Keith Martin

[Young Offenders Act, February 24th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak to something as important as Bill C-37, an act to amend the Young Offenders Act and Criminal Code.

This bill is in response to the increasing tide of violent crime. It especially is in response to the cries for justice from a public that is fed up with being terrorized by criminals, youth and adult alike, and seeing a judicial system inadequate to protect them and their property. It also responds to the cries from police who find the system which has been set out to deal with convicted criminals to be completely inadequate.

The frustration has been so extreme that some individuals in my riding who have been harassed by youth criminals have even suggested corporal punishment as a disincentive. Given some of the situations these people have been in, I cannot say I disagree with them.

I agree with this bill's initiative and will support it. However, I and my party believe the bill does not go far enough. In my speech I will deal with the principles of the bill and put forth some constructive criticisms and additions that I hope the minister will consider.

I agree with the increased penalties particularly for violent offences such as first degree and second degree murder and also the movement of 16 and 17 year olds to adult court at the discretion of the judges for violent offences.

I would agree with the principle of discouraging lengthening incarcerations in secure custody for non-violent offenders as I do not think it will serve the offender nor will it serve society well. However, we must also ask ourselves what this will be replaced with. Nowhere in this bill do I see this addressed.

One of the greatest problems in youth criminal behaviour is not only the violence but also the non-violent criminal acts which encompass a much larger number of criminal behaviour. Many youths who commit these acts for example, break and enter and auto theft, often repeat them many times over. They are convicted, penalized, incarcerated and released, only to repeat the sad cycle of breaking the law once again. The public and the police are understandably frustrated.

Justice must be served in a number of functions. The first one is the protection of society. The second one is the rehabilitation of the criminal. The third is the restitution to society and the victim. There should also be a disincentive to offend. The justice system has failed in many cases on all three fronts. All you need to do, as I said before, is to speak to those individuals who work in the system to know this is so.

We in the Reform Party have suggested that the convicted must pay back to the victim or society in some substantive fashion, for example by way of work or money. Also, to effect rehabilitation part of the penalty must be obligatory; the youth

must engage in school or a training program to provide him or her with the skills needed to be a productive member of society. This can similarly be applied to counselling and psychiatric services that the courts feel the offender must take. The offender must also be an active and willing participant in this, for not to do this would defeat the whole purpose of rehabilitation.

Relating to the rehabilitation of the young offender or lack thereof, many of these youths offend and reoffend. We must ask ourselves why this is so. Part of the reason is that tragically many of them themselves find that secure custody is a better environment than the one they come from.

This was graphically illustrated to me by a patient I saw not too many years ago. This young man of 15 stood in front of me prior to his release and pleaded with me to stay in the maximum security youth detention centre. He said: "Dr. Martin, if you let me go, I will go out and reoffend". That broke my heart. It was tragic. It brought to my mind that there was something desperately in need in our system if we had a young offender who had to say that. These young people need to be removed from the environment they find themselves and sent far away from the city to perhaps a setting in a rural area away from the drugs, the alcohol, the sexual abuse and the violence they are subjected to.

A change in environment is absolutely imperative for their rehabilitation. Also important is the length of time they are subjected to this change. They must be away from these destructive environments for a long period of time. I cannot emphasize that enough. It requires a long period of time to effect a change in behaviour and undo the damage of the many years of destructive influence they have been subjected to during their formative years. Repeat young offenders need stable, disciplined and constructive environments not for months but for a year or preferably longer.

Some may consider this suggestion harsh, but the idea is to get them into an secure and safe environment of normalcy where they can start to address the psychological and behavioural reasons they commit crimes. This cannot be done in the destructive environment in which many offenders find themselves, regardless how many dollars are spent on social workers and counselling. It will not work.

We will not change much by putting these individuals either into halfway houses or community rehabilitation centres for a few months, the reason being that they are in close proximity to the same environment they were in before. Therefore they are subjected to the same stresses that bred criminal behaviour in the first place that we see manifested in society.

Also the Reform Party has suggested that parents who wilfully abrogate responsibility for their children must also be held accountable. This could be in the form of fines imposed on parents.

Finally I address the penalty for violent crime. I agree with the lengthening of sentences. I suggest to the minister that another aspect is not addressed in the bill. Youth and adults who commit violent offences and are deemed to likely reoffend at the end of their sentences should continue to be held in custody until such time as they do not pose a threat to innocent people.

The rationale behind this idea comes from our belief that the rights and protection of victims in society are of the greatest importance with regard to justice. In the past I believe the rights of the victim have been violated and in our perception the rights of the convicted have been held at a higher level than those of the innocent.

The bill talks about the consideration of victim impact statements along those lines prior to sentencing. Rather than making them a consideration they should be made obligatory. It should be the right of the victim to give an impact statement at the time of sentencing.

I will address the prevention of crime. I do not have the answer but I would like to give a few insights having worked in the system both as a guard and as a physician. As we have all agreed the causes of crime are multifaceted. As I have said before many youths who commit crimes tragically come from horrendous family situations, often broken families, and are subject to the improper or inadequate parenting, sexual or physical abuse and alcohol and drug abuse often rampant in their history. Many children are born into these tragic situations and develop personality and psychological traits and behaviours that can lead to criminal behaviour.

The number of individuals subjected to such a tragic environment are increasing. Thus the number of people who suffer psychological dislocations as children that are manifested in criminal behaviour as adults will also increase. This will result in an increase in social costs in many areas, only one of which is criminal behaviour.

We should address the contributing factors that produce criminal behaviour. Children must be taught early at the beginning of their school years about appropriate behaviour, self-respect, respect for others, personal responsibility, what drugs, alcohol and sexual abuse are about, in addition to their a, b, c 's. It must happen at a very early age, at the age of five or six.

The parents could also be brought into the classroom so that they too could learn the value of important parenting and those lessons they may not have been subjected to as children. As

individuals we must learn these things if we are collectively to have a safe, responsible and law-abiding society.

If we are to address the antecedent issues to youth crime it will serve not only current youth offenders but will hopefully prevent those who normally take the path to criminal behaviour from doing so. It is an advantage to them and for the protection of society.

[Supply, February 14th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for the number of questions he poses.

We all know the history of the debt and deficit but rather than pointing fingers back in time we should look forward in the interests of all Canadians to put forward a constructive solution. I believe that is one of the things we have done.

Another issue that my hon. colleague mentions is the division between federal and provincial responsibilities. I will take but one example that is probably very close to his heart and that is the official languages policy. We in this party and people from coast to coast, including the people in Quebec, have said that the official languages policy has been a dismal failure.

We are saying we should give language responsibility to the provinces. If every province had that responsibility then they, the people inside the province, will determine what will be the language of choice in that area. It would reflect the regional bilingualism or unilingualism of an area. It would also save the taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

To reiterate, the biggest threat we have to the social programs is continued overspending. What we are trying to do, what we are obligated to do in the interests of those who are most disadvantaged in our society is to ensure that we get spending under control to enable the government to have the money to spend on them.

[Supply, February 14th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to speak to our supply motion which demands that the government respond to the demands of Canadians with spending cuts and not net tax increases.

Currently we are engaged in one of the greatest threats to our society and economy. It is not something that comes from without, but something that comes from within our own boundaries. It is not the deficit spending but the debt, that massive summation of overspending that has gone on for at least two decades that seeks to compromise every aspect of our society, every aspect of our economy and seeks to affect every individual in this country from coast to coast.

What is the magnitude of this debt? Many people talk about the federal debt being $550 billion. They do not include the provincial debt of $220 billion, the municipal debt of several billion, and unfunded liabilities such as CPP in the order of $500 billion. What does this do? The combination of all this amounts

to over $1.2 trillion. This debt is ever increasing and causes us to pay increasing amounts of interest from the public purse on this.

The government takes in about $120 billion every year and spends about $160 billion which means a deficit of about $40 billion. It is interesting because this amount is actually the amount of interest we borrow every year to pay on our debt. The government also spends out of this $40 billion on government services and about $80 billion on social programs.

As the debt increases we have larger interest payments to make which must come from one of two sources, either increased taxes or a boost in the economy. The increased taxes will either come from companies or from individuals.

If you are an individual it decreases your ability to spend money which has a downward effect on the economy. Similarly, if members speak to businesses in their communities they will find they cannot hire more people, they cannot do more research, they cannot do any more development, they cannot expand. Therefore it has a depressing and downward effect on the economy.

The citizens of Canada have sent a clear message to every member of Parliament: No new taxes; get the economic house in order; and make the necessary cuts in expenditures to do this because our taxes are already too high.

The government has said it will cut expenditures to 3 per cent of GDP, but I submit this is an element of intellectual dishonesty. This comes from the Maastricht negotiations where it was said that the combined amounts should be 3 per cent of the net debt, not the federal debt, but the accumulated debt which in this country is over $1 trillion.

If we adhere to what this government wishes to do, over a period of three years we will add at least $100 billion to the debt and further increase the amount of interest payments we have to make every year.

Even if we balance the budget, and we should look at the New Zealand experiment, there will be no change in interest payments over the short term and these expenditures will continue, but we do not have a choice in the matter. If we look at New Zealand now, some 10 years after its economic downturn, we see a country that is booming, a country that has one of the most aggressive and positive economies in the world. The reason it did this was because it was forced to the wall to get its economic house in order.

We do not necessarily want to go the way of New Zealand. We do not want a solution foisted upon us from outside the country by the international financial institutions. We would like to have a made in Canada solution, a solution which makes cuts that are sensitive and sensible without affecting the poorest of the poor in order to save the core of our social programs and to keep the economy we have come to know.

Our role in opposition is not to continually criticize, as the member from the other party mentioned just a few minutes ago. We have put forth a constructive and specific program to this government on how and where to make the necessary decreases in government expenditures. In other words, we have put forward constructive alternatives which very few opposition parties in the history of Parliament have ever done.

Initially, our financial group looked at government operations and removed $10 billion from that. Further, it decided to make cuts of $15 billion to $18 billion from social programs. The rest we would need in order to balance the budget would come from a 3 per cent growth in the economy.

Contrary to what has been put forward in the media, we are not a slash and burn party. Rather we are putting forth constructive and sensitive cuts in order to preserve the core of social programs in order to minimize the effect it will have on those who are most disadvantaged in our society.

Be aware that if we do not make these necessary changes now while we are in an economic upturn, we will have to do it in an economic downturn. That, my colleagues, will be one which is going to affect those who are least advantaged the most.

As I said before, our financial group has put forth a very constructive and specific plan in making these decreases to expenditures. The first priority is that we in this House must set an example. As a result of that we say: Let us make the cuts from the top first.

First we spoke about revamping MP pension plans and time and time again we have presented to this government specific ways in which to do that.

We have also advocated a 15 per cent cut to our budgets and eliminating excessive travel by members of Parliament. Just as an aside, each of us in this House can actually do this. In my office we found that by booking early and looking for deals we have decreased the amount of travel expenditures by 60 per cent from the average MP. If we all did this, it would be a considerable saving to the taxpayer.

We also say in this party that we must prioritize the funding to ensure that those aspects of government that are essential, that is, health care, education and law enforcement, are of the highest priority in terms of spending. We must also decrease duplication between the federal and provincial governments for savings of roughly $3.5 billion.

Some examples are eliminating the Official Languages Act which would save $310 million, to such things as eliminating official multiculturalism. Just as an aside I would like to say that this policy is one of the most divisive policies in the country.

Rather than concentrating on those things that bind us together as individuals it concentrates on our differences.

Speaking as an immigrant to this country, one who is very proud to have had the ability to come here and live here, this country offers so many things to all different peoples. One of the beauties of this country is that we are one of the few countries in the world which has been able to merge together over 160 different ethnic groups into a relatively heterogeneous group in peace. It is something as Canadians we ought to be proud of. Our new Governor General actually made a point of mentioning this in his installation speech which I was very grateful to hear.

Another aspect in our financial plan has been to stop subsidizing businesses and special interest groups to the tune of $3.7 billion a year. When we speak to businesses in the community they do not want handouts. They want a stable economy, a stable dollar, a skilled workforce and good information about where they can capitalize on export markets.

I encourage our fellow members who sit on the foreign affairs committee and the foreign affairs and international trade department to please listen and devise ways in which companies in our country can aggressively take advantage of export markets. They are out there and we can do it. We are more than happy to help.

The cuts we propose are over three years. Again we have emphasized no new taxes.

Some studies recently have come out to say that we in Canada are not taxed that heavily. I would argue again that this is an example of intellectual dishonesty. What it looked at was an example of taxation as a percentage of GDP which has no relation whatsoever as to how this affects each individual Canadian.

What is perhaps more revealing is to look at how it would affect the average person on the street. In 1961 the average Canadian family paid 22 per cent of its income in taxes and the free tax day was May 3. In 1994 the average Canadian family paid 46 per cent of its income in taxes and the tax free day jumped 44 days to June 16. We are being taxed more. Just in the eight years these taxes per family have gone up $3,500. This is due to increased spending by governments.

The government has recommended and made rumblings on increases in taxes on gas, lottery winnings, dental and medical benefits, surtaxes on individuals and businesses, RRSPs, inheritance taxes, and so on. The public and we in this party have said time and time again: Do not do this; we will not allow it to happen.

We would ask the finance minister to please look very carefully at the well thought out and specific plans our financial group has put forth. Please adopt as many of these plans as possible to do. We are more than happy to help you get our economic house in order. I put that to you as an offer.

[Criminal Code, February 10th, 1995]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-301, an act to amend the Criminal Code (violent crimes).

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to put forth this private member's bill to serve notice to those individuals in society who choose to continually victimize society; for those who wish to continue to commit violent offences on those who are innocent civilians.

This is a three strikes and you are out bill, which gives notice to those individuals who wish to do these things that if they commit three violent offences they are in for 25 years.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)

[Justice, February 10th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Solicitor General for looking into the matter.

I have a question for the Minister of Justice. I am glad that he reiterated his commitment to having the safety of Canadian society as his single highest priority.

I have a very simple question. Will the minister immediately bring forth legislation to incarcerate violent sexual offenders beyond their original sentence if they are deemed to pose a risk to society just before their release?

[Justice, February 10th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Solicitor General.

Once again members of my party have brought to the attention of the House and the minister cases of dangerous sexual offenders who have been released into society only to reoffend, or in the tragic case of Melanie Carpenter to claim the life of an innocent victim.

One such individual, Mr. Harold Irving Banks, was recently transferred to a halfway house in Victoria right next to one of his victims, then transferred to a halfway house in Abbotsford three blocks away from his terrified daughter.

Is it the policy of the government to have dangerous sexual offenders released into communities where their victims reside? Will he take immediate action to have Mr. Banks moved far away from his victims?

[Department Of External Affairs Act, February 8th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague hit on a very important point. We do get more bang for our buck by investing in primary education versus expensive post-secondary education.

We cannot have a stable country without a stable populous. We cannot have a stable populous unless the populous has a vested economic and social interest in the country in which it lives.

One primary way of doing it is to enable the people to have the rudiments of an education: give them some literacy and give them the ability to take care of themselves. If we give them the knowledge to take care of themselves we have helped to create a sustainable situation.

It is also more difficult for individuals to sway a population for their own illicit gain if the population is educated. It is easier to reason with a population that has the rudiments of education than one that is living in a primitive state of affairs. That has borne itself out time and time again.

As my hon. colleague just mentioned, one of the great benefits of providing primary education is that we see a population reduction. We see a reduction in the number of babies born. It gives women control of reproduction, which is fundamental in enabling them and their families to get control of their economic and social lives.

[Department Of External Affairs Act, February 8th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. If I had that answer it would certainly be wonderful.

There are a few things, I would submit in my humble experience, we could do. One would be to address the international security aspects. We cannot get a country back on its feet until the security aspects are dealt with. As I said before, that involves freeing the country of mines and putting in place a strong judicial system, as well as the necessary foundations of democracy to have a populace with confidence in its government. We are a democratic country, one that is well respected for our democratic institutions. We can and have done a lot to help these democratic institutions.

Another fundamental aspect is how we channel our aid. I think we will find a lot of agreement in the international community that international aid must go through NGOs as opposed to through governments. Much aid in the past has gone directly into the hands of foreign governments and in turn has become parts of personal bank accounts in Switzerland and other countries, or has been used to build people's personal empires through the purchase of arms and bribery. That is completely wrong and is not where our international moneys were meant to go.

As I said before in my speech, we need to look at the NGOs to determine which ones are doing a good job and which are not. We have to determine a set of criteria. We have to determine an end point that we want to address through committee reports. That is something the government agrees on. We wish to help the poorest of the poor. We can do that but we have to determine which NGOs are doing a good job and which are not. Once we do so, we can determine where we are proportioning our money.

It is an interesting and an exciting project, one that I hope the government through the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of International Trade will take up. If we can do that, we can effectively channel the aid money Canadians give to other countries.

I will finish by saying that many people in my riding and other ridings ask: "Why are you giving money to people half a world away?" If we want to argue purely on selfish grounds, the economic impact in a positive way to our exporters is very great because we are generous on the international stage. We take part in international organizations in an effective fashion and we bring forth to the international community some sense of peace, stability and sensibility.

If we continue to do so we will have on the international stage a clout far greater than what our population would normally give us.

[Department Of External Affairs Act, February 8th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak to Bill C-47, a bill to change the name of the Department of External Affairs to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

We have no opposition to this bill at all and therefore no position to oppose it whatsoever. It does not change the resource allocation within it, nor any significant restructuring. However, as we broker no opposition to it, let me talk about some concerns I have about the department and let me give some hope and constructive suggestions we have to perhaps change its focus somewhat, making it an even better organization than it already is.

I preface what I am about to say by reaffirming what my colleague said, that we have only had a few hours to address this bill. We hope that in the future the government will give us more time to do that.

First and foremost, if we are to have a Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade it must be one that lives within its means. Currently, as we know, the government is spending 25 per cent more than what it takes in. The department must, as all departments must, make an effective cut to its budget.

As I said before, the government is now spending over $40 billion more than what it takes in. If the department of foreign affairs were to make at least a 25 per cent cut, then we would have a department that would be able to live within its means.

The joint committee had an ideal opportunity to go ahead and do this. It could have given the Minister of Finance a hand by putting forth some constructive suggestions to do this. Unfortunately 20 out of the 60 recommendations that were put out asked for more money, if not explicitly then at least implicitly.

This does not make any sense whatsoever. It does the department and the people who worked very hard on the committee a grave injustice. I cannot emphasize this enough. I hope in the near future the department will take it upon itself to put forth the constructive cuts required to make it sustainable in the future.

I will not put forth criticisms without putting forth some constructive suggestions in some areas of budgetary cuts. One of the areas that our party has put forth is that bilateral government to government aid should be decreased or eliminated.

Unfortunately, when we go out in the field we see that a lot of the aid Canadians and our government give in good faith to help those people who need it the most tragically does not get there. I have seen foodstuffs given by the Canadian government being sold over the counter to various areas or being bargained for arms and ammunition. This is not where the Canadian government or people want this aid to go.

Another thing we have to do and which we did not do in the committee, although we listened to a lot of NGOs, is to determine which NGOs are doing a good job and which are not. Which are giving the money they are given to the people who need it the most and which are not? We need to determine criteria that can be applied to the NGOs to tell us which NGOs are doing a good job and determine ways in which we can

measure this in the future. This has never been done but it is something we must do in the future.

Another thing we have not done as a country and that no country has done is determine which international organizations we should and should not be members of. Currently we are a member of a vast number of international organizations, in many of which there is a lot of duplication.

If we are having difficulty in being a member of these organizations, so are other countries. No country in the world has taken the initiative to try to streamline these down. Canada has a unique opportunity to do this. We ought to go ahead and determine which organizations are duplicating themselves and which are not, making some constructive suggestions to the international community to determine where we can co-opt the functions of these organizations into one or fewer. It would save us money and would therefore save a lot of other people money.

Another thing we ought to, which this bill gives, is a method to streamline the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. By changing the name perhaps we can use this as a stepping stone to amalgamate various areas within the ministry to save the taxpayers a significant amount of money.

Another area we need to address is one that I recently had some experience in, the Department of International Trade.

There are a number of exporters in this country who have spoken to me about the fact that they would like to be able to capitalize on international markets more effectively. They are not able to do this for a number of reasons.

One thing the Department of International Trade can do is inform Canadian exporters about places where our exporters can capitalize, where we have an expertise that other countries do not.

Currently the biggest problem is getting the information out in a timely fashion. As a result other countries can get contracts on the international stage that really should belong to Canadians. They are jobs that could be brought home, jobs that we can do as well or better than other countries.

I would ask that people in the department look for ways to tell our exporters in a timely fashion about opportunities that exist abroad that they can capitalize on for themselves and for Canadians.

One area that we have not used enough is our embassies. We can utilize our embassies internationally to be the eyes and arms for our exporters abroad. They are in the trenches and they can tell the department what is available to our exporters.

I will move on to a slightly different focus. If we stand back and look at the large threat that exists today we will see that the world is not a safer place in the post cold war era. Last year there were at least 120 conflicts in the world. Over 90 per cent of these conflicts were internal. Why is this so? There are a number of reasons. One essential reason is the burgeoning world population that has been out of control for decades.

From 1950 until the present, a short period, we doubled our population; a population that took from the beginning of time until 1950 to develop. In the next 25 years we will double that population again.

There are those who say this is not a problem, that we will find ways to deal with this. I would submit that right now we have no way to deal with it and there has been nothing in the recent past to prove otherwise.

Out of this expanding population will be an increasing conflict for limited resources. Out of that conflict will come a migration of people. We have seen recently on television the horrible genocide and carnage.

In the trenches all of the foreign aid and development that countries such as Canada and other principle countries put forth will go for nothing. We will wind up back at square one. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever not to address this threat to security if we continue to give aid. It has to be addressed before our development needs are addressed.

Security not only involves the military aspect, which is what we have had over the last hundreds of years, but also security involving the environment, economic and resource management. This is the single most important threat not only to foreign security but also to our own. Many people in this country would argue who cares what happens half a world away, put a fence around them, let them kill each other. This has sometimes been said about Bosnia.

If we want to argue independent of humanitarian terms, argue on what affects us, let us say that what happens half a world away will one day wind up on our doorstep. These conflicts produce a number of things, a migration of people, a demand on our resources through international trade and also on defence. It also puts our people in harm's way, our defence personnel who have provided exemplary service in the past.

There is one way to deal with this in the near future. It is something that no country has ever taken the initiative to do, but I think Canada can, the aspect of preventive diplomacy. This country has a unique opportunity to go around the world and develop a consensus to try to address these conflicts before they blow up. Once they blow up we get into the very expensive aspect of peacekeeping and peacemaking and everything it entails. On the other hand preventive diplomacy is cheap by comparison.

Why Canada? As our new Governor General mentioned this morning in a very eloquent speech which I thought was one of the few speeches that brought us together and concentrated on our similarities rather than on our differences, we are one of the few countries in the world that has managed to bring together a truly historic mosaic of people in a peaceful setting.

That reputation should not be undersold by anybody in the House because it is internationally renowned. We may not realize it, but people in countries around the world look to Canada as the example of a country that has managed to merge different people from different walks of life, different colours, different religions and different ethnic groups into a peaceful and relatively harmonious mosiac.

We can and we must take the initiative to act as the honest broker to bring together NGOs, academics, politicians, the United Nations and international financial institutions to determine a series of reproducible measures that we as the international community will enforce when conflicts are about to blow up. This is fundamental to international security in the future and, as I said before, cost effective.

Finally I will concentrate on a few specific issues I have had recent experience in and, as I have seen before, cause a great deal of tragedy. One is the trafficking of small arms. People may not think it is much of a problem, but I was recently in a third world country where the destabilizing effect of small arms is dramatic. I was in areas where an AK-47 could be bought for as little as $20. In these areas resources are depleted, populations are growing and small arms are proliferating. The result is a pot ready to boil over and an area that is very unstable.

We must act as a world leader to develop an international consensus on how we are to go about severely restricting the production, sale and movement of small arms. Canada should act as a leader in banning two things: first, mines and, second, anti-personnel devices. These weapons have absolutely no place in warfare. They are meant merely to destabilize a civilian population and are meant to kill civilians. I have seen it with my own eyes.

Unfortunately, when a so-called war is over, because of the proliferation of the aforementioned a country is unable to get on its feet for decades. The cost to the international community is in the billions of dollars. It is one of those things we can pay now or pay later. I would submit it is a lot better to get involved in this early than late.

I hope the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of International Trade will take these suggestions into consideration in their future endeavours. I know people on this side of the House are prepared to work toward furthering those suggestions.

[Royal Roads Military College, December 12th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, fairness and equality are what this deal is about but are not occurring at Royal Roads.

If this is an example of regional fairness let us talk about it. The government is now making acceptance of a settlement package of the military base in Masset as a condition of its settlement of Royal Roads. They have nothing to do with each other.

Why is acceptance of the compensation package for Masset linked to the resolution of Royal Roads when no such example exists with CMR.