Maurice Vellacott

[Supply, September 23rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to address my hon. Canadian Alliance colleague who talked about consumers stepping up to the plate. Were there other levels of government that showed more leadership on this? Notably in the west I think they probably did a whole lot better. Maybe the member could respond to that.

[Petitions, June 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, lastly, I have a petition, referring back to the Latimer euthanasia Supreme Court case, strongly expressing opposition to euthanasia and stating the desire for Parliament to ensure that anti-euthanasia legislation is in force to protect those most vulnerable in our society.

[Petitions, June 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition calling on the government to ban the sale or exchange of human embryonic or fetal tissue or human reproductive services.

[Petitions, June 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition with 800 names urging Parliament to take all legislative measures necessary to preserve the current definition of marriage as the union between one man and one woman.

[Petitions, June 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition from petitioners who have a great concern about the adding of sexual orientation as an explicitly protected category under sections 318 and 319 of the Criminal Code. The petitioners believe that would lead individuals to be unable to exercise their religious freedom and their freedom of speech as protected under the charter.

They call upon Parliament to protect the rights of Canadians to be able to share their deeply held beliefs without fear of persecution and prosecution, and for the full and lawful use of the Criminal Code as it presently stands.

[Justice, June 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, Julian Fantino, the chief of police for Toronto, stated in a letter to me his many concerns about the government choosing to decriminalize marijuana. He referred to research indicating that the number of drivers less than 25 years of age under the influence of marijuana may increase by as much as 400%. Police Chief Fantino spoke of the added hazard that this would create on our roadways.

Does the minister not care about the carnage caused by such impaired drivers each year?

[First Nations Governance Act, June 3rd, 2003]

Madam Speaker, we have had an interesting run over a number of weeks and this has been no doubt recounted over the course of the speeches thus far. We started this cross-country caravan in every province across Canada. We had video conferencing from some of the territories. We heard some interesting testimony. A lot of it was coming at us from the same point of view. The point was clearly made that there was strong opposition throughout the country to the first nations governance initiative as we have it in Bill C-7.

I guess in fairness we should say there were individuals who said there were aspects of the bill that they thought might be a good thing for the country, but there were definitely problems. As we approach any bill, we want to look at ways to either salvage it, improve it or have it in a form that is helpful to the people it is intended to be of help to. I do not think anyone would disagree in the House and certainly not in first nations territory across our country that changes are necessary. No one is denying that.

In fact, the Indian Act is pretty much universally acclaimed as being a problem. It is outdated and needs to be changed. We need to have discussions and exchanges to make changes to the Indian Act in order to bring it up to date and modernize it. This would allow first nations people across our country to do well, succeed and have all the other rights and opportunities that other Canadians assume and take for granted.

The process was flawed from the very beginning for a couple of reasons. There were individuals who were supposed to be heard across the country. However it was done over a period of time where a real big percentage of individuals did not come forward because in some cases their leaders had indicated to them they did not think it merited support, so they just did not become engaged in the process.

In other cases it was more of an information sharing at suppers and so on across the country. Those numbers were counted up as those who were engaged in the process when in fact they were there for a meal. They watched a video and shared information. It was certainly not a two way dialogue.

Out of that process we got back to this place, the House of Commons, and had committee work done over a period of weeks. It dragged on and on, as everyone knows, because of the strong objections of different people. The committee members were not particularly enamoured with the piece of legislation. We had late nights: 9 p.m. to 12 a.m., 9 p.m. to 1:30 a.m., and 9 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. The last couple of days we sat from 9 p.m. until 11 a.m. the next day.

In my short six years of being a member of Parliament--and I thought it was just because I had not been around the block long enough and that this was a pretty common occurrence--I am told by a third term member of Parliament that this is only the second time this kind of long, protracted and drawn out process has occurred.

There are a lot of myths surrounding the first nations governance initiative. Certainly the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development has contributed in part to some of the myths that have grown up in respect to this piece of legislation. He stated that the FNGA would provide aboriginal Canadians with “real measures to seek redress and to hold their governments accountable”.

As I look at it, there are no serious foundational changes in this particular bill that need to occur. In fact, it seems to be in many respects formalizing some failed accountability practices of the past. We were told repeatedly or at least on a number of occasions that bands currently complete 168 reports a year. I am not of the view that more forms or more paperwork will necessarily enhance the accountability if it is not the right kind of reporting and done in the manner that is going to be of most help to first nations people so that they can press accountability on their reserves.

Accountability can only occur if individuals are empowered with the rights and freedoms to hold their governments accountable. It comes from the bottom up and it has to be there. The tools and mechanisms must be given to individuals.

It is not an imposition from above, but we must begin with the people. There needs to be a buy-in and ownership. Over the course of time as they own the process and these mechanisms and so on, then we can get true accountability.

The only redress mechanism available to reserve residents is a band and chief appointed ombudsman or redress officer. Some have called it a “mini-me” ombudsman, kind of like the Prime Minister's ethics counsellor. If I were a chief or a band council member, I am not so sure that I would even want the kind of local ombudsman appointed by myself and my other colleagues on a council. If there was ever an issue and somebody said there was a problem with something which I had done even when I was quite clean on the matter, and I was the individual who had appointed that particular redress officer, I am not sure that even if there was a clearing of my name, a clearing of me as a chief or a councillor, that there would be that perception that things had been done right because I was the individual who hand-picked or appointed that person.

We have reserves across our country and bands that are as small as a couple of dozen people, and many that are in the range of 100 or 200 people, all related by family. I do not really know that we would have the perception of impartiality and evenhandedness if a chief and council were to appoint a local ombudsman of that sort. We obviously have a problem with that.

People who are often beaten down with life and are not easily able to get through in terms of having their issues addressed would have to go to their chief and council. If that does not resolve it, then they would have to go from there to the local redress officer, the ombudsman on the reserve appointed by chief and council. If they have the guts and the gusto, and they push to get through that level and it is not adequately addressed there, then they would have to go on to a national ombudsman. We think there are too many layers and tiers. Justice will be greatly delayed if people persist to get through. As a result we will not have proper redress.

The minister said that the bill would help to build a strong foundation for a first nations economy. Many economists would strongly disagree with the minister because there are continuing barriers in the Indian Act that have prevented economic growth and those would remain. Those are not dealt with or done away with in Bill C-7. For example, aboriginal Canadians would still not be able to mortgage their homes and secure credit or financing.

I had the privilege to talk to a first nations entrepreneur who is an aggressive businessman. He is assertive. He employs other first nations people. He was lamenting to me a couple of days back about the situation on his reserve. It concerned the issue over control of the resources by chief and council. He has a certificate of possession for his home and he has a store right on the edge of the reserve, but there is still the issue of the certificate of possession. He can only sell it to somebody there. It does not have true market value. It is determined by others, the chief of the band and the council, as to what kind of business comes his way. He is a contractor as well. This is a first nations person who is lamenting the difficulties and that things are not greatly changing with this particular bill.

I see that my time is about to expire. I have much to say and I will do so at future stages of the bill. I appreciate the opportunity to initially indicate our concerns, our distress, and our opposition to the bill as it comes before us, even in view of the amendments. We do not believe it mitigates nor will it be of real help to first nations people across our country.

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

[National Children's Memorial Day, May 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be able to speak to this private member's motion, Motion No. 396, introduced by my colleague from Labrador.

As a reminder to those listening, the motion reads:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should recognize the second Sunday of December as National Children's Memorial Day.

Children and the very special place they hold in our hearts have been used to promote many issues and ideas, some good and some not so good, but this proposal to recognize a national children's memorial day is a very, very good proposal in my view.

Many days are set aside to remember special things. The reason for this is that we recognize the value of those regular times of remembrance, so we have Christmas, Easter, New Year's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Labour Day, Remembrance Day, National Child Day, Literacy Day and so on. The list is really quite long.

A national children's memorial day would be a valuable addition to this tradition of days of remembrance, and since, as I understand it, no expenditure of public funds is necessary to implement this proposal, such concerns should not limit support for this initiative.

Being a memorial day, we know that this proposal is dealing with a memory. It is memorializing something, in this case the death of a child, a very tragic experience. The purpose of a national children's memorial day would be to help people, particularly parents, remember their loss in a special way. It would be a day on which special events could be organized to bring people together who may have nothing else in common except that they have had to deal with the loss of a child and are grieving the death of a child.

It could play a vital role in the grieving process for many families. It would be a way to tell grieving families that society supports their need to remember, even years after the loss of their child. We do not want them to sweep that experience under the rug or out the back door after a few years and forget that tragedy as though it never happened.

Depending on the support system people have, they may receive a lot of comfort in the early days of a loss as people gather around them, but that support can drop off very dramatically long before their own grieving process has worked through and they have stabilized. A national children's memorial day could help remedy that problem.

I think it would be very reasonable to expect that in this place, with our 300-plus members, at least some of us have had our own experiences with the loss of a child. I expect that there would be a lot of personal empathy for a proposal like this.

There are many ways in which we can lose a child. We could have 100 people in a room and they could all have had a different experience. And here we are talking about children, as I understand it, all the way into their teenage years. Just because a child grows up, he or she does not stop being our child. I have a 24 year old son, a 21 year old daughter, a 9 year old and a 3 year old. They are still my sons, my daughter, my children, and will be right through until the day I die.

Some children die in tragic traffic accidents. There is a particular website with respect to this with links on the Internet to where memorials have been set up by parents to remember their children. One tells the story of a boy hit by a car when he was trying to run across the highway. It was a very tragic loss of life. Another memorial was to a girl who, just days before her graduation, died when she fell asleep at the wheel of her car just a few miles from her home.

Other stories involve losses though illness and disease and children who have died from cancer or AIDS or one of many other childhood diseases. One Internet memorial was for a beautiful little girl who died at the age of three. As far as everybody knew, she was born healthy. However, two months after her first birthday, she began to lean to one side when she walked and soon afterwards she was diagnosed with a golf ball-sized malignant brain tumour.

Many parents will carry the pain of these tragedies with them forever, or should I say at least in this lifetime, and it is a real encouragement to them that they do not have to carry this pain alone, that at least once a year we can set aside a special time with others to remember their child. A national children's memorial day could be of real value to those parents as they adjust to that loss and try to cope.

These are not the only childhood tragedies. There are thousands of women and families eagerly anticipating a new baby who have to deal with the tragedy of a miscarriage. As I was going over this, it came to mind real quickly that my sister-in-law, Marilyn, several times had a miscarriage when the little babies were a number of months along the way. My brother Lincoln and his wife Marilyn have had that occur on several occasions. At a point they adopted a special son, Nathaniel, a chosen son, as a tiny baby. Then two other precious children were born to them, Samuel and Tabitha. But it does not completely eliminate that grieving and that great sense of loss they had from the miscarriages of several children.

My wife and I have also had two miscarriages and we are confident that we will meet those two little ones in heaven some day. I think very few people realize how traumatic a miscarriage can be until they experience one of their own. Because of the battle in our society over whether or not an unborn child is truly a child, women dealing with a miscarriage may feel that pain alone. They might feel very alone in that experience and less comfortable in sharing that pain with others believing that they really should not be feeling so much anguish in the first place.

A couple of a weeks ago, I sent a picture to all my colleagues here on the Hill using today's amazing technology. It was an ultrasound of a 56 day old baby, a baby in the first trimester of a pregnancy, not quite two months old. The picture showed how incredibly well defined that baby was, with hands, feet, organs, eyes, facial image and so on at that 56 day stage. I would have to say at this point that in order to legitimize abortion some people still call babies of that age just a blob of tissue, but medical technology has really exposed that deception, that fraudulent claim, when we know it is life. We know it is human. It is a little baby.

Then there is the experience of abortion and the deaths of unborn children. About 100,000 unborn children die in Canada each year by way of abortion. Sadly, the rhetoric and the politics involved in the issue have not allowed people to recognize the emotional trauma women face when it comes to abortion.

For women who do proceed with an abortion, what do they experience afterward? I have had the conversations to know. Many of them feel deep remorse, regret and guilt, but because they are not allowed by society to grieve openly and because of the personal shame so many of them feel over that abortion experience, they turn their pain inward and it demonstrates itself in other destructive and sometimes harmful behaviours. Regardless of what other people tell them and regardless of the circumstances that conspired to bring them to that decision to abort, many of these women know what was destroyed inside of them and know that it was a little baby and they grieve. Many of these women were pushed to that experience by a husband, partner, boyfriend, by a mom, a sister or family member, but they grieve the loss of that little one.

Last week several of my colleagues and I shared the podium at a press conference with some ladies who were talking about their regrets over abortions they had many years ago. One of those ladies, Angelina Steenstra, talked about the destructive lifestyle choices she made in her attempts to deal with an earlier abortion, choices that resulted in a sexually transmitted disease and infertility so that today she can bear no children of her own. Hers is one of thousands of similar stories. These women grieve. Following an abortion, many women grieve their loss. A national children's memorial day could be that valuable time of remembrance for them in their healing process as well.

A number of memorials have been set up in cemeteries across the country and in my province of Saskatchewan, including one in Saskatoon, to remember the deaths of unborn children. I understand that is done across the country and across North America as well. Canadians want to remember the deaths of those unborn children rather than having them dismissed as insignificant and meaningless.

We also need to remember those little ones who are stillborn or those who lose their lives to sudden infant death syndrome. It is a terrible and still poorly understood phenomenon. There is a memorial day in the United States promoted there by groups that assist parents who have lost children through SIDS.

There are children who are murdered. There are children who die in tragic accidents. The cases and examples are endless. What is clear from these many examples is the kind of impact that a national children's memorial day could have on the lives of thousands of people across Canada.

The pain parents experience when their children die is something that cannot be explained in rational terms. The bonds between parents and children involve intangibles that are beyond our understanding.

We need to hope that as members in the House we will recognize this special relationship between children and their parents by establishing in Canada a national children's memorial day. I commend the member for his initiative in this regard.

[Question No. 208, May 27th, 2003]

For each year since 1988, what was the total number of abortions performed in Canada, including: ( a ) the number of abortions by weeks of gestation (i.e. first, second and third trimester); ( b ) the number of abortions resulting in complications, by type of complication; ( c ) the number of subsequent hospitalizations; and ( d ) the number of deaths as an indirect or direct consequence of an abortion?

(Returns tabled)

[Petitions, May 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the next petition is with respect to the issue of stem cell research.

The petitioners draw to the attention of the House that thousands of Canadians suffer from debilitating illnesses, that Canadians do support ethical stem cell research which has shown encouraging potential, and that non-embryonic stem cells which are known as adult stem cells have shown significant research progress.

They call upon Parliament to focus its legislative support on adult stem cell research to find the cures and therapies necessary to treat the illnesses and sufferings of Canadians.