House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2008, with 39% of the vote.
Canada Elections Act April 19th, 1996
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-269, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Parliament of Canada Act.
Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to ensure that when a vacancy occurs in the representation, a byelection shall be held within 80 days after the Speaker sends his warrant to the Chief Electoral Officer for the issue of a writ.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
Department Of Agriculture And Agri-Food Act April 19th, 1996
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-268, an act to amend the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food Act.
Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to delete the section of the agriculture act which permits the governor in council to assign powers or duties to the minister of agriculture. These powers are currently used to create new agricultural programs.
The reports of the Auditor General of Canada tabled in the House in 1989 and in 1992 recommended that this power be deleted from the act. This bill carries out that purpose and will require the minister to come to the House if he seeks to establish a new agricultural program rather than create it on his own without the proper authority.
That is the purpose of the amendment to the act. It is a short and very simple act and I hope it will commend itself to all hon. members.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms April 18th, 1996
The hon. member says I would be the first one. I think I would find more of the opinion that he would be higher on list than where he put me on the list. I am happy to humour him by volunteering to undergo psychiatric observation for the purpose of determining whether I should vote or not if his rule ever became law.
Fortunately the hon. member was unable to persuade the procedure and House affairs subcommittee to make this motion votable. I assume he went there and made his pitch and the subcommittee members decided that this motion ought not be votable. There were other motions that were more important and I can understand why. The hon. member is really nit-picking.
There is a wide variety of opinions on whether or not inmates ought to have the right to vote. I am inclined to the view that they ought to have that right. I say that directly.
Taking away the right to vote makes practically no difference. There are something like 12,000 inmates in federal penitentiaries in this country. In the referendum, very few of them exercised their right to vote. I do not have the precise figures, but I would guess it was something around a third of that group at the most who exercised their right to vote in the referendum.
The same figure would apply in an election campaign. Most of these people would not be interested in voting and would not cast a vote. If they had the right, under the rules that were in place in the referendum which, no doubt, would apply during an election, their voting rights would be exercised in the area from which they came and not in the area where they are incarcerated.
I have a very large prison population in my riding and, frankly, I would not mind if they were each voting in Kingston. That will not happen. They will be voting across the country. If the hon. member does not think he can persuade some of these people to vote for him, I can understand why he might oppose allowing them the right to vote.
Most hon. members would find that in terms of the voting patterns of inmates, they reflect that of the general population. They are not a group that is going to vote as a block on any issue. In my view, the casting of 12,000 votes out of the millions that are cast in an election campaign would have practically no substantial effect on the outcome.
I know it bothers hon. members opposite to think that people who have been sentenced to prison are somehow exercising this kind of democratic right. I am at a loss to understand how it hurts the rest of us.
Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms April 18th, 1996
Obviously the hon. member shares my view in this regard, otherwise he would not have brought forward this motion. He wants to change the charter. He obviously shares my view that this is unconstitutional. He wants to fix it so that it will be constitutional. He wants to take away the right of all persons in prison to vote as I read it.
It says a penitentiary and everyone knows what a penitentiary is. He says everyone in a psychiatric institution should not have a right to vote. A person who checked in because he or she needs treatment for depression would not be allowed to vote. That is the effect of the hon. member's motion. That is why the committee when it considered this matter was so reluctant to move in this area. It was because of the difficulty in choosing who should be voting and who should not. It was an extremely difficult question.
The committee did not think it was something that it ought to make a decision on and ought to fix in the law. It was better to give the franchise on a broad spectrum, allow everybody to vote, than try to determine who is reasonable and who is not. If we went on reasonability I am sure we would have psychiatrists in here checking out some of the members of the House to see if they were suitable for voting.
Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms April 18th, 1996
The hon. member opposite does not want to listen to this. I recognize that facts are always troublesome to members of the Reform Party.
It was a government bill but the basic outline of the bill had been designed by a committee. No matter what the hon. member for Fraser Valley East has said, there had been a previous court decision on this very issue. The law as it existed before Bill C-114 was passed provided that no person incarcerated in a prison had the right to vote. There had already been a decision, I believe by the Supreme Court of Canada, although my recollection is hazy. It has been some years since I have looked at this problem and I did not plan on speaking today, but hearing so many inaccuracies I thought I should try to correct the record.
There had been a court decision concerning the previous law. It was for that reason that when Bill C-114 came along, the committee considered the issue of the right of inmates to vote and came to a decision.
There was a referendum in Canada prior to the passage of Bill C-114. In that referendum because of the court decision throwing out the provision in the electoral law that prohibited all persons in prisons from voting, all federal inmates in Canada had the right to vote in that referendum. Some did exercise their franchise and voted in the referendum. If we listened to members of the Reform Party we would think the sky had fallen in but it did not. The referendum took place and those persons exercised certain voting rights.
Then the committee studied the whole issue and decided to recommend there be a limited right to vote for persons incarcerated in prisons. My recollection of the committee report is hazy. I will tell the member that I am accurate within two years. I am surprised he has not looked at this because it might have been relevant to his speech, but as I say, facts are troublesome to members of the Reform Party. The fact is the committee recommended that all inmates who were serving a sentence of seven years or more be permitted to vote. In my recollection that was a unanimous recommendation from the committee.
The Conservative government, notwithstanding the fact that it had a majority on the committee which agreed to that recommendation, decided that was too generous and so it opted for a two-year term. That is, every person serving a sentence of two years or more would be disqualified from voting. It meant that all federal inmates were automatically disqualified because by definition persons serving prison sentences in a federal institution must have been sentenced to two years or more.
I recall very well the day the bill was debated because I was the electoral reform critic for the Liberal Party. I moved amendments to this section because I said at the time, and it is on the record, that this section would be thrown out by the courts as being too restrictive.
Seven years was chosen based on the legal advice that the committee received at the time. We had to have something reasonable in terms of length in order to justify it under the charter of rights and freedoms. It was the committee's unanimous view that seven years was a reasonable time and could be defended before a court. It also constituted a reasonable restriction on the right to vote given in the charter which granted to every Canadian citizen the right to vote.
The members of the Reform Party want to take that right away from citizens that they consider unworthy of the right. Once you start inching away at who is unworthy you can start to whittle away other rights.
I know there will be some members in the House who might want to take away rights of members of the Bloc Quebecois to vote. I know there are some who would like to take away the right of members of the Reform Party to vote. I am not one of them. I am a firm believer in the principle that citizens should have the right to
vote. That principle is stated in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which I fully support.
I moved amendments that would have taken away any restriction. I moved a seven-year amendment. I believe I moved a five-year amendment in an effort to get a compromise that I thought could be supported before the courts and that would win the support of members of the House. The Conservative House leader at the time, the Hon. Harvie Andre, would hear none of it. He was insisting on the two-year rule and it was that or nothing. Because the bill had a lot of other amendments in it besides this one item, we agreed to pass the bill.
I remember the day we did it because some fancy agreements were made between the parties to get the bill through. I think it was a Friday afternoon before Easter or something like that. It was certainly a time before the House was to break for a period of at least a week.
I remember the day. This particular clause caused great difficulty because in my view it was unconstitutional and would be found to be so by a court. And it was. The surprising thing is that the government is bothering to appeal this. In my view it is a waste of money. This clause is contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms April 18th, 1996
Madam Speaker, I want to correct a few of the inaccurate suggestions made in the speeches by my colleagues opposite.
The Parliamentary Secretary to Solicitor General of Canada made an excellent speech, although he did not remember certain facts which occurred during the course of the last Parliament in relation to the bill he was referring to, Bill C-114. It was passed toward the end of the last Parliament in a successful effort to amend the Canada Elections Act.
Had he been a member of the electoral reform committee which was an all-party committee established in this House that basically drafted Bill C-114, he would have been aware-
Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms April 18th, 1996
They do not.
Agriculture April 17th, 1996
They have a wonderful minister of agriculture.
Criminal Code March 29th, 1996
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-256, an act to amend the Criminal Code (hate propaganda).
Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to amend the Criminal Code to include in the definition of identifiable groups those identified by sex, sexual orientation or mental or physical disability and include them for the purposes of prohibiting those who wish to promote hate propaganda against specified groups from doing so.
Those groups would now achieve the same protection others now have under the law if this bill were adopted by the House. This bill had also been introduced by me in the last Parliament. It is being reintroduced now but it was not in the last session.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
Beverage Containers Act March 29th, 1996
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-255, an act respecting the beverage containers.
Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to provide for a minimum deposit on all beverage containers made in whole or in part of plastic, metal or glass and that contain beverages for the purpose of sale.
The purpose of the bill is to ensure that these containers are not thrown by the roadsides and into the countryside of Canada, and to keep our environment cleaner. A deposit system will achieve that.
I am pleased to introduce this bill, which I had introduced not in the previous session but in the previous Parliament.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)