Peter Milliken

[Supply, May 28th, 1996]

The hon. member for Kootenay East can protest all he wants. He can say what an awful thing it is but when it comes right down to it, Stan Waters was appointed the same way the others were.

Listen to the protests. There is no provision in the Constitution Act for the election of a senator. The only way one gets to the Senate-I urge my hon. friends to read the Constitution Act-is by a nomination of the governor general on recommendation from the Prime Minister. There is no other route. One can win a popularity contest for Mr. Beauty Queen and that person will not get into the Senate unless the governor general summons them to the Senate on the recommendation of the Prime Minister.

Stan Waters managed that feat. He got into the Senate but he got named by the Prime Minister. If he had not been, he would not have been there. I do not care how many election campaigns he ran in Alberta or anywhere else. He could not get there without that little slip of paper signed by His Excellency the Governor General of Canada.

He got it and he loved it. He sat in the Senate and while he was there we had the hon. member for Beaver River here in the House. She did not rant and rave about the evils of the Senate and its expenditures then.

[Supply, May 28th, 1996]

There we are. We are hearing it, what we have been listening to throughout this debate from the opposition today, the politics of envy. Here we have two opposition parties screaming and ranting about the Senate. Why? They do not have one of their own in the Senate. We did not used to hear these criticisms of the Senate when Stan Waters was there.

Here was the hon. member for Beaver River shedding crocodile tears earlier because Stan Waters won a popularity contest and was appointed to the Senate by Brian Mulroney. He was appointed just like every other senator was. He was as big a hack as Lowell Murray and Lynch-Staunton and all those Tory hacks in the Senate.

[Supply, May 28th, 1996]

If the hon. member for Kootenay East could control himself for a few minutes he will have a chance to ask questions a little later. He says it is a fact. Yes, it is a fact. It is also a fact that this kind of request has never gone to a Senate committee chair before from this House. It is also a fact that it is quite improper for one House to demand the attendance of members of the other House in their capacity as representatives of the House.

I suggest to the hon. member that if a request came from the Senate for members of this House to go down to defend their expenditures before the Senate, the request would be treated with some disdain.

The hon. member for Kootenay East wags his head. Perhaps he would go to the Senate to explain his expenditures, but I do not regard it as my responsibility to go there to explain anything to the Senate about my expenditures.

The hon. member says he is elected and that, of course, makes a difference. It may, but the Senate has certain powers and rights under the Constitution. Senators may not be elected but they are appointed under the Constitution and their powers are derived from the same act, the Constitution Act, from which our powers are derived.

While the hon. member may have a point that there is a difference in the way we are appointed, if I received a request from the Senate to come hither to answer questions, I would say no, I will not, thank you very much. The Senate has exercised that right.

What the hon. member for Comox-Alberni is trying to do by the motion is make it appear that somehow the Senate is being undemocratic because these non-elected people are saying they will not appear before a group of elected people to explain the way they are accounting for their money.

There are procedures for doing this. There are procedures for bringing the Senate to account in respect of its management of the funds it has. Members can ask questions with respect to the Senate estimates when they are here in the House. They can move a motion, as they have today. They can ask a minister of the crown to discuss the estimates. They can ask the President of the Treasury Board questions about the Senate estimates. They can also arrange for members of the Senate to ask questions in the Senate.

The hon. member opposite seems to suggest the Senate is one big happy club, but he knows, as I do, the Senate is made up of partisans from at least two parties.

[Supply, May 28th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to participate in the debate this afternoon.

I am somewhat shocked by the remarks made by the hon. members of the Bloc Quebecois and the Reform Party who just spoke. In their speeches, they made remarks to the effect that several members of the other place are not working, which are insulting to the members of Senate. It is not true. Many senators work hours on end at the Senate and the hon. members of both opposition parties know it full well.

They are perfectly aware of the fact that many senators sit on Senate committees, often splitting their time between these committees and the Senate itself for weeks on end, and they work very hard for the residents of their province, whom they represent in the other place.

For hon. members opposite to dump on the Senate in this way may be popular and may be fun, but I suggest that in respect of at least some of the hon. senators, quite a good number of them, it is unfair. Many of them are extremely hard working and do an excellent service for Canada and for the Parliament of Canada.

I know it is a popular sport to criticize the Senate. I will have some remarks of my own in respect of the Senate. I have made them in the past. That is fair game. However, there are many hard working Canadians in the Senate and for hon. members opposite to make those remarks is improper, in my view, and contrary to our rules and practices.

The motion before the House is questionable. It is not surprising when one considers the source. The hon. member for Comox-Alberni put forward the motion which says the Senate failed to respond to a message from the House requesting that a representative of the Senate committee appear before the Standing Committee on Government Operations to account for $40 million of taxpayer money. Talk about crocodile tears.

[Supply, May 28th, 1996]

I am not insulting, I am just stating a fact. I am rewriting history in a way the hon. member for Beaver River just did but I am trying to put a fair slant on the facts.

I wonder if the hon. member for Beaver River could tell us what day it was when the former Prime Minister had this look of shame come over him which, as she says, possessed him to appoint this particular fellow to the Senate. I do not recall it and I do not think any of my colleagues who were here in the House at the time every recall any look of shame on Prime Minister Brian Mulroney ever, at any time, let alone the day he appointed some Reformer to the Senate of Canada.

I wonder if she can tell us when that was because I would like to hear about it. I also wonder if she remembers the look of shame that came over him when he stuffed the Senate with eight extra Tories to get the GST bill through. I think she was here then too.

[Supply, May 28th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, in her remarks the hon. member for Beaver River rewrote a little bit of history. I recall her saying in the course of her speech that she remembers the former Prime Minister, Mr. Mulroney, being shamed into appointing a Reformer to the Senate.

I know she likes to claim that this particular senator was elected because he happened to win a popularity contest in Alberta that was organized under an Alberta statute which had no validity whatsoever in terms of the election of a senator. However, the Prime Minister of the day, because he had a surfeit of Tory senators in the Senate, was quite prepared to stuff it with a Reformer. He chose a Reformer who had won this popularity contest in Alberta because, according to the member for Beaver River, he was shamed into doing so.

Mr. Speaker, you were in that Parliament. I was in that Parliament. The hon. member for Nunatsiaq was in that Parliament. I do not recall any look of shame on the Prime Minister's face when he appointed this particular Reform hack to the Senate.

The hon. member for Beaver River loves to rewrite history. I know she thinks this man was the people's choice because he won a popularity contest in Alberta. She says he received more votes than anybody else. He may have but there were no qualifications for running in this election. It was a fraud run by the Government of Alberta for the purpose of trying to change the Constitution which it did not do.

[Employment Insurance Act, May 14th, 1996]

When did he say that?

[Canadian Human Rights Act, May 7th, 1996]

I do not agree.

It is important for hon. members to realize the reason they are seeking to delay this is so they can spread false stories about what the legislation will do in order to generate opposition to the bill. This bill is clear cut and straightforward and it ought to be approved by the House without delay.

Who are the groups the hon. member for Calgary Southwest refers to in his statement? I do not know. He says these groups are mentioned in the human rights act. They are not mentioned. I have indicated the words that are used. The words that are used include all Canadians. No group is singled out for special protection in the sections of the act we are dealing with in this amendment today.

I have received a lot of letters on this issue, not so much from my own constituents but groups in British Columbia and Alberta in particular have written to me quoting chapter and verse from the book of Leviticus and various writings of the apostle Paul believe in his letter to the Romans I believe and a couple of others. I am concerned that these people would quote this kind of biblical

reference to me and suggest that because of those particular verses in the Bible I ought to vote against this bill.

I have a message for them and for hon. members opposite which I ask them to consider. I know they regard the importance of biblical teaching very highly. I will read from the gospel of St. Matthew:

Do not judge and you will not be judged. For as you judge others, so you will yourselves be judged, and whatever measure you deal out to others will be dealt to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye, with never a thought for the plank in your own. How can you say to your brother: "Let me take the speck out of your eye," when all the time there is a plank in your own? You hypocrite! First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's.

Another is: "Always treat others as you would like them to treat you: that is the law and the prophets".

I can only urge those words on all hon. members in this House as we approach a vote on this very important bill. In my view those words from the Sermon on the Mount summarize what the government is attempting to do by this bill to bring fairness and justice to our society.

[Canadian Human Rights Act, May 7th, 1996]

There the member goes again, special status. Because it says sex he concludes it means special status because women receive rights they would not otherwise have under this act. Men receive the same rights, but the hon. member cannot accept that the rights have to be the same. In his view it is special status. His leader is doing his best to cover up the difficulties within that party by arguing that somehow we can just make a declaration which says everyone is equal.

Let us go to the ramifications of that. What are the prohibited grounds of discrimination under this new Reform law? There will not be any prohibited grounds of discrimination. Everyone is declared to be equal and therefore everyone who is discriminated against in any way will have a claim.

One of the members of the Reform Party is a retired professor. I wonder what he would say if a student applied to Simon Fraser University where he taught and was told that his or her marks were insufficient to get in and then the student laid a claim of discrimination saying: "I am a Canadian citizen and the new Reform human rights code says discrimination is not allowed in Canada. My marks are lower than John Doe's. John Doe got in and I did not. I want in". What would the hon. member say to that?

I would like to hear from the hon. member for Calgary Southwest on that point. I bet he does not have the faintest idea of what he would say because he could not possibly come up with a law that will do what he says he is going to do and make it stick. This whole notion is a chimera.

There is no sense of how you divide people into groups, how you discriminate against people if you do not have the bases of discrimination spelled out in the human rights act. This act spells out the bases of discrimination. Almost all Canadians agree that the bases set out in this act are fair and reasonable.

The government by this amendment is providing justice for a group of Canadians who have complained loud and long that they have been unfairly treated. They have already been included in the human rights codes of seven of the provinces. They have been determined to be part of this code by the courts in their exercise of judicial interpretation of this statute.

This law is doing virtually nothing new. What it is doing is bringing Parliament up to date with what has been going on in the rest of society. It is something that should have been done a long time ago and obviously has gone right over the heads of hon. members opposite.

The hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster and other members have suggested that this bill is being rushed through with undue haste.

[Canadian Human Rights Act, May 7th, 1996]

The hon. member says I do not understand it. I am about to explain it to him because it is clear this is an excuse to cover the bigotry that has been displayed by his colleagues in the House. It is a sick excuse.

What we have to look at in this case is that their notion of equality is to repeal the Canadian Human Rights Act and make a declaration that everyone is equal. I point out, as I have on numerous occasions in the House, the human rights code does not grant special rights to special groups. What the human rights code declares and what this bill will declare is that there may not be discrimination on certain bases.

The bases include things like sex, age and colour. Those words are in there and they are neutral. They are neutral in the human rights code. In other words, they give rights to both men and women when sex is talked about. When sexual orientation is mentioned it gives rights to bisexuals, to lesbians, to gays and to heterosexuals. These rights are across the board. They apply to everyone. The section on colour does not give rights only to blacks; it gives rights to all Canadians regardless of their skin colour.

Hon. members opposite forget that. They think that because it says sex and colour and sexual orientation it means women, blacks, gays and lesbians. That is what they think it means. Why do they think so? The Reform Party is made up of older white men. They do not realize discrimination exists because it has not been a particular problem for men who are elderly, who are white and who already have jobs and are doing very well in society.

That is primarily what the Reform Party is made up of. If we go to any Reform meeting the preponderance of men is overwhelming. They are almost all white. They are almost all Anglo-Saxon. They are not part of the other minority groups which form the country, and of the majority group of women who have been under represented in many of the institutions and professions in the country for generations.

What we have here is an attempt by the Reform Party to cover up that its members do not agree with the principles of the human rights act in its effort to grant equal rights to all Canadians.