Maurice Vellacott

[Petitions, February 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, in view of the fact that Canada has a long history of recognizing the rights of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience, the petitioners lament the fact that health care workers and those seeking training for a career in the health care system have been stripped of those rights by medical facilities and educational institutes.

They refer to examples of some hospitals where nurses are forced to assist in abortion procedures against their deeply held religious and moral convictions. That is now happening in respect of pharmacies too.

In view of the fact that some nurses have lost jobs due to their adherence to religious and moral beliefs, they call upon parliament to enact legislation against such violations of conscience rights by administrators of medical and educational facilities.

[Criminal Code, September 26th, 2000]

Madam Speaker, for the sake of our viewers who are tuning in across the country, those who are arriving home from work, getting that channel zapper and tuning in to hear the debate in the House of Commons today or those who are just getting up from the supper table, putting their feet up or getting their slippers on, we are discussing Bill C-17.

This is a Liberal bill that is before us. It is an act to amend the criminal code, cruelty to animals, disarming a peace officer and other amendments and the Firearms Act, technical amendments. That is the title, and as it suggests, it is an omnibus bill, which is to say that this often odious method of government mixes some good with other unrelated problematic legislation, which is what is before us this hour.

We have no objection to the latter two other aspects of this bill which are the disarming a peace officer, which is a good and necessary thing, and the technical amendments to the Firearms Act.

Bill C-17 would make it a criminal offence for everyone who, without the consent of the peace officer, takes or attempts to take a weapon that is in the possession of that peace officer when the peace officer is engaged in the execution of his or her duty. Everyone who commits this offence is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years, or is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 18 months.

As I previously stated, we support this particular amendment. In fact, in my constituency, a place called Warman, Saskatchewan just north of Saskatoon in the Saskatoon—Wanuskewin constituency, there is a large recreational centre that was put together by the good folk of that community and possibly with some government money. It is called the Brian King Centre and was named in memory of a wonderfully dedicated member of the Saskatoon police force who was killed in the line of duty when he was jumped by two individuals who took his gun. In commando style, they had him kneel on the banks of the river in Saskatchewan shot him through the head and killed him. He left a young widow and children. It was a very tragic story. This would be one particular address to that kind of situation.

We need respect for authority. We need respect for RCMP officers and for city and municipal police. The Canadian Alliance supports our police officers across the country and respects this particular part of Bill C-17.

I note this past Sunday on Parliament Hill there were numbers of dignitaries and police officers. It is an important event that occurs on an annual basis where we recognize our police officers, those who have lost their lives in the line of duty. I referred to just one, but there have been other police officers who have been jumped, assaulted and shot with their own guns.

Without question we want to give this kind of a tool to the judiciary with respect to justice officials so that they can prosecute in a very serious way those who have disarmed a police officer. Of course, in these other cases there were murder charges for the criminals who killed the individual from my constituency, Brian King.

The section in Bill C-17 concerning the amendment to the Firearms Act is simply a technical amendment. It is a cosmetic thing. It simply grandfathers the inventories of prohibited handguns held by businesses in mid-February 1995 so they can sell to individuals eligible under the act. A further amendment adjusts employee licensing requirements so that it better reflects appropriate firearms safety training for employees as opposed to some of the non-restrictive firearms.

We have no problem with those two parts of Bill C-17. However, as we said before, omnibus bills are quite objectionable. It includes excellent and very necessary legislation combined with flawed legislation, using good legislation to slip through flawed and problematic legislation. That is the problem.

The government's side will say, as it is already setting up to do, that the official opposition does not support making it a criminal offence for disarming a police officer. That will be the spin and its approach to this. Members can mark my words on that. That is the approach that will be taken, especially if past history is an accurate judge of this. That is how it handles the omnibus bills. It slips through these nefarious, unpopular and sometimes not good pieces of legislation by way of something that is good.

The genesis of changes to cruelty to animals is to no longer treat cruelty to animals as a property crime. We have some basic agreement with the intent of this part of the bill. What the government is doing though is making a new provision, moving the cruelty to animals to section 4 of the criminal code under sexual offences, which would be renamed sexual offences, public morals, disorderly conduct and cruelty to animals. That is currently contained in sections 444 to 446, part XI of the criminal code. This section of the criminal code protects a person from being convicted of an offence if that person acted with legal justification. That is the way it stands now. It is adequate. It serves us quite properly.

However, agricultural groups, anglers, hunter groups, and the Fur Council of Canada want cruelty to animals to remain in section 444 to 446. They fear that by moving the cruelty section to sexual offences it will make it easier for them to be prosecuted. They argue quite rightly that those who lawfully and legitimately harvest animals for business will not be protected if the cruelty section is changed. They are not reassured by the minister's words. She has said that it does not pertain to them or apply to them and that it is not an issue, yet for some strange reason they are not at all reassured by the her words.

Therefore, as has been indicated by members before, we are going to be moving an amendment at committee stage to have the animal cruelty provisions back under sections 444 to 446, or make those necessary changes to section 182.1 to comply with and allay the concerns of these farmers, hunters and agricultural groups and others who harvest animals.

The second point of the cruelty to animals section of Bill C-17 that causes concern is the amendment in the bill which proposes to take out the words wilfully or wilful as a defence if a person has been charged. That has been mentioned before. The removal of those words would make prosecution easier but not proper in many instances where one is involved in the legitimate slaughter of animals or the raising of animals for legitimate use or harvesting. We all appreciate that when we eat meat at mealtime it is because we have animals that can be killed humanely, quickly and prepared for our tables.

We believe there is reason to add the terms wilful and wilfully back into Bill C-17 to assuage or allay the concerns of various individuals.

The Canadian Alliance will be moving an amendment at committee stage to ensure that legitimate individuals involved in animal operations are not unduly subject to criminal intent.

There is another part of the bill which was referred to before, but it bears repeating because many people have tuned in since those features were given. The amendment that proposes that criminal intent for animal cruelty can be simply civil negligence is a part of the bill which causes concern for legitimate animal operations. It lowers the burden of proof, if you will. Agriculture groups would like to see “wilful neglect” or “marked departure from the exercise of reasonable care” put back in and maintained. It should be reinstated. It should not be something like a civil negligence which is a lower burden of proof and could possibly be used to prosecute farmers trying to carry out normal farming operations and cattle management, et cetera.

We as well will introduce an amendment at committee stage to ensure there is the proper recognition of that need to protect legitimate farm operators from prosecution.

The fourth area of concern in Bill C-17 is what is called animal care provisions. The bill proposes convictions when there is any pain or suffering or injury to an animal. In other words, animals have feelings too.

Currently the criminal code prohibits unnecessary pain. It is only common sense and one does not have to be a legal beagle or a lawyer to know that removing the word “unnecessary” could open up a whole area for conviction. As someone pointed out, putting a worm on a hook could become a problem for a fisherman if somebody was a little overzealous and got on that case. That is unrealistic and it is too loose and open for interpretation and prosecution. We will move an amendment to re-establish the word “unnecessary” to protect anglers and others who are conducting a sporting activity.

The fifth area of concern is where Bill C-17 states that anyone who kills an animal or being the owner permits an animal to be killed brutally or viciously, regardless of whether the animal dies immediately, is guilty of a criminal offence. Again that part is very subjective and is open to a lot of latitude. It is very ambiguous and must be defined more clearly.

The bill raises the penalty for intentional cruelty to an animal from the current penalty of six months to five years and lifts the cap on the fine which is currently $2,000. This is appropriate in the area of cruelty to pets and where cruelty can be established in other practices.

The lifetime ban on owning an animal without doubt is appropriate in cases of pet abuse.

The intent of the bill on the whole is legitimate. No one wants to see animals abused in any way, but there is a need to clarify the language surrounding some of the parts that we have cited here so as to ensure that legitimate individuals involved in the raising and harvesting of animals are not subject to unnecessary and unfair indictment.

We will support the bill at second reading, but we warn the government that it needs to amend the bill to meet the legitimate concerns that have been outlined. If it does not, we will oppose it at third reading.

Last but not least, I want to draw attention to a very cruel irony which has been alluded to before. It is the cruel irony that we take the kind of steps included in this bill to protect animals from any pain, but we have no protection for vulnerable preborn children right through the entire nine months of a pregnancy.

We can use a saline solution and burn the skin off a tiny, vulnerable pre-born child. We can violently suction a baby's arms or legs or other body parts. We can tear them violently apart, no problem, from limb to limb, but the speedy branding of livestock may bring criminal sanctions. To be consistent, we need to have some basic protection for a preborn child. We have got the order of importance mixed up here to some degree.

We also need to show respect for human life, the sanctity of life. All life must be returned—

[Criminal Code, September 26th, 2000]

Madam Speaker, I wonder if the member from the maritimes could indicate specifically how the bill would impact his riding and the people throughout his riding, particularly in the area of the amendment regarding cruelty to animals. I ask the hon. member to give us some examples of its impact.

[Income Tax Act, September 19th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege as a Canadian Alliance member to support my colleague's bill, the member for Calgary Centre.

I have the privilege of having several adopted nephews, four to be exact, and an adopted niece. In a counselling role, I have worked with couples who were sterile or could not conceive a child in the normal way. It was a big concern to them to have the adoption option. It would also have been a big concern to those people to have some kind of support. Some of them did not have a lot of financial means. They came from lower income groups and would have found it to be a a great drain on their resources to adopt children.

Nevertheless, many parents do proceed at great sacrifice because children are dear, special and precious to them, but I do believe that it would be of great assistance to have the kinds of measure that are in the bill before us today.

Bill C-289, as has been said, is essentially an adoption expense deduction bill. We are not talking about an infinite amount of dollars that would be allowed as an income tax deduction, as my Liberal colleague across the way inferred at a point. It is capped at $7,000 for expenses incurred as a result of adopting a child.

As members on this side of the House have said, I would also agree that this is not a simple purchase of a car or some other luxury item. This rates as an altogether different kind of thing. These are couples who want to adopt because they are in some cases sterile or for various other reasons cannot have children by the normal way. It is not purely a discretionary issue or choice as was implied by my colleague across the way.

The deduction would be available for the adoption of any child under 17 years old, matching the child care expense deduction provisions. Expenses to be reimbursed by the employer or by government would not be eligible for the tax deduction.

As has been stated by colleagues in the House in response to the bill thus far, without doubt adoptive parents would face a huge financial burden. It does not matter whether the adoption process is public or private or whether it is in Canada. When it is international it involves travel and involves a great deal more in costs as well. Sometimes these costs are considerable. Sometimes they are prohibitive. Let us consider a few of these costs. Some have been referred to, but I will just reiterate again.

There are expenses for pre-adoption home study undertaken by a couple hoping to adopt. That first base is as far as some of them may get because of the rigours of the whole process. There might be agency fees involved in private adoptions. Even in public adoptions where provinces have traditionally covered expenses relating to adoption, we are now seeing adoptive parents faced with new fees and ever increasing costs.

There might be costs for counselling for the birth parents who must grieve the loss of the baby if the child to be adopted is an infant, or in the case of a mother who is giving up her baby.

For international adoptions my Bloc colleague noted considerable travel expenses, transportation, meals, lodging and other expenses related to the child's immigration into Canada.

Then there are the judicial expenses. We know that lawyers are not cheap. There is the adoption order, whether it is a Canadian one or a foreign one. On top of that, international adoption orders may require that the couple obtain a recognition order in Canada as well so that the foreign adoption order will have the same force and effect as a Canadian adoption order.

This means that some couples will have two judicial expenses, one in each country. Let us not forget the legal fees that will change hands if there are several lawyers involved in the whole process. I think hon. members get the idea that significant amounts of money can change hands in an adoption, especially in the case of private and international adoptions.

The province of Quebec estimates that the average cost of an international adoption is at least $20,000. I believe that it is unacceptable that these expenses are not tax deductible. What is unacceptable is that expenses associated with adoptions are paid with after tax dollars. The tax system in my opinion is quite unfair in this regard. It does not provide a tax deduction for adoption expenses, even though it provides tax relief for couples who become parents through means other than adoption, and I will get on to citing some of those.

In other words, the Income Tax Act is unfair in its treatment of new adoptive parents. I want to look at some of the inconsistencies and the unfairness in the Income Tax Act.

First, the Income Tax Act makes provision for parents of children who are born naturally. Such parents have the pre-natal and post-natal costs of having a child covered under medicare across our country. Adoptive parents, however, do not have either the direct assistance of public funds or even the direct assistance of a tax break, as we are talking about here today. While society pays for the cost of a parent's birthing of a child, an adoptive parent has to pay for the entire cost of adopting a child.

Second, as was said before but I think bears repeating just to show the unfairness or the inequity, the Income Tax Act makes provision for parents whose children are conceived and born as a result of fertility treatments which are tax deductible. According to the Library of Parliament, fertility treatment expenses are eligible for the existing 17% federal tax credit for medical expenses provided for in section 118.2 of the Income Tax Act.

Thus it could be argued that among those taxpayers who are unable to have children naturally, the current tax law favours those who seek fertility treatment over those who adopt. Yet it could be said that adoption is more socially beneficial since it aims to provide a family for children who already exist.

It is inherently unfair for expenses related to in vitro fertilization to be tax deductible while adoption expenses are not tax deductible as things stand. There is really no logical reason for it. There is no consistency at all in its approach.

Third, the Income Tax Act does allow parents to deduct child care expenses. My colleague referred to that. It does not distinguish between adoptive parents and parents who have given birth naturally, or between adoptive parents and couples who have used fertility treatments. They all are allowed that expense under the Income Tax Act.

All parents who use day care receive the deduction. There is another matter of parents who provide care at home and are not given the deduction, which is unfair, but that is another matter for another date.

Therefore it is inconsistent for the government to treat adoptive parents and natural parents the same when it comes to the costs involved in parenting by way of the deduction for child care expenses, yet differently when it comes to the costs involved in becoming parents. I think my colleague, in weighing the logic, is thinking he can understand that there is an inconsistency in that whole approach.

There is no justification for this inequity since new parents contribute equally to society regardless of how they become parents, whether by adoption, whether biologically or whether by in vitro fertilization.

If there were a good reason for this unfair treatment then perhaps we could justify it, but there is no reason. No reason exists. New parents contribute equally to society regardless of how they become parents. A child, its needs and its potential for contributing to society are the same, whether there has been an adoption, in vitro fertilization or a natural birth.

Therefore the logic would suggest that a tax deduction for adoption expenses makes as much sense as medicare spending in maternity wards and as much sense as the current tax deduction for infertility treatments.

Let us think of the benefits of adoptions to society. Children who would otherwise grow up without parents gain parents to love them, discipline them and teach them, parents committed to them for the long term. The likelihood of positive outcomes for such children would be much greater. It translates into better physical and mental health, better grades in school, and a greater contribution as adults in the workplace and in the community.

Parents who adopt love their children. They make deliberate choices and deliberate sacrifices. Adoption is a positive thing for society and it makes sense to encourage adoption by use of a tax deduction.

What loss is there to government tax revenues? Not very much at all. In fact public coffers would be offset by reduced government expenditures in several ways. It costs money for the state to provide care for unadopted children. Adoptions therefore save taxpayer money as the new parents assume financial responsibility for the children. There would be reduced mental health costs, criminal justice system costs and prison system costs.

There would also be increased sales tax revenues from the parents spending on adopted children. Once grown, those children would be healthy, contributing members of society who would pay taxes themselves.

This is an important bill. I would move at this point that it be made votable by unanimous consent of the House.

[Petitions, May 31st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to present the final petition.

The petitioners lament the violation of the rights of freedom of religion and conscience in our country when health care workers in their training institutions have had those rights stripped away when hospitals have forced nurses to assist in abortion procedures against deeply held religious and moral convictions. They ask that parliament enact legislation against such violations of conscience rights by administrators in medical facilities and educational institutions across the country.

[Petitions, May 31st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition I wish to present has some 225 signatures. The petitioners pray that parliament withdraw Bill C-23 and affirm the opposite sex definition of marriage in legislation and ensure that marriage is thereby recognized as a unique institution.

[Petitions, May 31st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition similar to that of my colleague.

The petitioners ask that parliament invoke section 33 of the charter of rights and freedoms, the notwithstanding clause, to override the B.C. court of appeal decision. They ask that the section of the criminal code making child pornography possession illegal in British Columbia and across the country be reinstated. They reinforce and reaffirm their objection to the B.C. court of appeal decision.

[Petitions, May 11th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I have a third petition. These petitioners ask for the removal of the head tax. They say that it is a discriminatory tax and should not be imposed. They want it to be withdrawn.

The petitioners think it is contradictory and does not protect the rights of immigrants coming to our country, particularly those who are destitute.

[Petitions, May 11th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is related to Bill C-23. These citizens of Canada lament its passage, but it is still not too late as it is now being studied by the Senate.

The petitioners want us to affirm the opposite sex definition of marriage in legislation and ensure that marriage is recognized as having been a unique institution of great good to society historically. They want that to be recognized by the Parliament of Canada to the good of our nation.

[Petitions, May 11th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I have about 750 signatures of individuals who call to the attention of parliament the rights of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. They ask for protection for health care workers, and those seeking training for careers in the health care sector, who have been stripped of those rights.

They call upon parliament to enact legislation against such violations of conscience rights by administrators in medical facilities and educational institutions.