Keith Martin

[Supply, March 2nd, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I believe all members of the House have the same objective of ensuring that the health care system is available to all Canadians and has no financial barriers to it. We have a serious problem. As the member knows we have an aging population. The population of people over the age of 65 will double in the next 30 years.

Ralph Klein is proposing in Alberta that if the public system cannot take care of patients he will pay those in the private sector to provide health care services. Then people on waiting lists will get medical care when they need it at a cost lower than the cost in the public system. How will this damage the public system?

[First Nations Ombudsman Act, February 25th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague for introducing this critically important bill.

One profound tragedy in our country today is the existing situation for aboriginal people on and off reserve. The present government, previous governments and all Canadians have created an institutionalized welfare system in aboriginal communities. Through legislation we have put our heels on the necks of those people and have prevented them from having the same rights, responsibilities and obligations as other Canadians.

It is an insult to them that the government and previous governments have pursued these policies for such a long time. It will lead to the balkanization of our country. It will do nothing to address the fundamental problem of grassroots aboriginal people being dislocated from the wealth, the hope, the possibilities and prosperity that this country has to offer.

The government is empowering, albeit with honest intentions, the leadership of aboriginal people to rule. It is doing nothing to ensure that grassroots aboriginal people generate the control, responsibility and power to stand on their own two feet. That is why this bill is so important. It is important to have an ombudsman to ensure that grassroots aboriginal people are heard.

I have some true stories to tell. I have worked with aboriginals for a long time on and off reserve and in emergency rooms. I have seen firsthand the devastation brought on by fetal alcohol syndrome, child abuse, sexual abuse and gross poverty. I have not seen this type of situation since I worked in Africa. There have been medical problems that I have not seen since I worked in the third world. It is going on in our country today.

I implore the media to investigate what is happening in Nunavut, in northern Ontario, in northern Quebec, in Vancouver East and in northern British Columbia. This is not to say that all reserves or all aboriginal people are suffering from the same maladies. The incidence of poverty, medical problems and disempowered aboriginals is epidemic. We are ensuring that continues by virtue of the policies that are implemented in the House.

We want to empower grassroots people, but through the Nisga'a treaty and others we have done the exact opposite. We have empowered the people at the top. Time and time again grassroots aboriginal people have come to me saying they would like to send their children to school. But a lot of the money that is to go to the school to pay for books and teachers and to ensure that the kids get an education does not get there.

The elders in the aboriginal communities are saying that they would like to teach their people their traditional ways. Money has been allocated for that but it does not get to them. It disappears. Yet the chief and band council members drive expensive cars, live in expensive homes and go on expensive vacations while their people live in abject poverty.

If we were successful and if proposals made by the government and previous governments and the Conservative Party had worked, why is it that aboriginal communities have some of the highest rates of violence and sexual abuse? Their mortality figures are the highest. Maternal deaths are the highest. Infant mortality figures are well beyond anything in the non-aboriginal community. Why is it that their diabetes rates are four times higher than non-aboriginal communities? I could go on.

Individual grassroots aboriginal people are not empowered to stand on their own two feet. We are not giving them the same resources and legal tools which enable us to produce for ourselves, our families and our communities. By doing so we get self-respect. It is a myth to say that we can give people self-respect. People only get self-respect by taking it. We only get it by being able to support ourselves, our families and our communities.

It is up to the aboriginal leaders to take a different tack and control themselves. How can they ensure that their people are going to have the power to represent themselves as opposed to the present situation where a small cabal of people at the top controls the situation.

Some aboriginal reserves work well under these conditions, the ones on the west coast in the Charlottes for example. There is responsible governance on the part of the people. They have invested the money the government has given them in ways which the people earn revenue. They have invested in the tools which give aboriginal people the education and the power to generate funds and work. They have healthy communities and live in congruence with their environment. This is what is taking place in some communities but unfortunately in many communities across the country that is not the case.

I can only plead with the government for an ombudsman to ensure that aboriginal people are heard.

When the current HRD minister was minister of Indian affairs, I went to her about situations in my riding. Children were falling into open sewers. Health Canada determined it to be a health hazard to the people living in the area. Yet it took years to get the money to the people so they could fix the problem. In part the leadership was not prepared to deal with these people in an honest way. This is what is happening.

The regional director could not intervene on behalf of the grassroots aboriginal people because the leadership in the community said no. The leadership in the community was compromising—and I am saying that nicely—the ability of the grassroots people to fix the problems on the reserve. If their own leadership will not speak for them, who will? The leadership, the director and the minister will not speak for them. If the minister just turns her face away and says that is the way it is, who will speak for these people? No one.

If non-aboriginal people suffered from the same type of nonsense that aboriginal people suffer from, they would not tolerate it because it would violate their basic rights. The basic rights of aboriginal people are being violated across Canada. As a result they are suffering from health problems and poverty.

To merely give them money will not work. It will not work to engage in a process of land claims that will balkanize the provinces. It is going to compromise the tax base of a province and its ability to work with people to provide resources for everybody. We are going to compromise the economy of those provinces for everybody.

The only people who will benefit from this are the people at the top in aboriginal communities. That is what is happening. The fact that the government is prepared to turn a blind eye and stick its head in the sand is one of the greatest tragedies of this country today. It is truly profound.

When members of parliament visit an aboriginal reserve they will not see what is going on behind the scenes. They will fete us around to look at the nice things that are happening on the reserve. We will not go into people's homes to see them lying drunk at 10 o'clock in the morning on soiled mattresses, 10 to a room. We will not see the children with gross infections on their faces, sitting among adults, looking for basic parenting, looking for the basic care which all children deserve. They do not receive that care.

Understandably, their societies are ill. If any of us were put in that environment, whether we were aboriginal or non-aboriginal, we would do the same thing. If we give people things all the time we create an institutionalized welfare state which takes the souls from human beings. It cuts away at the souls of the people. It destroys them from inside. That is why these people simply cannot get on their own feet, given the current situation and given the current legal tools which this government and previous governments have followed.

If this way of doing things were successful, then we would have seen a dramatic improvement in the health and welfare of aboriginal people. Have we? The answer is an obvious no. The longer we continue doing what we are doing, the longer this will continue.

Members from all political parties find the situation to be appalling. I know that all members of parliament want to do something about it. I know that all members want to work with aboriginal people to ensure that there is change. For God's sake, give those people the same rights and responsibilities that we have. They will flourish. They will teach us a great deal.

In 1967 former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau created a superb white paper. He recognized at that time that the way to aboriginal emancipation was through integration, not assimilation. Those were wise words then and they are wise words today. I can only implore the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and the Prime Minister to hearken back to that document which was created by Mr. Trudeau, read it again and listen to what he said. Within the context of that document is, in my view, in our view and I think in the heart of the Prime Minister, the way to ensure that aboriginal and non-aboriginal people will come together, respecting their differences, ensuring that the respective cultures and languages will flourish and ensuring that all people in this beautiful country will be empowered to be the best they can become.

The failure to acknowledge that, the failure to change the present course, which is a course of separation, a course of balkanization, will hurt not only aboriginal people but non-aboriginal people. That is something that all of us will have to live with for the rest of our lives. We can strive for something better.

We must work with grassroots aboriginal people, not necessarily the leadership. Normally these questions are dealt with by the leadership of aboriginal groups and parliamentarians. The discussion does not get to the people on the ground, who want the same things which we have. They want safety, they want hope, they want prosperity and they want a future. They want to live. They want their culture and language to survive in perpetuity. We want that and they want that. We would all benefit.

We cannot tolerate the present situation. It will ensure the ultimate cultural and social genocide of these people. That is something for which we as Canadians should never be proud.

I hope that 20 years from now we will see that the Nisga'a treaty was a success. I truly hope for that. However, it is our view that it will not be the case.

I hope that the government will see fit to work with us and to implement the solutions found in the document of former Prime Minister Trudeau for the sake of all Canadians.

[Human Resources Development, February 25th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, good news does not constitute driving a company under with kindness. The HRD minister took a billion dollars of taxpayer money and bungled it.

Now they are spending money, giving it to companies and telling the world that they are bankrupt. What kind of mismanagement is that? Is it a policy of the minister to kill and drive viable businesses under with kindness?

[Division No. 751, February 24th, 2000]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak to the amendments to Bill C-13, the CIHR.

I want to publicly congratulate Dr. Friesen on the great work he has done in pushing this through. I also want to make some comments about my friend from the NDP, the health critic, who also brought up some excellent points that were ignored in committee and to which answers were not forthcoming.

Quite frankly, when I sat on the committee last year as the health critic, we as a party were firmly in support of the essence of the bill, the organization of it and the public-private partnership notion. It had a great deal of foresight. Dr. Friesen and his colleagues deserve a great deal of credit for that. It is a good idea and something that we in the Reform Party support.

However, a number of very constructive solutions that our party put forward at committee stage were repeatedly shot down. Why? Because once again the committee demonstrated very clearly that it was not demonstrating the autonomy that it ought to have if it was going to have credibility as an institution.

Committee members made amendments that would have strengthened the bill and allayed the concerns of the research community. These amendments were universally defeated by the government without, I might add, a great deal of forethought. The amendments put forward—some by the NDP, some by the Reform Party and some no doubt by other opposition parties—would have strengthened the bill and made it better. However, those amendments were defeated because they came from the opposition, and I think that is a sham.

Unfortunately, this takes place far too often in committees. Committees are supposed to be an avenue where members from across political parties can negotiate, discuss and debate issues related to bills in a manner that is largely beyond partisanship. The health committee chose not to pursue that course on a bill which could be enormously supportive of the research community and of the health and welfare of Canadians.

The organization is fairly good. We support Dr. Friesen's contention and promise that a maximum of 5% of the moneys allocated toward research will go toward administration, making this a lean, mean organization, one where 95% of the money is spent on the hard edge of research, which we support. In order for this to happen, I put forward an amendment on behalf of the Reform Party but it was not accepted.

Another important issue is to ensure that basic research, a fundamental aspect of research in Canada, would be secured and that 20% of the money that was available would be proportioned directly to basic research.

One of the problems of involving a public-private partnership is that basic research, which does not have any short term to intermediate term benefit and no observable, concrete benefit in terms of profit-making for the private sector, would not be adequately funded in Canada. Dr. Polanyi, our Nobel prize laureate in chemistry, and other researchers, sent letters to all committee members saying that this was very important. We put forth an amendment to ensure that at least 20% of the money allocated to the CIHR would go toward basic research but that was defeated.

There are no assurances in the bill that basic research will be financially supported, basic research that may not have the support of the private sector. This is a flaw in the bill which I hope the government will rectify as soon as possible.

We also found that there was not enough support for conflict of interest provisions, which the NDP health critic talked about very eloquently. These provisions could affect the decision making and allocation of funds through the CIHR. This needs to be addressed and I would ask the government to do that.

I have further issues that need to be addressed in the bill for the sake of research in the country.

First, at least 20% of the money that is available should go toward basic research. I challenge the new CIHR to investigate naturopathic substances. As a physician, one of the problems we have in the practice of medicine is trying to incorporate naturopathic substances. We know some of it has a placebo effect, is not useful and is not backed by any science. Others have a demonstrative therapeutic effect on people but we do not know if it is a placebo effect or if it is based on good science. The medical community would love to know which naturopathic substances have a therapeutic effect and which ones do not.

Pharmaceutical companies are not prepared to engage in the roughly $500 million required to determine if a substance has an effect. Therefore, it would be up to organizations like the CIHR to engage in a public-private partnership to see which of these naturopathic substances have an effect and which do not. This would be fascinating.

It is frustrating to see substances such as EDTA being used by people in Canada and the United States with allegedly profound impacts on cardiovascular disease when there is not enough evidence to show whether it truly works or whether it has a placebo effect. If it does not work, then we should know about it. If it does work it could have a profound impact on lessening the need for surgical and non-surgical interventions in treating cardiovascular disease. Statements have been made by patients indicating that this has had a profound impact on their health and well-being. I have no factual evidence to back this up and no scientific proof that substances such as EDTA work.

St. John's wort can work very well for people with depression. This is the impression we have and it has worked on patients. However, we would like some scientific basis as to why these things work. It would certainly help medical practitioners in Canada.

I would also like to bring up the issue of research and how moneys are allocated. Too often moneys are allocated on the basis of special interest groups. The interest group that screams the loudest gets the most money.

My colleague from Vancouver North Shore has done a yeoman's job in bringing the issue of prostate cancer to the forefront. For many years prostate cancer did not get the funding it warranted based on the number of people it affected. Similarly, breast cancer did not get the funding it required based on the number of women it affected.

We should base the research, and the moneys that are proportioned to it, on the morbidity, mortality and economic effects a disease has on society. It should not be based on the group that screams the loudest.

The House might be interested to know that unipolar disorder or major depression will have a profound effect on our country in the future. In fact, it will be the second leading cause of disability in the next 20 years. Just imagine major depression being the second leading cause of morbidity in our country.

Another issue our policy makers are ignoring is the impact that psychiatric disorders, particularly dementia, will have on our health care system in the future. There is not enough leadership on this issue. I plead with the Minister of Health to meet with his ministers to look at what can be done today to address the future problem of dementia. As we get older the issue of psychiatric and dementia problems in the geriatric population will have a profound impact on our health care dollar. If we do not put in place today the tools to deal with it, we will be caught in a very difficult situation in the future.

I will now put a plug in for my private member's motion that passed in the House in May 1997 for the national headstart program. I know it was supported by members across party lines, but we need a spark to ignite it. It will save the taxpayers billions of dollars. It will save thousands and thousands of children in the country. It will deal with issues such as fetal alcohol syndrome and fetal alcohol effects. It will reduce teen pregnancy by 40%. It will keep kids in school longer. It is something that will benefit children.

Our party is prepared to work with members from across party lines to put this into action. I implore the relevant ministers to call their provincial counterparts in justice, health and human resources and work together to put a national headstart program in place that will benefit all Canadians.

[Cida, February 23rd, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the minister in charge of CIDA is wrong.

I do not know what reports she is looking at, but we have a stack of performance reports showing the following: poor planning, weak financial control and a disregard for her own environmental protection rules. Those are her reports. I wonder if she is taking the same kind of management rules, regulations and observations as the minister of HRD.

We want to see this management plan that she has. Will the minister table this management plan today in the House?

[Iran, February 22nd, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Reform Party of Canada I rise today to express our congratulations and encouragement to the people of Iran in light of their recent election.

The Iranian people have spoken. They have told the world that they are willing to seize an opportunity and institute structural democratic reform within their borders. The people of Iran are now looking forward. Although there are strong elements of the old guard within their government, the new reformers are committed to peace and stability.

This is an encouraging sign that the world must not ignore. Canada should support the Iranian government and its people in their move toward increasing tolerance. The new government has expressed strong support for basic human rights and an encouraging positive sign toward liberalizing its country.

On behalf of the Reform Party, I encourage Mr. Khatami and the new government of Iran to pursue their stated course. I urge our government to keep the diplomatic door open and help bring about democracy and freedom in Iran.

[International Organizations, February 21st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the motion will enable us as a country to deal with the horrible situation facing the world today. We have seen throughout the world tens of thousands of people who have been indiscriminately slaughtered in internecine conflicts.

We heard the refrain time and time again “Never Again”; never again would we see the slaughter that took place during World War II. After World War II the world got together and made a commitment to end the conflict that plagued it. In the case of Europe, we saw the decimation, destruction and genocide of over 6 million Jews, gypsies and other people who were unwanted by the Germans at that time.

After World War II, instead of the world breaking apart, it came together to develop the IMF, the World Bank and the United Nations. However, the outcome was two superpowers glaring at each other over a nuclear arsenal that was enough to destroy and decimate the world.

Since the breakdown of the Berlin Wall, we have seen a very different picture. After the cold war and the post-cold war era there has been a proliferation of internecine conflicts, conflicts within states. Rather than soldiers being killed, which is what took place during World War II and before, we now have situation where civilians are the ones being slaughtered. Over 90% of the casualties occurring today are innocent people like us and the viewers out there.

It is not a situation for the faint of heart. When I used to work in Africa, situations happened where children came up holding their bowels after they had been eviscerated. At the end of last year a friend of mine who worked in Uganda was confronted by a group of women who were walking along a roadway. Children, as part of the Lord's Resistance Army, stood up, took the women to the side of the road, cut off their ears, their noses and their lips and forced the women to eat the parts. This is the brutality that children were inflicting on adults.

Those same children were abducted by other adults in northern Uganda. However, before they were abducted they were forced to kill one of their parents. This is the kind of trauma that is occurring there.

We see circumstances in west Africa where individuals have their hands and legs chopped off. It is not to kill them but to terrorize them. In Central Africa right now we have the largest war in the history of the world with unspeakable brutality taking place. Widespread torture of unimaginable proportions is taking place against innocent civilians. The international community has been unable and unwilling to deal with these situations in a preventive manner.

Today I will articulate a way of dealing with conflict and of preventing it.

Too often in our foreign policy today we confuse conflict prevention with conflict management. When we talk about conflict prevention we often talk about peacekeeping and peacemaking, which is often too late because once blood has been spilled and people have been killed the seeds for future ethnic discontent and war have been sown for generations to come.

Trauma has been inflicted upon children and lost generations occur. We see that in many countries of the world, from Caucasus in Europe, to Bosnia, to west Africa, to Central Africa, to South Africa and to South America, to name just a few. Whole generations are lost. Economies are laid to waste. The degree of trauma to a nation is extraordinary, not only to the people but to the costs that are inflicted.

In the case of Mozambique, in its 16-year civil war 400,000 people were slaughtered, 400,000 children lost their lives, 200,000 children were orphaned and the gross domestic product fell to 20% of its pre-war situation. We had a country laid to waste. This is what is happening throughout the world.

Why should we as Canadians be involved or interested? We should be involved not only on a humanitarian basis but in cold hard dollars and cents. If we do not get involved and prevent these conflicts then we pay for it through our defence, aid and our domestic social program budgets. When conflicts occur we have refugees leaving their countries and going to other countries, including our own.

We need look no further than the Somalia and Ethiopia situations where thousands of poor individuals have come to our country putting demands on our immigration social program budgets. We have welcomed them here because of the circumstances that they left, but I am sure most of these people would rather live in their own homes in peace and security than have to move half a world away just to have their basic human needs met. We must prevent conflicts because it costs us, it costs them and it costs the world.

The cost of peacekeeping and peacemaking to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the UN has driven these institutions, particularly the UN, to bankruptcy. The UN costs have increased dramatically. The peacekeeping and peacemaking options have increased dramatically. It takes such an enormous chunk of money out of them that they simply cannot afford to function. It is driving them into bankruptcy.

In the case of the World Bank, the cost of post-conflict reconstruction has increased 800% in the last 12 years alone. This cannot continue but it will continue unless we put measures in place to prevent conflicts from occurring.

Here is a road map to conflict prevention. The first thing we need is an early warning centre. I propose today to the Canadian government that it work with members from across party lines to develop an early warning centre in Canada.

There are three possible sites that I have identified: First, Royal Roads Military College in Victoria, which has an excellent centre for conflict prevention; second, the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs in Ottawa with its fine post-graduate programs in diplomacy and in teaching political science; and third, the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development in Montreal.

Any of those sites could be an early warning centre where people from around the world could input data from the private sector, NGOs, private individuals and academia. They could input information concerning their particular area for human rights abuses, violence being meted out to individuals and torture or polarization taking place between different ethnic groups, which is what usually happens. Polarization is foisted upon certain groups, usually by despots who are trying to do this for their own political gain. An early warning centre is key. Second, we need to have a series of responses. These have to be an integrated series of responses involving diplomatic, economic and military initiatives.

The diplomatic initiatives are fairly self-evident. I propose again today that the government work with like minded nations, with other interested parties, to develop a rapid reaction force of multilateral diplomats under UN auspices that can go early into a situation. We have rapporteurs in the Horn of Africa but we need more of them. We need teams of diplomats who are viewed as being independent and without prejudice who will go in and try to identify ways in which the circumstances can be diffused.

Third is economic issues. This is an area that has been untouched and unexplored and an area wherein we as a nation can use multilateral organizations to enormous effect. Using economic levers can be very effective both as a carrot and a stick in the prevention of deadly conflict.

War needs money. We have all seen pictures on television screens of individuals in impoverished countries where the average income is $1 a day, carrying on their backs AK-47s, 50 calibre machine guns and enough weaponry that would cost them years to be able to afford. The money to buy these comes from somewhere. To look behind the scenes to see where it comes from is interesting. We must develop a way to choke the money supply. We can do that by applying sanctions targeted particularly at despots engaging in behaviours patently destructive to their people.

We could look at the present situation in Angola where President Dos Santos and the head of UNITA have been engaging in a war for more than 12 years that has resulted in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people. As we speak, there is an impending devastating famine in Angola, completely and utterly organized by the two individuals that have been engaging in war for so long and using their people as tools and pawns.

Angola is one of the richest countries in Africa, and indeed the world, with its billions of dollars from the sale of oil and diamonds, diamonds that we buy when we get engaged or married. The diamonds coming from Angola are fuelling a conflict that is causing the death of thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians as we speak.

We must develop ways to choke off the money supply. Intelligent targeted sanctions and the use of financial levers should be applied to these individuals to encourage them to pursue peace and not to take the road toward polarizing groups. Using economic levers as a carrot on a stick can be enormously successful in the prevention of deadly conflicts.

The World Bank and the IMF should put conditions on their loans and on their development aid packages. We simply cannot continue to pour money into countries with no good government and where there will be an explosion of conflict. Once conflict takes place all the aid and development engaged in for decades is destroyed. We go back to square one. All the good money that we and many other countries of the world have put into the IMF, the World Bank and the UN for development is for naught once conflict takes place.

We can look at the degree at which destruction can occur. If we look at Kuwait, six months after Saddam Hussein walked into Kuwait he destroyed the country. It will take up to $100 billion to bring Kuwait back to where it was. Who pays for that? Kuwait and the international community.

We cannot afford it. International organizations cannot afford it. We have to prevent it. The IMF, the UN and the World Bank need to put conditions on the actions of countries behaving in ways that are completely destructive to the internal and external security of their regions. The government has done some excellent work in Sierra Leone by sending one of our colleagues there. We need to continue doing this.

All these organizations are not apart from us. They are us. We make up those organizations. People like to sling arrows at the UN, the IMF and the World Bank, but we are a part of them. We make the decisions and set the direction of these organizations. Therefore we can change it. In self-interest we must argue with other countries of the world that this can no longer continue.

Usually the last resort is military. It can also be implemented in a preventative fashion as was done in Macedonia. The argument can be that a small early investment in troops, particularly of a multilateral nature, can be enormously effective in preventing conflict. We saw this is in Macedonia.

It would have worked in Rwanda if it had happened before April 1994. Instead we sat on our hands and did nothing. I find it ironic that the European Union would rise on its hind legs and criticize Mr. Haider for his egregious and repulsive comments of the past. It went through enormous gymnastics to slam him yet sat on its hands when it knew that people were being slaughtered in Srebrenica and Bihac. The European Union was targeted with doing something about it. It knew full well that people would be slaughtered and it did absolutely nothing.

Right now we see situations all over the world where the European Union, the OSCE, the OEDC and the UN are sitting on their hands while people are being slaughtered. In Rwanda there is another impending conflict. It is the same one that took the lives of over 700,000. It will happen again. We do not hear a peep about what is happening in Angola, yet thousands of people are being slaughtered. In northern Angola the body parts of innocent civilians are being chopped off and fed to them, and we are doing very little to save them from this trauma.

Military intervention has to take place under certain circumstances. Troops have to be armed for war while engaged in peacekeeping missions. We cannot send them into a situation without being armed appropriately. They must have robust rules of engagement. We cannot have a situation like occurred in Bosnia where soldiers helplessly watched while innocent citizens were gunned down. They must have the mandate to go to their defence.

That is why a rapid reaction force is good. I compliment the Minister of Foreign Affairs for proposing that in the past. It is good and we need to continue to work toward it. Five to ten thousand troops in a multilateral initiative that has a permanent peacekeeping base and operation centre can be very useful for diffusing a situation early, but it has to be multilateral.

I hope these initiatives will take place with regional organizations. Regional organizations can and should play an enormous role. Too much emphasis has been placed on first world countries, NATO and North America to implement peacekeeping and peacemaking solutions. More power and more initiative has to come from organizations like the OAU, OSCE and ASEAN on security issues within their areas. This is important.

The next point is to deal with the U.S. arms registry. It should be expanded to involve the sale of small arms. The greatest producers of small arms are the G-8 nations and the five permanent members of the security council. They stand and want to talk about peace, yet they are fuelling the fires by selling small arms to individuals engaging in wars in which civilians are being slaughtered. This circular pattern needs to be broken. We need to engage in the rules and regulations and develop a method of preventing deadly conflict.

In summary, I thank the government and members of the other political parties for their support of this apolitical motion. It is one that could be extremely useful to our country in finally breaking the cycle of war that continues to take place. The major problem we have is a lack of political will and action.

If I have not been able to argue today on humanitarian grounds the basic need to intervene by helping civilians who are helpless and are being slaughtered, tortured or raped indiscriminately, perhaps I can convince the House to support the motion on the basis of self-interest. If we do not get involved early on in these conflicts we will pay for it in defence aid and economic costs to the taxpayers of Canada.

The world is looking for a leader to revamp the UN, the IMF and other regional organizations. It is up to us to work with other parties in this regard. There is a will and a desire to do it but there needs to be a flame or spark to ignite it.

It is not an option for us but an obligation. It is something of which Canadians would be proud, something we could do and something that would be manifestly important for the security of the international community.

[International Organizations, February 21st, 2000]

moved:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should convene a meeting of “like-minded” nations in order to develop a multilateral plan of action to reform international organizations (e.g. International Monetary Fund, World Bank, United Nations) so that they can identify the precursors of conflict and establish multilateral conflict-prevention initiatives.

Mr. Speaker, I thank members from all political parties for showing support for the motion. It is a motion that will save many lives and, indeed, for Canada, it will demonstrate our extraordinary leadership on the world stage for the collective good.

With the unanimous consent of all members, I would like to change the wording of the motion in a way which I think the government and other political parties will find acceptable. I have only changed a couple of words. The motion would read:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should continue to intensify efforts with `like-minded nations' to further develop multilateral initiatives in order to strengthen the capacity of international organizations (e.g. International Monetary Fund, World Bank, United Nations) to enable them to identify the precursors of conflict and improve their conflict prevention capabilities.

I ask for unanimous consent that this be the motion that stands.

[Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act, February 14th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for calling in the members on this riveting Bill C-6. I am disappointed at the Bloc members who have left after they chose to call quorum. It shows their interest in e-commerce and Bill C-6.

The Minister of Health would find this very interesting because he has proposed plans and solutions to develop a mechanism whereby patient records can be shared by medical practitioners across the country. This is a good idea. However, it is very important that the medical information on these records be protected. There is very little in the bill to protect patient records from individuals who have no business whatsoever getting that information and dealing with the personal medical records of individuals.

That is why the Reform Party proposed amendments to Bill C-6. They would have ensured the personal health care records of Canadians remained protected so unscrupulous individuals who have no business whatsoever in knowing about another individual's personal medical records would not have access to them. This is not included in this legislation. The Canadian Medical Association and civil liberties groups have asked the minister repeatedly to amend the bill so it will protect the personal health care records and personal information of individuals.

A number of things have to be drawn up since the feds have failed to do this. The provinces should take the bull by the horns.

A code of conduct, a code that governs personal health care information should be implemented. It should involve the following aspects.

Health care information should be defined. Who owns this information? Individuals should be permitted to identify specific aspects of their records as sensitive. Patients could indicate that certain aspects of their records are sensitive and absolutely nobody could have access to that information.

It would require restructuring the health care records to allow different levels of access by different individuals. It would require electronic health care records to separate the fields that can be used to identify individuals. A uniform consent form to release personal information should be established. The keeping of audit trails would be required. Obligations respecting the security of information should be imposed. Protocols for third party access to personal information must be developed. Oversight mechanisms should be established or existing data protection oversight bodies should be used to review legislation and policy issues relating to this. Transparency of the collection, use and disclosure of personal information must be ensured.

Those holding personal health care information would be required to inform individual patients of their rights relating to their information and provide civil rights to redress the statutory penalties and misuse of this information.

Not only should this be applied to health care information, but it is important that it be applied to banking information, personal information relating to finances, welfare payments and other social issues the federal government relates to individuals.

I want to deal with the larger issue of e-commerce in Canada. Our country is significantly lacking in our ability to compete in the dot-com world. Dot-com companies are taking the world by storm and they are on the cutting edge of the new economy today. The vast majority of dot-com companies are in the United States. We can see by corollary that very few of the dot-com companies are in Canada. Why is it so few of the dot-com companies are in Canada?

It speaks to a lack of innovation. It does not rest with the people in our country; it rests with a structural problem in Canada which starts with the education system which has provided many of our finest individuals. Individuals who have studied and taught in Canadian universities such as McMaster which has an excellent program, or Waterloo which has a better one. Students on the cutting edge of information technology are flocking to the United States.

People at these universities and in the private sector tell us that they yearn for these people to stay in Canada. Unfortunately very few of them do, not because they do not want to stay in Canada and not because they do not feel compelled to contribute to our economy. They find that Canada's economy and the environment under which they work in the information technology field are so far behind those of the United States and other countries that they leave Canada. They leave with a broken heart. They would like to stay here but we are very far behind.

It is critically important for the Minister of Industry to work with the Minister of Finance and the Minister of National Revenue. They must develop an acute strategic emergency plan to ensure that our students who are graduates from our fine universities and are experts in computers and information technology stay in Canada. The government must address the issue of taxes, the rules and regulations which are choking off the ability of our companies to compete in this new IT world. If we fail to do that, we will have a serious problem on our hands in the future and there will be a vacuum in our economy which will be very difficult to fill.

I impress upon the government the urgent nature of dealing with the privacy issues that I have mentioned. It must institute with the provinces rules and regulations to govern privacy issues. It is also equally important to develop an urgent strategic plan of action to work in connection with the private sector and the educational leaders, the academia. An integrated program must be developed with the government and educational facilities on the tax structure and rules and regulations at the federal, provincial and municipal levels to ensure that Canada can take advantage of today's IT wave.

The longer we hold out, the more we as a nation will fall behind in our industrial capabilities.

[Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act, February 14th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today on Bill C-6, the privacy in electronic commerce bill.

The Reform Party supports the thrust of the bill, but we had a couple of concerns which we put forward in the form of amendments. Had the government seen fit to adopt these amendments they would have strengthened the bill. However, the government chose not to adopt them. One of the reasons we put these amendments forward was the importance they had to social concerns, particularly in health care and welfare.

As it stands, this bill the government has put forth really is comprised of two bills. One deals with electronic commerce which we ardently support. The Reform Party recognizes that the government unfortunately has failed to support our business sector in the world of electronic commerce. Our e-commerce business is falling far behind that of our colleagues to the south. The government needs to do much more to give business the ability and power to compete internationally in the global e-commerce market. We support the parts of the bill that deal with electronic commerce.

We wanted to strengthen the first part of the bill that deals with privacy. There is a need to deal with the privacy aspects of the bill, in particular the aspect that deals with health care issues. The bill does not do that at all. In the coming era of e-commerce, globalization and sharing of information by electronic means, it will become increasingly important for the government to introduce legislation that protects individuals and records concerning them, particularly in health care issues. Privacy in this area is a right of Canadians. Unfortunately that is lacking in the bill. We put forth amendments to deal with that.