Pat Martin

[Aboriginal Affairs, December 10th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, what we read in the National Post flies in the face of that. It sounds like déjà vu to aboriginal leaders. It is back to the future to the 1969 white paper. Everything has changed since 1969 except for the fact that the architect of that disastrous document is the Prime Minister of Canada today.

Instead of embarking on a destructive collision course with first nations, would it not be a better legacy to commit to a program of recognizing treaty rights, settling these outstanding land claims and embarking on a true economic development program by guaranteeing access to resources on first nations' lands to first nations peoples?

[Aboriginal Affairs, December 10th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, imagine the surprise of first nations leaders to learn from the National Post that the Liberal government is fundamentally changing its policy toward aboriginal people. It says it wants to stop spending so much money on nuisance issues like rights and redress, land claim negotiations or access to resources. It has been the government's intransigence on these very issues that has led to a thousand outstanding land claims and expensive court cases.

What does the government hope to achieve by avoiding its obligations in this regard and by sidestepping the bilateral nation to nation process in dealing with first nations communities?

[Transportation Services, December 10th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to enter into debate on final offer selection Motion No. 405 put forward by the member for Wetaskiwin. He and I have had this debate over the years.

In most settings or forums where industrial relations are debated the Alliance Party puts forward the idea of final offer selection as an alternative to work stoppage in just about any industrial sector. I made the point at the Standing Committee on Natural Resources and Government Operations where we amended part I and part II of the Canada Labour Code. I will make it again. Final offer selection is a flawed idea that is riddled with faults.

The hon. member's motion would make final offer selection a mandatory way of settling any kind of impasse in collective bargaining. This would take away the right of employees to withhold their services. The right to withhold services is an integral part of the collective bargaining process.

I am probably the only person in the House of Commons today who has personal and practical experience using final offer selection to settle an impasse in a collective bargaining setting. The province of Manitoba had final offer selection for a number of years as an option so that two parties could, if they chose, settle their collective bargaining round using this type of binding arbitration.

Having been the leader of the carpenters' union at the time the law was in effect in Manitoba, I had cause to use final offer selection in certain rounds of collective bargaining. The point is that it was the choice of the employees. Key and integral to any final offer selection legislation must be that it is the choice of employees whether or not to settle the round of collective bargaining through final offer selection.

I will explain how this was done in the province of Manitoba. Either party could make application to the minister to settle a round of bargaining through final offer selection or FOS. However the employees had to have a vote, supervised by the labour board, on whether or not they wished to use final offer selection.

In this way it became another tool in the toolbox of the negotiators as to whether it was to their advantage to use final offer selection. It did not take away the right of employees to withhold their services or the right of employers to walk out. It simply provided a third option.

We should be clear that final offer selection is available to all employees. We do not need special legislation to contemplate the use of final offer selection. In any round of collective bargaining the two parties can agree to resolve their impasse through binding arbitration. That is all final offer selection is. It is another form of binding arbitration. It has its place.

As I said, I have used final offer selection in some negotiations but only when the number of outstanding issues was reduced to a few simple and elemental issues such as money. Anyone familiar with labour relations will tell us that money is one aspect of a round of collective bargaining but sometimes a minor issue compared to things such as rules of work, benefits being negotiated, et cetera.

I will tell the House why it is risky to use final offer selection for anything other than dollars and cents. If all the parties are arguing about is a 50 cent pay increase the employer will come to final offer selection with, say, 25 cents and the employee will come with, say, 75 cents and the arbitrator will choose one or the other. That forces both parties to temper their demands with reason because they know if they put forward too outlandish a position the arbitrator will choose the other party. In that sense it forces a coming together of the two parties.

Let us say, though, that the outstanding issues were things like workplace safety, a day care centre for a factory or joint trusteeship on the pension plan.

Those are issues that are hard to quantify. It is hard to put a dollar value on those issues. Employees are at a disadvantage particularly if they go to the arbitrator with a complex series of work rules and the employer goes to the arbitrator with a simple wage increase. The arbitrator in all likelihood would take the position that could be quantified, which is the wage increase. Employees have little hope of ever getting the work rules changed.

Employees have to strike almost always for things like pension plans and on the job issues such as workplace safety and day care. Those kinds of things usually take the heavy hand or the blunt instrument of at least threatening to withhold services. Employees would be disadvantaged by the FOS process if all rounds of bargaining were to be settled by mandatory FOS.

In our own experience we found that employees would rarely vote to use FOS because they were aware of the shortcomings. The law was on the books in Manitoba for a number of years. During that time period about nine rounds of bargaining were settled by the final offer selection process where the arbitrator ruled. Five rulings were in favour of the employees and four in favour of management.

Even if the two parties opted to use final offer selection, the bargaining and talking would carry on. Nine times out of ten, at least, the two parties found some kind of resolve prior to the arbitrator making a ruling.

The motion finds its origins in a Canadian Alliance bias against employees having the right to stop work. It would take away their right to withhold services. That is why it keeps being raised over and over again by Canadian Alliance members. They see a perfect world where employees do not have the right to withhold services. In their minds there would be no more strikes and inconvenience of lost time and productivity.

What they fail to understand is that the threat of withholding services is the only tool employees have to add pressure to the collective bargaining process. It demonstrates a naïveté on their part and a clear bias against what most employees rely on to elevate their standard of wages and working conditions in the workplace.

I would speak against the introduction of any final offer selection measures unless they were at the option and choice of employees. Nothing should stand in the way of the two parties trying to resolve their impasse through FOS as it is. The labour code should not be amended in this way.

[Competition Act, December 7th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I too will join in the debate at the report stage of Bill C-23 and on Motion No. 1 which seeks to amend the bill.

We believe the issue brought forward by the member for Laval Centre would benefit the bill and strengthen the intention of the amendments put forward at the committee stage.

I would like to remind all members that there was a great deal of co-operation at the committee stage. We agreed with the general thrust of the motions brought forward at that time. I see nothing in this motion that does anything but augment the direction in which we wanted to go at committee. I admire the hon. member for taking the trouble to introduce it at this stage.

I noticed that sections 75 and 77, which the hon. member seeks to amend, would have the effect of strengthening the private access to the Competition Tribunal for the offences that she mentioned: tied selling, market restrictions and exclusive dealing, and a number of the issues that came forward as being offensive to most Canadians and most Canadians I think wanted the industry committee to deal with these issues in a very strong way.

We look forward to the motion getting the same sort or co-operative support that many of the other amendments received at the committee stage. We hope to approve the amendment as it has been brought forward. I extend my compliments to the member for Laval Centre.

[The Media, December 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, there is a growing outrage over the worrisome new editorial policy in the Southam chain of newspapers. Now a national editorial will be printed in every paper and the local editorial board will be forbidden to contradict it.

This loss of editorial independence is a direct consequence of the concentration of ownership in the media and our worst fears are being realized because of the laissez-faire attitude of the government toward the issue.

What concrete steps does the government intend to take to prevent even further corporate centralization of the media and an even further erosion of the editorial independence in the country?

[Aboriginal Affairs, December 6th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I am glad to have a few minutes to wrap up and summarize some of what we have heard.

I appreciate the remarks by the member for Windsor--St. Clair. He added another element to the debate as to why it is appropriate that the federal government and not the provincial government should hold the inquiry into the incidents at Ipperwash.

There are substantive issues that connect the federal government to the events at Ipperwash. I have outlined some of them. Surely, when the federal government sent military equipment to the paramilitary operation that went on there, it was involved. Surely, as was pointed out by another member, when DND used the War Measures Act to occupy the area and create the military base in 1942 and then failed to give it back, which was really the origin of the whole problem, the federal government was implicated. The ongoing fiduciary responsibility to aboriginal peoples and land claims connects the federal government. If there is one more reason needed, CSIS had a plant among the 35 protesters for the whole period of time and was reporting directly to the federal government their opinion that this was to be a peaceful protest and the people were unarmed.

All of those reasons show that the federal government was linked in substantive ways. The only question left is does the federal government have jurisdiction in the matter?

As I pointed out, the federal government can call a public inquiry into any matter that relates to peace, order and good government. It not only has the ability, we believe it has an obligation.

Again, Professor Bruce Ryder cites that federal jurisdiction in relation to Indian lands reserved for Indians under section 91 of the Constitution Act provides a solid constitutional basis for a federal inquiry, and there could be no doubt of the involvement.

What that inquiry would look like and how it would be struck would be up to the federal government. However, there are guidelines under the Federal Inquiries Act, which also gives primacy over provincial statutes that may be inconsistent. It would have the ability to call witnesses. I do not believe it would have the ability to call elected officials who are currently holding office, but it would be able to call witnesses from the OPP to find out what happened on that fateful day when, as we suspect and as a growing body of evidence would indicate, the premier and at least one cabinet minister met with them on September 6 and we believe interfered incorrectly or improperly with the police action at Ipperwash.

Those witnesses could be brought forward and made to testify with the same power of law that any court enjoys and with the same rules of evidence, et cetera.

On behalf of the George family, I am very glad to have been able to bring this motion to the House of Commons. I know that Sam George, Dudley's brother, who filed the civil suit has reiterated his willingness as recently as last week to drop the civil suit if a federal inquiry were called. I can certainly empathize and sympathize with what the family has been going through in trying to get to the bottom of this very tragic event.

Members of the aboriginal community as a whole are very eager to have this issue given the attention it deserves because they take it as an affront. As has been pointed out to me, when kids were pepper sprayed at UBC there was a full blown national inquiry, but when a person was shot and killed at a peaceful protest, we have had six years of silence from the federal government. It could be viewed and is being viewed by some in the aboriginal community as a race based decision in terms of prioritizing these events.

I am disappointed it is not a votable motion. I will go through the futile gesture to ask for the unanimous consent of the House to deem this motion to be votable.

[Aboriginal Affairs, December 6th, 2001]

moved:

That this House urge the government to call a full public inquiry into the death of Dudley George, fatally shot on September 6, 1995, at Ipperwash Park, during a land claims dispute related to the land, treaty and cultural rights of the Stoney Point aboriginal people.

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to have this one hour debate on the untimely death of Dudley George during the tragic events at Ipperwash.

When an unarmed man is shot and killed during a peaceful protest it should be cause for great alarm and great concern. It should be, I argue with the motion, the subject of a full federal inquiry to get to the bottom of what happened.

The facts surrounding Dudley George's death are not in dispute whatsoever. The person who pulled the trigger has been charged, tried and convicted of this wrongful death. Therefore, we do not need any kind of an investigation about the actual killing of Dudley George.

However, what the country does need to know is whether there was political interference in the actions the police took at Ipperwash. In other words, did the premier of the province of Ontario improperly interfere and influence the way the police officers handled themselves in the events leading up to the death of Dudley George?

We have presented this issue to the federal government because we believe it is appropriate and that it is within the federal government's jurisdiction to undertake the inquiry, although it would have been more appropriate if the province of Ontario had undertaken a full provincial inquiry. As more evidence has come forward we know the premier and at least one, and possibly as many as three, of his senior cabinet ministers are in a conflict of interest situation and therefore have steadfastly refused to allow the truth to come out surrounding Dudley George's death.

We do not need a full two year, multimillion dollar inquiry. I know that is the fear some people have. When they think of federal inquiries they think of the Somalia affair or the APEC affair. Frankly, given that it is a very specific thing we need to know, we do not contemplate the need for a two year investigation. It could be very short and focused. I have heard that with any degree of co-operation it could be over in a six week period. Then we would know if there were police involvement in an improper way.

The real point here is that the very definition of a police state is when politicians can interfere with police officers to have them do their bidding for some purpose other than the enforcement of the law.

I will not dwell on the very sad details of Dudley George's death. The point I would like to make is that the federal government had knowledge that the native protesters at Ipperwash were unarmed and had no plans of violent action because it had a CSIS plant among the aboriginal people the whole time. This was readily admitted.

The CSIS report to the federal government during the days leading up to the incident stated that there were between 27 and 35 individuals, many of whom were women, children and elders; that they were unarmed and had no plans for any kind of violence; and that the park they occupied was closed for the season. No tourists were around and no one could be inconvenienced if these aboriginal people occupied the park for a day, a week, a month or even until the next spring when the park opened again.

It seems that no one had any urgency to clear these people out of the park other than the premier of Ontario. He did not want to be seen to be soft on aboriginal occupancy type issues. He remembered that only a year earlier the premier of Quebec had lost an election partly because he was viewed as being soft on the Oka crisis by letting it get out of control. We believe the thought process of the premier of Ontario was similar. He had just been elected to his first term of office and was not going to be namby-pamby about one of these nuisance aboriginal occupancy issues.

Even though the information from CSIS, in the days leading up to September 6, 1995, said nothing about any kind of imminent violence, on September 6, we now know, Premier Harris and one of his cabinet ministers met with the OPP. That evening some 200 OPP officers, armed with rapid fire machine guns and armoured personnel carriers they had borrowed from DND, went in with a great sense of urgency to get these people out of the park that night. That was when the situation hit a crisis fever pitch and escalated into an armed conflict.

No one has ever been able to indicate that the aboriginal people involved were armed at all, although hundreds of shots were fired by the police. Dudley George was killed, another fellow was shot, a dog was shot to death and an aboriginal person was literally beaten to death and then resuscitated on the way to the hospital. The level of violence was extreme.

I made the point earlier in the House of Commons that when some middle class college kids were pepper sprayed at UBC during the APEC demonstration, as vile as that action was, it caused a full public inquiry that went on for years. When an unarmed aboriginal man is shot and killed at a peaceful protest, no full public inquiry is held. I should also add that Dudley George was the only aboriginal man to be killed in the 20th century on a land claims disagreement issue. That in itself should be worrisome to the point where we should be as a nation very interested in getting to the bottom of this matter.

It is not just the voice of the NDP caucus. While this is actually a private member's motion, it is not just my lone voice as a member of parliament calling for a federal inquiry. I am in very good company. I would like to indicate some of the international attention that this issue has generated.

Other groups that are calling for a full inquiry include: the United Nations human rights committee; Amnesty International; the Ontario ombudsman; the Chiefs of Ontario; the Assembly of First Nations; the Canadian Labour Congress; and both provincial opposition parties, the Liberal Party and the NDP at Queen's Park.

Interestingly enough, the former minister of Indian affairs, Mr. Ron Irwin, went on the record a number of times calling for a full public inquiry into the death of Dudley George because, frankly, he was left out of the loop. He had information that the occupancy of this provincial park actually had merit. DIAND had letters on file from the 1930s when the park was formed in which the aboriginal people were complaining that the proposed park was their historical burial ground. DIAND had the historical record on file that at least proved there was some justification for the actions the aboriginal people were taking. I think the reason Mr. Irwin was so offended was that he could have brought some light to the issue if he had been brought into the loop. Instead, it became a matter where we have a letter from the current Deputy Prime Minister, who was then the acting solicitor general, volunteering the loan of an armoured personnel carrier to the OPP siege of the Ipperwash gates.

Therefore there was involvement from the federal Liberal government but not enough involvement from the minister of DIAND, so he was one of those actively calling for a public inquiry.

In its report on the status of human rights conditions in Canada, the United Nations made reference to Ipperwash eight times. In its concluding observations about Canada, it stated:

The Committee is deeply concerned that the State party so far has failed to hold a thorough public inquiry into the death of an aboriginal activist who was shot dead by provincial police during a peaceful demonstration regarding land claims in September 1995, in Ipperwash. The Committee strongly urges the State party to establish a public inquiry into all aspects of this matter, including the role and responsibility of public officials.

Amnesty International went further when it called the killing of Dudley George a possible extrajudicial execution. This is along the lines of a Stephen Biko issue in South Africa.

We have the United Nations human rights committee calling for a federal inquiry. We have a professor, Bruce Ryder, a constitutional law expert, calling for a federal inquiry and reminding us that the federal government has the right to call this type of inquiry under the peace, order and good government clause on any issue, but further, that the federal government is justified and jurisdictionally correct to call a federal inquiry because of the fiduciary responsibility by DIAND for aboriginal peoples and land claims, which was the origin of this whole dispute, and the involvement of DND, as Ipperwash was the neighbouring property to a military base which was the first activism taken by the Stoney Point people.

The third thing, I suppose, would be the issue that DND loaned an armoured personnel carrier to the efforts at Ipperwash to lend further force to the approximately 200 police that were already there to oust the 27 to 35 protesters. If there were more justification needed, the fact that there was a federal government CSIS plant among the aboriginal people the whole time making believe he was a member of the American Indian movement and reporting back to the federal government, surely the federal government cannot deny that it was involved.

We are not looking for blame here. We are looking to find out if in fact the premier of Ontario acted in an improper way and if he did interfere with the police action.

I suppose we are hoping, as a result of a inquiry, if any stated goal were necessary in order to justify opening up such a thing, that we could develop some accepted protocol for dealing with this type of thing in the future, because a lot of aboriginal people and a lot of groups around the country have had to resort to occupying ministers' offices, occupying pieces of property that are under land claims and blocking roads. Incidents like this have been happening across the country and we need to know that these will not resort to lethal force on a regular basis. We need to have some series of tests or justifications before sending in tactical riot squads that are armed with machine guns capable of firing 800 rounds per minute and killing people a mile away. The action taken at Ipperwash was a serious reaction to what was, in this case, a peaceful protest, which many protests are.

We would hope that the recommendations from an inquiry commission would give some direction to the federal government as to how it might conduct itself in the future in cases of occupancy.

I hope I have explained clearly enough that it is not our purpose to open up every aspect of the case. As I said, the actual pulling of the trigger is a stated fact and has been proven in a court of law. Sergeant Deans, who actually pulled the trigger and killed Dudley George, has been charged, tried and convicted. We are not interested in revisiting that. We are interested in the days leading up to the terrible tragedy of the death of Dudley George. Was the premier of Ontario improperly influencing the Ontario Provincial Police in the action it took? I look forward to hearing comments from other parties.

[Aboriginal Affairs, December 6th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the longer the federal government remains silent on the tragic death of Dudley George the more it shields and protects Mike Harris.

The public has a right to know if the premier of Ontario improperly influenced the OPP. It is a very serious matter and Harris stonewalls at every attempt to get to the truth. It is up to the federal government now if we are ever going to learn the truth about Ipperwash.

Will the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development use his authority to call for a full public inquiry into the tragic events at Ipperwash that led to the death of Dudley George?

[Supply, December 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member did not spend much time on article (d) of the opposition day motion which deals with EI. He is from the same province I am from. The cutbacks to EI have had a dramatic impact on our province, maybe more of an impact in the inner city riding that I represent.

Is the member aware that in my riding alone the cutbacks to EI cost $20.8 million per year? Under the current rules, 1,400 fewer people are eligible than would be under the old rules. I would ask him to try and keep in mind that if a new business with a payroll of $20 million a year wanted to come to a riding, we would be very pleased and would pave the streets with gold to invite the company in.

Rather than bringing down the premiums as is contemplated in article (d), would the member not see the logic in increasing the eligibility so more people would be eligible for the benefits?

[Supply, December 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the secretary of state did not mention anything about EI even though it forms a part of today's opposition day motion. The opposition day motion calls for a reduction in premiums. I think the secretary of state knows that we would advocate an increase on the benefit side so that more people would be eligible.

I would like him to comment on the layoffs in the hospitality industry. In the province of Ontario, the prediction is that over 80% of all the employees in the hospitality industry in downtown Toronto will be laid off this winter and less than 15% of them will qualify for EI benefits.

Would the hon. secretary of state admit that the system is not working as it should for unemployed Canadians?