels of non-renewable resources should receive tax credits.

On the surface one might argue that there is a cost. My friend from the government is correct. That is, however, offset by savings in terms of encouraging this alternative method. The tax structure is a method of encouraging more responsible use of non-renewable resources that would provide not only an environment which is more conducive to our health but significant savings in terms of agriculture, health care and our economy as a whole.

I bring to the government's attention its failure to address this issue in a very substantive form and I congratulate the member for Jonquière for bringing this bill forward.

I encourage the government to work with the member for Jonquière and others in the House who are leaders in the environment such as the chair of the environment committee. He has been in the House for a long time and has some very profound and important ideas. He is also a member of the government. These members would advise us on what we could do to improve our environment.

I encourage the government to take a leadership role, step up to bat and look at the ideas within the House and our country. Considerable expertise, knowledge and research has been done. The government should work with the provinces to develop a comprehensive plan to have a more sustainable and healthier environment.

[Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act, October 5th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. friend, who has a Ph.D. in history, so I would never want to joust with him on this because I would lose every time. He has extensive knowledge in this area.

Basically what his question refers to is what we are to do in the face of domestic terrorism. What do we do in regard to a despot who is willing to abuse his or her citizens in the most egregious way?

I think we could divide it into two responses, military and non-military. Both would require a multilateral, multifactoral approach. In the non-military response, I think we could use our international organizations through the IMF and World Bank. We can use economic levers as a carrot or as a stick for those leaders who want to abuse their people. That can easily be done through IMF tranches and World Bank help.

As a country we can also apply our help in international aid in a diplomatic carrot or stick approach. Also, with respect to diplomatic recognition and bilateral involvement, we could make them conditional on a country's willingness to support the basic tenets of human rights.

We also need to deal with communication. As we have seen in Pakistan and Afghanistan and indeed in certain areas of the Middle East, how we actually stimulate people to take up arms against another group is to feed them a steady diet of violent propaganda against that group. We in the international community ignore this when communication is used not as a lever of peace but as a tool to stimulate one group to fight against another group, but we can apply other tools. The UN has ways to do that through shortwave radio and other tools whereby we could institute positive propaganda, positive information, to build bridges among disparate groups and to support moderates.

Last, on the military option I firmly believe a rapid reaction force should be developed with the command and control structure that is already in place. In my view we also need an international arms registry that deals just with the bulk sales of automatic weapons. If we had an international agreement that would enable us to track the bulk sales of automatic weapons it would go a long way to making this world a safer place.

[Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act, October 5th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. friend from Rosedale, the head of the foreign affairs committee. We congratulate him on his reappointment to that post. It is well deserved.

I have to say that our party's deep concern is that the bill was labelled, as the minister said, as merely a housekeeping bill. While as a party we have been strong supporters of the RCMP, and indeed have backed them up when others have tried to criticize them in the face of doing a very difficult job, our concern is that when we start giving extra powers to the RCMP we do not believe this is merely a housekeeping issue.

This issue deserves a complete and public debate and public knowledge. Only by doing that will we be able to have the buy-in on the part of the public, the buy-in on the part of the House and the full knowledge of the public as to what powers we are giving.

I know the member would abhor the belief that in any way, shape or form we would want to turn Canada into a police state. No one wants that. However in certain quarters there are those concerns, particularly among the anti-globalization crowds he referred to.

Our responsibility is to make sure that those people, and indeed all Canadians, are well aware, in a transparent fashion, of the kinds of powers that this bill would represent within the statutes of our country, and we will not simply say that this is some housekeeping bill that we will slide in through the back door. That is the problem our party has with it. We want to make sure that there is a transparent and public debate so that all Canadians will know what is in the bill.

[Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act, October 5th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I thought that there might be some opportunity for questions and comments on my speech.

[Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act, October 5th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak on this very important bill which affects Canadians across the country.

I want to echo the comments made by the member from the NDP that this bill was expected to be merely a housekeeping bill, a bill which did not have much significance, a few amendments here and a few amendments there.

The fact is that buried within this so-called innocuous bill are many profound changes that can have a huge impact on the country, on the powers of the RCMP and on the ability of Canada to not allow certain types of individuals, terrorists and criminals, into Canada. It behooves the Canadian public to know what is in the bill. My colleagues will try to do that over the coming weeks, but we are certainly will not give it the free passage which the government wants.

The government brought this bill forward four days ago. It gave the bill to us two and a half days ago and did not even allow the Library of Parliament to give us an analysis of it. That is not appropriate. That does not provide for adequate scrutiny of the bill.

The bill would allow a number of things, including allowing the foreign affairs minister to order the detention by officers under the Customs Act of goods imported by a diplomatic mission or consulate post of a foreign state. This is very important. We know internationally that certain consulates and embassies use their consulate bags to import and move contraband around. It is known internationally that the contraband can involve diamonds, drugs and weapons. It can also involve the illegal trafficking of endangered species, which is worth billions of dollars. This illegal trafficking is responsible for the decimation of thousands of species around the world, many of which have become extinct.

The bill also deals with a clause involving the RCMP's primary responsibility to ensure the security for the proper functioning of any intergovernmental conferences that may occur. Clearly we do not have a problem with that.

I want to bring forward an issue that the NDP have been harping on for a long time, which I find quite offensive. NDP members keep on criticizing the RCMP about its actions at international meetings. It is true that there has to be some analysis, as the Hughes report mentioned, about certain activities. However, for heaven's sake, when individuals who protest are willing to advocate violence, or assault the police, or teardown banners or throw molotov cocktails at the police, the police have a responsibility to protect those who are behind them as well as protect themselves. It is totally irresponsible for certain parties and certain groups to expect members of the RCMP to stand back while certain individuals impart violence against others. It is the responsibility of the RCMP to protect individuals who come to Canada and to protect those who protest peacefully.

We do need to investigate those incidents in which peaceful protesters were somehow hurt. We should also investigate the incidents where banners were put up, but were then torn down and where people were apprehended and taken into custody or thrown in jail before anything actually happened. That violates our basic tenets of freedom of speech which cannot be allowed.

However we cannot keep on using the RCMP as a punching bag for certain political interests that may exist, particularly those who violently oppose anti-globalization efforts.

The bill also lists treaties, conventions and agreements that entitle foreign representatives to immunities and privileges. It was brought forward at some of the meetings here that some foreign leaders, who are thugs, or criminals, or who have grossly abused citizens in their countries, are allowed to come to Canada to attend international meetings.

There certainly is an argument to say that if we do not sit down at the table and discuss matters that may be very difficult and painful, then a resolution cannot be found. Some people we talk to are individuals who, by most definitions, would be considered murderous or thugs at the very least.

We can use a tool to work toward peace. Perhaps the quid pro quo for international despots to arrive at a table and be welcomed as a member of the international community would be that they show good will within their own countries and stop abusing and violating the basic rights of their people.

The international community could apply pressure on groups and leaders in countries from Sierra Leone to Liberia, Angola, the Congo, Sudan and others by using the lever that they genuinely put forth an effort to deal with the significant human rights crises and wars in their country or they would not be allowed to attend international meetings in Canada or abroad. This lever ought to be used.

The problem we have with international treaties is that while they have nice words, they are toothless. We have to put some teeth in international treaties like the Geneva convention, or the rights of the child or the convention on nuclear weapons.

From the United Nations, to the IMF, to the World Bank, many agreements are made, they sound nice on paper and in a perfect world they would make a lot of sense. However many of these treaties are violated, yet there are no penalties, no implications nor ramifications for those who choose to violate them.

I bring attention to an issue that the government has been involved with for a long time and that is the issue of the wars in West Africa. In Liberia, Charles Taylor the president, has for a long time played friend and supporter of a man by the name of Foday Sankoh, the head of the RUF a group of rebels who are committing atrocities in Sierra Leone. They go into villages and chop off the arms or legs of children, women and men, not with the intent to kill them but to terrorize them.

The international community has until very recently turned a blind eye. Only recently have we applied the tools and levers against Charles Taylor and Foday Sankoh to do something. The implications of failure, in this case, is that tens of thousands of innocent people have had one or more limbs amputated with hatchets and have been left to die. That is beyond comprehension.

This conflict is flowing into Guinea as we speak. This has resulted in hundreds of thousands more refugees and the destruction of entire sectors of this area.

Why I bring this up in relation to the bill is that Canada can indeed take a leadership role by applying pressures, using levers, and putting teeth in the international agreements which exist today. The argument to support it is not merely the obvious humanitarian argument that it is wrong to mutilate innocent civilians, or commit gang rape, or murder innocent civilians on the street or purge the economic resources of a country without sharing it with the civilians.

Perhaps the self-centred argument that should be put forth to the international community is that if it does not deal with these despots now then we will pay the price later on.

The costs of post-conflict reconstruction are massive. Whether we talk about the former Yugoslavia, West Africa, the Congo or Rwanda, the costs are in the billions of dollars. When the precursors to conflict were staring us in the face, as they have been for years, perhaps we should have got involved. The argument could be that if we had spent a bit of money, if we had put forward a bit of effort and if we had spent a bit of time and attention to deal with these precursors to conflict, economically we would not have had to deal with the disasters that followed.

We cannot talk about the penalty we pay in human terms. That far greater penalty is borne by the civilians in the some 50 countries around the world where bloody conflicts are occurring today and to which we in the international community have by and large turned a blind eye. We need to get involved. We need to apply levers internationally. There is an opportunity to do so in the international agreements referred to in the bill, in treaties and in the meetings we sometimes host.

Next year we will be hosting the G-8 summit. It is rumoured that the summit in part will deal with Africa. I hope it will also deal with the issue of terrorism. There is a grand opportunity for us as a nation to put some constructive solutions on the table. There is an alignment of the stars. Recently, led by South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki, a millennium plan for Africa has been put forth. It deals with such issues as economic development, conflict prevention, resource management, political changes, democracy and human rights. Rather than looking at the past, it deals with some pragmatic solutions that can be done now and in the future.

There is an opportunity for Canada to link up with the some 15 leadership countries on that secretariat dealing with the millennium project and merge the G-8 summit leaders with the millennium project in Africa so that there is some commonality in the actions they pursue. Next year in Kananaskis, there is a great opportunity for Canada to take a leadership role with the G-8 nations. Those constructive solutions could be put forward with the blessing and the co-operation of the members supporting the millennium project in Africa, most notably the South Africans. There would be an enormous possibility for pursuing peace and security.

The bill also deals with protecting individuals who have committed crimes in Canada, such as the tragic murder of a woman by a drunk driver, a Russian employee at the embassy. Canada has faced problems in dealing with that because of today's laws.

Motion No. 373, placed on the notice paper on June 5, deals with just that. It reads:

That, in the opinion of this House, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade should: (a) release the names of all foreign nationals and diplomats employed in Canada in the service of their country who are charged with an indictable offence under the Criminal Code; and (b) urge the sending states of said diplomats either to recall their respective foreign officers, allow them to proceed through the Canadian judicial system, or allow their diplomats to be subject to expulsion from Canada as provided by the Vienna Convention of 1961.

The motion would enable Canada to deal with individuals who have indeed committed crimes here in Canada, rather than allowing them to flee to their countries of origin.

There is another thing that may be of help to foreign service officers here and indeed to our foreign services officers abroad. Once they come to Canada, their families cannot work. It is a problem. Similarly, the families of our foreign service officers cannot work when they go abroad. It would be useful to have provisions in the bill that would allow the family members of individuals who are employed by foreign embassies in Canada to work in our country. The quid pro quo would be that the family members of our foreign service personnel working in our embassies abroad could work in those countries. That would be beneficial to them and would provide a great deal of security for the individuals and their families.

The bill also deals with a number of immigration issues. My staff in Victoria and the staff of every member in the House have been plagued by problems with respect to the immigration department. The bill could have dealt with that.

For example, the visa officer is in Gambia for the hearing process once every six months. The office in Gambia deals with a lot of refugees from the bloody conflicts in Sierra Leone , Liberia, Guinea and others. If that foreign service officer comes down with the flu, that officer may not get there for a year. People who apply for refugee status in Gambia can only get hearings every six months and sometimes it takes a year. Bear in mind that this is only one step in the emigration process.

That office in particular needs to be looked at. There are other problems. People who go to that office say that the individuals who work there do not really care. When informed that gangs of people were shooting refugees in Sierra Leone on sight, they said there was no danger. Imagine. The international community knows that people have been shot, murdered and chopped up in Sierra Leone, yet our office in Gambia said that there was no danger. When a boatload of refugees was sent back from Sierra Leone, the office in Gambia denied that it ever happened. Either that department is overwhelmed or some significant structural problems exist there.

There are serious concerns in the embassies in India and the Philippines. I do not know if those concerns have been substantiated but the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration needs to look at this issue. Visas are potentially being sold and there are suggestions that people are being bribed.

Not Canadians, but nationals working in our embassies in the Philippines and India allegedly have been selling visas and access to the immigration system in Canada. That is not appropriate. We have repeatedly brought this to the attention of the minister yet we have had no significant response from her to date. Given the number of people who are coming through India and the Philippines it would certainly behoove her to investigate what is going on at those two embassies.

The filing fees and landing right fees are prohibitive for a number of individuals. There has also been little flexibility on the part of the departments there and pettiness has been shown in terms of the documentation required.

We are very disappointed that the government has not taken the bull by the horns. It has not demonstrated to the House the importance of the bill and the critical issues contained within it. We feel the bill is quite sneaky.

The bill should have dealt with reforms to the IMF, the World Bank and the United Nations. There were opportunities in the bill to deal with some conditionality arrangements. They ought to be made but they do not exist.

Conditionality is critically important within the context of how we disburse our taxpayers' funds through these organizations. The World Bank is primarily tasked with aid and development. The International Monetary Fund deals with the security of international markets. The United Nations deals with a whole collection of issues.

The bill could have made suggestions on how our members internationally could reform these systems. It could have enabled the UN, World Bank and the IMF to communicate with each other more effectively. Canadians and the international community would be absolutely appalled to learn that those organizations rarely speak to each other. That they rarely speak to each other now is actually headway because they hardly spoke to each other before. That is bizarre given that all three organizations are supposed to be working in concert on a number of critical international security issues.

There are a number of opportunities in the bill. The Canadian Alliance will try to improve the bill by offering constructive suggestions and solutions to deal with the issues within it. I therefore move: That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “that” and substitute the following therefor: “Bill C-35, an act to amend the Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act, be not now read a second time but that the order be discharged, the bill withdrawn and the subject matter thereof referred to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade”.

[Health, October 5th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the problem is that Canadians and members of the minister's own department are not reassured. They are scared and frustrated because they have not seen a plan from the minister.

Silence breeds fear. I have another question for the minister. Back in March 2000 Health Canada was warned of a possible bioterrorism attack. The U.S. department of health has allotted a quarter of a billion dollars for that eventuality.

Will the minister tell the House how much money he is prepared to spend to let Canadians know what they can do in the event of a bioterrorism attack?

[Health, October 5th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, Health Canada officials are frustrated and in the dark because they do not have the information on how to tell Canadians how they can protect themselves in the event of a bioterrorism attack.

Would the Minister of Health table in the House today his plan on how Canadians can protect themselves in the event of a bioterrorism attack?

[Blood Samples Act, October 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I echo the compliments to the members from the PC/DRC who put forward the bill in both the last parliament and this parliament. It is a bill that is intended to protect those individuals who, in the line of duty, in the line of protecting individuals, who seek to serve and protect others, are inadvertently potentially infected by a disease that could make them sick or at the very worst could be fatal. In particular we are talking about HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C, the three primary viruses prevalent in our society and unfortunately on the increase. The bill is designed to focus on those people who are doing good Samaritan acts or also acts in the service of others, particularly those people who are firefighters and police officers.

The bill has been on the legislative table for quite some time. As such, the member for Fraser Valley, like many others in the House, has done a lot of work in trying to get co-operation.

If the bill were bad, if the bill were somehow going to trample on the rights of others, we would not see the support we see for it from dozens of groups, and I will name just a few today, including the Canadian Police Association, the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Police, the Toronto Police Service, the RCMP veterans society, the Central Saanich Police Association and so on. Additionally there are dozens of police organizations, firefighting organizations and hospital organizations that support the bill.

The purpose of bill is to enable an individual who has been accidentally infected to have the blood of the person who accidentally infected him or her, or occasionally deliberately, as police officers have found in the line of duty, taken and examined. The information would be shared by the physicians treating the person and the physician or the medical personnel treating the individual who is accidentally infected. This information, as medical information, would be treated with the utmost respect and as such would not be shared with the general public. That was a concern of those individuals who in fact composed the bill.

Some say that the bill tramples on the rights of the individual who is sick and whose blood accidentally infects emergency personnel. The fact of the matter is that we have a legal precedent which says that it does not actually infringe upon the rights of individuals. That overarching philosophy imbued within our legislative codes is the good Samaritan bill, whereby if we found somebody sick on the side of the road we would be obliged to some degree, to the extent of our abilities, to help that person. If in the course of trying to help that person something happens where that person is injured or we are injured, we are protected by the overarching belief within our legal system that we were trying with the goodness of our heart and to the best of our ability to help that particular individual who was hurt. Therefore we are protected. The fact that we are protected also means that we are protected from other eventualities that could happen when we are trying to help that other person who is sick. That is what the bill is all about.

The bill, as the member for Fraser Valley has put it so articulately in the past, is meant to protect the good Samaritan, just as that good Samaritan is trying to protect the individual who is hurt. I define a good Samaritan as not only the member of the public who is trying to help somebody but also as the firefighters, the police officers and indeed the medical personnel who try constantly to help individuals in the line of duty.

We do not often speak about how prevalent this is, but we know at it is. There are people like Isobel Anderson, a constable here in Ottawa who has done a tremendous job of putting this on the board, and dozens of personnel who in the line of public service are accidentally infected by blood products. They go through all kinds of trauma. They go through emotional trauma and trauma with their families. They go through a great deal of uncertainty that by and large is not necessary.

The bill would remove that uncertainty to a large degree. It would give them much greater peace of mind, not absolute, but it would greatly diminish the consternation and psychological trauma they would endure if they were potentially infected.

As a physician I have worked in emergency medicine. I have treated many colleagues who have been accidentally infected. In the course of our duties in the emergency department we are continually confronted by blood sprayed out in all manner of ways when treating patients who are very sick. There are cases where unfortunately, people are infected. It does not happen very often but it can happen in the line of duty.

There are individuals who seek to deliberately infect police officers, firefighters and emergency room personnel. This is an assault of the most vile nature. As such, the emergency response personnel need to be protected. They must be protected in that particular environment.

I wanted to address a couple of issues because I am a strong supporter of the bill. A number of people have said that this bill is an effort to root out those people who have these diseases, that it is an effort to stigmatize those individuals. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There is not a man nor a woman in the House today who does not want to see a cure and a prevention for HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C. All of us recognize the scourge and the incredible heartbreak exerted on the individuals who are infected with these diseases. Our hearts go out to them.

Reciprocally, we have to put ourselves in the shoes of those people who are trying to help those individuals who have been infected and unfortunately, encounter blood borne product. On balance, the legislative framework within our country today, the good Samaritan laws clearly articulate that it is within the realm of fairness and of our legal system to protect those individuals who put their lives on the line in the service of others.

I encourage the House to adopt the bill, put it into legislation. The bill will give a great deal of comfort to the police officers, firefighters and emergency personnel who day in and day out put their lives on the line.

Given the number of groups in those three professions across the country that have supported the bill from the outset, those individuals and groups that have made eloquent interventions in support of the bill, it is important that the government listen to them. They are on the front lines. They are the ones who put their lives on the line and they deserve to be supported.

[Terrorism, October 3rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I will give the Minister of Justice a grand opportunity right now.

In 1999 the U.S. state department, our immigration department, our Senate and our justice department said that FACT is a front that raises funds for the terrorist Tamil Tiger organization LTTE, yet this group still raises funds here in Canada.

My question for the Minister of Justice is a simple one. Will the minister place FACT on that list of organizations that are banned from raising funds here in Canada?