Rick Casson

[Motions For Papers, May 17th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the government's efforts in researching that project for us. Certainly, I will withdraw that motion.

[Petitions, May 9th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition has to do with the definition of marriage.

These petitioners pray that parliament withdraw Bill C-23, affirm the opposite sex definition of marriage in legislation and ensure that marriage is recognized as a unique institution.

[Petitions, May 9th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to present two petitions today from the good folks in southern Alberta.

The first petition deals with child pornography. The signatories are horrified by pornography which depicts children and are astounded by legal determinations that the possession of child pornography is not criminal.

They call upon parliament, which has the duty to enact and enforce the criminal code, to take all measures necessary to ensure that possession of child pornography remains a serious criminal offence.

[Criminal Code, May 2nd, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, it has been four months since Canadians first learned that the Liberal government bungled $1 billion of their tax dollars. That is a disturbing thought for the millions of hardworking Canadians who just filed their tax returns.

Since then there has not been a single resignation, there has not been a cabinet shuffle, and there has not even been an admission of guilt. Instead Canadians have been subjected to a steady stream of arrogant abuse from the government.

The Prime Minister tells us he is only doing a good job as an MP, despite numerous RCMP investigations into HRDC grants in his riding.

We have discovered that one Liberal member after another benefited from well timed government grants. In a glaring conflict of interest the HRDC minister approved three grants totalling over $700,000 in her own riding which went against the rules of the transitional jobs fund. Even more shocking was the news that she had approved an additional $840,000 in grants the day after her officials told her about the bungled funds.

Every week new details surface about more improprieties in how the HRDC grant money was doled out. Just this week we heard how the Deputy Prime Minister took advantage of Canadian taxpayers by directing $1.6 million into his riding and skirting the rules by spending only a paltry 20% of the funds on wages for employees.

The government fails to understand that the money it so callously threw around is not its money. It enrages Canadians when they realize that the government has yet to understand this concept, continuing to bungle billions of tax dollars on boondoggle spending while hardworking Canadians suffer because of deteriorating health care systems.

Instead of treating this health care emergency the Liberals patted themselves on the back, increasing the 2000 budget for federal grants and contributions by a further $1.5 billion.

The Canadian Alliance believes that Canadians would rather see money spent on improving the quality of health care than see it lining the pockets of the Prime Minister's friends. We believe that this funding is better spent upgrading the quality of health care. We are deeply concerned about the future of our health care system. No one wants to see people suffer when they fall ill. No one wants an American style health care system in Canada. We believe that health care should not be based on financial status and that all Canadians should have timely access to essential health care services.

When we form government we will provide greater freedom of choice when it comes to ensuring well-being and access to medical care and medical facilities. We believe that the needs of patients must come first in the delivery of health services. We will work together with the provinces so that they have the resources and flexibility to find more effective approaches to the financing, management and delivery of health care, thereby ensuring that patient choice and quality of care are maximized.

It is time for the government to go. It becomes clearer every day that the government is incapable of offering solutions to these problems. It has become detached from the concerns of Canadians and cares only about feeding its own inflated ego.

Canadians can be assured that the Canadian Alliance is ready and willing to tackle the ongoing problems of high taxes and substandard health care. We can no longer afford to become complaisant as our country falls to pieces under the Liberal government.

How much longer will long suffering, overtaxed Canadians have to put up with this Liberal arrogance instead of getting reasonable value for their tax dollars?

[Supply, May 2nd, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the member talked a bit about labelling products that are produced on Canadian farms so that Canadian consumers would know that. He feels there would be a willingness by the Canadian public to pay a little extra for that.

One reason our farm community is in trouble is low commodity prices, and those prices are being driven by subsidized products from around the world. It seems that every time the agriculture community wakes up in the morning there is a new challenge facing it. Fuel costs are up. The government announced that transportation rates are up for shipping grain off the prairies. The issue of species at risk legislation could affect agriculture producers, as well as the idea of controlling greenhouse gas emissions. These are all issues of concern to the agriculture community. To say that we would label food produced in Canada so that the consumer would pay a little more might come up against some opposition. There are a lot of consumers who cannot afford to pay any more for food. We would somehow have to do it in a way that would benefit all of society, the farmer at one end and the consumer at the other.

I want to be get back to the labelling. A lot of products are labelled “made in Canada” now. How in the member's mind would something like that be structured to ensure that the benefit of such a program would return to the producer?

[Supply, May 2nd, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I too thank the minister for being here this morning to take part in this debate, and certainly the member of the Bloc Quebecois for bringing forward this motion.

Genetically modified organisms and what effect they have on people have been a topic of debate across the country and around the world. We need to have more research and we need to know more about what is going on.

There are many questions I want to pose to the minister this morning about grain transportation, increased fuel costs and increased input costs to farmers, but I will stick to the issue at hand.

As the minister is aware, there have been suggestions that a joint subcommittee of the agriculture committee and health committee be struck to study this issue. If this does happen, I would like him, as the agriculture minister for Canada, to assure the agricultural community that it will be well represented as the witnesses come forward to bring testimony to that subcommittee.

[Taxpayers' Rights, April 11th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, on January 30, 1994, Deborah Starr-Stephan, a mother of 10 and beloved wife of Tony Stephan, took her life. In 1993 her husband, after exhausting all other options, was forced to declare bankruptcy. From that point forward his family was unceasingly harassed by overzealous Canada customs and revenue agents. With her family driven into extreme hardship, unable to cope with the immense stress she was under, Deborah Stephan committed suicide. This should never have happened.

In the fall of 1997 the official opposition proposed a taxpayers' bill of rights and an office for the taxpayers' protection. The government needs to adopt this proposal so Canadians such as the Stephan family are protected from the summary treatment and abusive actions of CCRA agents.

Without enacting a strong taxpayers' bill of rights, the CCRA could be plagued with the same accountability problems that makes the IRS the most hated agency in the United States.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, April 11th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, while it is reassuring that the member opposite admits that everyone in this country is a taxpayer, or will be a taxpayer, and this is important, he is missing the point.

The point is that Canadian taxpayers are concerned. Certainly when a bill comes before the House they have the right to know what component it is, how much their taxes are going to rise to support that initiative, whether it is this initiative or whatever ministry it comes from. They have a right to know what the cost is going to be to them through the tax system.

I think he missed the point. Canadians have a right to know what this is going to cost.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, April 11th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to respond. The member just said that families were important, but. Families are very important. The problem is that there have just been too many buts, too many howevers and too many what ifs.

In order to clarify conjugality the member for Calgary Centre asked the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism at a round table at CPAC if she was saying that two people who did not have a physical relationship would qualify under Bill C-23; yes or no. The minister responded by saying that if they fulfilled the other requirements of the conjugal relationship, yes.

What does that mean? What are the other requirements? Where is the definition of conjugality?

The minister says it is not about that. We are getting so many mixed messages from the government that people are confused as to what it means, why the definition is put in there. The government should clarify it, take all the indecision away, put the minds of people who are questioning it at ease and put the definition of conjugality and the definition of marriage in the bill, wherever it needs to be.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, April 11th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, it is important that we be here today to debate this issue. I am here to speak for hundreds of my constituents who have phoned, faxed and e-mailed me. Hundreds more have filled out petitions which I have tabled in the House. They contained thousands of signatures asking the government to repeal the bill.

I want to approach the issue in two separate ways. The proposed bill has not received wide public debate. I think a bill of this importance should be subjected to that. A number of questions have been raised and I would like to get to some of the ones people have asked. Then I will get into the record of the Liberal government on family issues and its lack of support for families. I will also deal with some of the things it has put in place, and some it has not, which affect families and undermine their importance.

The first issue is the fiscal impact of the bill. The Liberals have not put out any dollar figures as to what it might cost the Canadian taxpayer. The finance minister when referring to the bill and some of the amendments said that the fiscal impact of these amendments would be minimal if anything at all and that it was not a cost issue.

It is a cost issue. We should know how many people will be affected. We should know the cost it will have on the treasury, on the taxpayers of the country. We do not know that. Bill C-23 purports to give benefits to people who have never received them, which will be an additional cost.

The whole idea of conjugality has been the subject of much debate and many questions. Bill C-23 defines in statute that a common law partner is any individual person who is cohabiting with another individual in a conjugal relationship for a minimum of one year. Who defines a conjugal relationship? The dictionary says that it is of or relating to the married state or to married persons in the relationships.

Does this mean that we are equating a conjugal relationship with a married relationship? Is that what we are saying? Is that what the bill means? Does it mean that these relationships will be forced to incur the same responsibilities as married couples? Is there that aspect of responsibility? Or, does it mean that these relationships have a societal contribution equal to a marriage relationship? How will the government prove the conjugality of a relationship? I suppose the real question has been how we will prove conjugality. As a previous Liberal prime minister said, I agree that the government does not have any place in the bedrooms of the nation. Why has the government refused to clearly define it in the legislation? Where is the definition? Will there be any methods to stop people from abusing the bill by saying they are in a relationship when they are not? How are we ever going to pull that out?

The bill should clearly define a conjugal relationship but it does not. It should outline the rights and responsibilities associated with that definition. Are there additional responsibilities if one falls under the bill? What change will that have for society as a whole? I want to mention that I will be sharing my time with the member for Dewdney—Alouette.

Let us look at the relationships that are not included, the other dependent relationships that exist in society. We all know of such relationships. It could be a daughter taking care of an elderly mom, or a couple of elderly brothers who live together to help each other out. Whatever the situation, these situations are not addressed because they are not based on conjugality.

There is a lack of public input. Time and time again people have said the issue is of such importance that they need a debate on the national stage. It has to go across the country to give everybody an opportunity to debate both sides of the issue in a very broad manner. We have not seen that happen. As a matter of fact closure has been brought in on a number of occasions in parliament and certainly on this bill.

We talk about marriage. Is the bill about marriage? Is it about the definition of marriage? People have said that the definition of marriage needs to be reaffirmed. We did that last June in the House. A motion was put forward and passed that the definition of marriage is and should remain the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others, and that parliament would take all necessary steps within the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Canada to preserve this definition of marriage in Canada. It is simple. The motion passed. The people have spoken.

However, the bill was brought forward without a definition of marriage. The justice minister made an attempt to include a definition but only in a way that legal advice has told us could be struck down. The definition of marriage needs to be implanted in all of the 68 statutes affected by the bill; it should be embedded right in the text.

One key issue people have brought to my attention is that the definition is important to them. They would like to see it embedded in the bill, as witnessed by the thousands and thousands of signatures tabled in the House asking for the definition of marriage to be included in the bill and, if not, for the bill to be pulled in its entirety. Yesterday we put forward some amendments to do so but they were voted down. We have tried to include that definition through amendments to the bill, but the House chose to vote them down.

I want to speak a bit about the family as a whole in society and some of the things we have seen which are detrimental to strong families. One is the tax system which is unfair to families where one parent chooses to stay at home. We think tax breaks and lower taxes are essential in helping to create stronger families.

Another is the child pornography issue. The notwithstanding clause was not implemented to protect our children from people who use, sell and collect child pornography. In the B.C. case we asked members of the government to use the notwithstanding clause to keep that law in effect while the challenge went through the courts. It chose not to do so. It has been going on for a year and a half to two years now and it is still in abeyance.

The whole child pornography issue has affected my work as well. I brought forward private member's Bill C-321 to amend the criminal code to allow equipment used in the production of child pornography to be seized by the courts and taken away from the people who use it. In many cases in the criminal code this is allowed to happen and in the case of the production of child pornography it is not. Hopefully one day that bill will be drawn and debated. In the meantime I am pursuing the justice minister to have that change made in the laws.

Another issue we deal with on a daily basis when we watch the erosion of families is that of sex offenders. We wanted to have a registry of sex offenders. If we add up all the issues, it comes back to what we think. We need a definition of marriage in the act. We need a definition of conjugality. We need support for families. We need to strengthen families.

We do not need attack after attack on the family unit to try to take away its authority. Members of all parties have gone to world conferences where there has been an attack on families. We as a country should recognize the importance of families and do things to strengthen them, not to undermine them.