Rob Anders

[Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act, November 29th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his questions. I am also frustrated with how our committees work. I sat on committees with you, Madam Speaker, and remember how you were frustrated by your own government members with regard to the Elections Act. I thought it was a wise provision that you were putting in place which would allow for local fundraising without the authorization of the top down control, the Prime Minister in that respect.

That being the case, committees could work in this place. However like all things in the House of Commons they are very partisan beasts. I sometimes look to our neighbours to the south where their congressional committees have the power, and probably then some in comparison to ours, to call before them anybody in the land to give them wisdom and advice on adjudicating and making the laws of the land.

There have been times in the history of our neighbour to the south when particular impressive committee work was done. Even democrats like Robert Kennedy did good work in that regard. People laugh because they know I am probably more sympathetic to the republicans.

That being the case I believe committees could work. However they are not allowed to because of the interference by the parliamentary secretaries, the Prime Minister's Office and the people coming in from the whip's office to carefully count heads and shape things.

The hon. member wanted me to comment on the Hughes report. I do not know the actual cost. However I am sure that taxpayers, if they look into it, would know that millions of dollars were wasted by the government to put forward that report. Yet it has not followed through on its recommendations so it was a tax and spend scenario to fund something that was never used.

With regard to the RCMP or soldiers I know some of my colleagues talked with people with regard to Kananaskis or other things in their ridings. It is a shame when we do not listen to officers on the frontline. I talked to customs officials who told me they wanted more sniffer dogs and vehicle lifts so they could look underneath vehicles. They told me they needed more staff and other practical things. Yet when we asked the ministers across the way they totally denied it. I do not know how that works. They did not want to recognize there was a problem.

I believe in whistleblower protection. If somebody in the administration of the government finds a way to save money I would even give them a percentage of the money they saved as an incentive for them to find ways to save taxpayer dollars.

[Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act, November 29th, 2001]

I hear crying and guffawing coming across the way. I would suggest to those who are real students of democracy, free votes and parliamentary procedure to check the record to see which party of all the parties in this place has the better record in allowing free votes and allowing people to speak their minds and to speak for their constituencies as opposed to their party leaders. Our record will stand up very well.

My constituents were equally torn over this issue so I went with my conscience in terms of the concerns that I heard. Being 50:50 either way for my constituents put me in a position to allow me to do that.

I cherish the fact that the Canadian Alliance, and before it the Reform Party, laid out more concrete measures than any other party in the history of the country. The Alliance talked about allowing free votes and having a formal vote of non-confidence. In that way no government could whip its own members into voting the party line to avoid the government from falling.

There should be a formal vote of non-confidence. We put that down in black and white and ran on it in election campaigns. I wish that more people had seen fit to make that the election issue because, if that were the case, the Alliance would have been the government that truly believed in democratic and representative government.

I am proud of the record the Alliance has stood on. In that way government members would be able to vote against legislation that they did not think was good enough and which needed to be reassessed. Legislation only gets better by doing something like that. It may be a horrible process to watch and engage in for those of us who are the cogs in the wheel, but nonetheless it is a valuable exercise for the people we make laws for. For that reason having free votes and a formal vote of non-confidence so the government cannot whip people on things that should not be votes of confidence provides a good record for the Alliance. That is why I did what I did.

[Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act, November 29th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member sits with me on the national defence and veterans affairs committee. I would like to put a plug in for him and say that the government has probably downsized too many bases. I am aware that an issue near and dear to his heart is ensuring that his constituents on the good, fine base at Shearwater have the resources they need to continue their operations. I say save Shearwater.

Now that I have that out of the way I will address the member's question. The Canadian Alliance believes in free votes in this place more so than any other party in the House.

[Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act, November 29th, 2001]

That is right. There are all sorts of nasty things the government is willing to do in the name of anti-terrorism. However on the flip side there are at least half a dozen governments that I could count right off the tip of my fingers which have in one way or another abused diplomatic immunity over the last 20 years.

The government has chosen to open up the gates instead of going after the people who fund terrorist acts and provide travel documents and passports, visas, diplomatic immunity and diplomatic pouches for the transfer of materials. It is not going after those foreign missions, consulates, embassies, diplomats and attendees that come to Canada for various conventions and who are agents of foreign governments that have funded some of these acts.

The government has chosen to open Pandora's box and allow those people greater freedoms and privileges in Canada while restricting those of its own citizens, those people who are native to this land.

I cannot tell the House how frustrating it is to be an opposition member in parliament and watch the government fumble with the whole issue of national security. For years we called on the government to do things for national security.

We called on the government to increase the size of the Canadian armed forces and to secure better equipment for the forces as it was rusting out. We called on the government to look into the matter of people coming to Canada and claiming refugee status when they burn and destroy their own documents. We criticized the lack of detention and enforcement in that regard.

We called for greater police force provisions to have more police out there enforcing the law. We called on all these things ever since we first came to parliament. Even some of my colleagues who were here four years before my time called for these reforms. Yet when it came to the crunch and a terrorist crisis killed thousands of North Americans with evidence of planning and staging in Canada, the government failed us.

The government went ahead and opened the doors to those who would harm us and restricted the freedoms of those who were there to bolster us and help us. It does not make any sense.

[Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act, November 29th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I think the last question posed to the parliamentary secretary shed a lot of light on the particular problem which is basically this whole idea of diplomatic immunity. Over the last five years we have had 76 crimes committed in Canada in which diplomats have been charged. We have some pretty egregious examples. I have laid out one.

The parliamentary secretary likes to claim that her government has a policy of zero tolerance on crimes committed by diplomats in Canada. Yet we have all sorts of examples, 76 of them, ranging from impaired driving, where there was a six week interval between two different incidents for the same individual, to sexual assault and interference, invitation to sexual touching, offences in relation to prostitution and criminal harassment. To me there is one that take the cake in terms of the so-called zero tolerance policy of the government, which I would claim does not exist. I think diplomatic immunity is abused. There are 8,000 individuals in Canada right now who enjoy the privilege of diplomatic immunity and over the last five years up to 13,000 people have enjoyed this type of privilege.

Let us look at some of these examples. One of the most egregious ones I can find is that of somebody who was charged with attempted murder in Canada and applied for a waiver of diplomatic immunity. It makes sense, I guess, if somebody is guilty as charged and realizes there is wiggle room to get out. Maybe that person's government allows the person the privilege of applying for diplomatic immunity. However, how can this parliamentary secretary can get up in her place and claim there is zero tolerance when the government grants the immunity? It is one thing for the government of a criminal to ask it but quite another for this government, which loves to claim it has zero tolerance, to grant it.

One might ask, then, what happened? Indeed, the criminal appeared in court and the case was dismissed. What is even more egregious is this policy of zero tolerance. Not only did the government grant the person the waiver of diplomatic immunity, but this person is still in Canada after having been charged with attempted murder and the woman across the way has the gall to stand in the House today and claim with a straight face that she has a zero tolerance policy with regard to criminals and diplomatic immunity. Shame on her.

I will go on to some of the problems I see in the bill. We have a situation where we have just recently had two terrible and tragic terrorist bombings in the United States. It is not as though Canada is immune. When Ahmed Ressam was interviewed by reporters previous to his capture in Seattle he was on his way, from Canada, to bomb the Los Angeles airport, planning what he was doing out of New York, which the Mujahedeen cult, for example, uses as a staging ground. Ahmed Ressam claimed there were 60 individuals like him who were trained in the preparation, delivery, et cetera, of bombs just for his particular proclivities and cause, never mind all the other terrorists that may choose to use Montreal or Canada generally as a base from which to stage operations. This was just for Ahmed Ressam alone. He claimed there were 60 other individuals like him residing in the Montreal area who were in favour of his cause and the government has the gall to extend and expand diplomatic immunity privileges.

Since the member across the way sees fit to heckle today, I will retort in terms of what he is talking about. I will explain to him why extending diplomatic immunity is bad in cases just like that. He is burrowing his head in his books and so he should.

The reason the diplomatic immunity extension is particularly bad in those cases, if the member happened to be reading about or paying attention to any of these things, is that at least a half dozen if not a dozen countries have misused diplomatic immunity over the last decade or two. They have abused the privileges of safe houses. They have abused the privileges of travel documents, visas and passports. They have abused the privileges with regard to money transfer in the country.

Does the member across the way not happen to remember that his own finance minister had to be accountable for the abuse of money transferring privileges in the country? Now of course someone has left the Chamber. The heat was a little too hot in the kitchen, I think.

It is egregious to consider that the government will go ahead and open up this Pandora's box of diplomatic immunity after it has gone ahead and restricted freedoms on Canadian citizens. Instead of going after the culprits, the ones who dare to actually plan bomb attacks against citizens in North America, no, instead of going after the people who purport these things and the governments who actually fund these activities and train these terrorists in their vicinities, instead of going after the people who come to Canada with allegiances other than our own, the government is going after our own citizens. It makes no sense whatsoever.

The parliamentary secretary across the way, with her elitist out of touch attitude this morning, sits guffawing and wonders why Canadians are upset. She cracks down and votes proudly for those things that would restrict the freedoms of Canadians, but would go ahead and happily and gaily stand up this morning and talk about how she will extend the diplomatic privileges for foreigners in the country when I have given her perfectly good examples of people who have abused diplomatic privileges in the country. Does she not understand? It is egregious.

A number of events will be coming up in our country. In my backyard we are to have the G-8 summit. It will be held in Kananaskis. I hope it goes off without a hitch and I hope the government provides all the necessary resources it is supposed to provide, which it still has not coughed up for Quebec City in terms of the costs of some of the meetings held there. Even though that event will be taking place, what do we have happening? The government wants to extend more diplomatic privileges for people, whether it is for a summit, for example, with diplomats from China, a known human rights abuser, coming to our country, or for an APEC summit, and we all know the Prime Minister's fondness for pepper spray and whether he has it on his plate too and all the rest of the fine quotes that man mumbled with regard to the whole APEC inquiry and the cover up involved with that.

With these meetings coming up we will have a lot of diplomats visiting the country. Instead of trying to limit the amount of immunity given out for potential crimes coming up, and we certainly know there are a whole raft of those as I have a document detailing 76 of them just in the last five years, instead of curtailing that in light of the terrorist attacks, the government, in its top-down wisdom, in its elitist pronouncements, has decided to go ahead and extend diplomatic immunity in this circumstance rather than place restrictions on it.

I will give the House some of the gruesome details because I think it is very important that people know about them. The gruesome details include, for example, that in committee when this came up, and I am hoping the parliamentary secretary was there because I will be able to judge by her face today whether or not she was by her reaction to this, the opposition, not just the Canadian Alliance but indeed all the parties in the opposition, put forward an amendment that would have kept the current reporting procedure in place. The current reporting procedure is that there actually has to be a ministerial permit and every year there has to be an annual report to parliament in terms of accountability.

Under Bill C-35 the Liberals wanted to get rid of it so that it would not be subject to the part of the Immigration Act we are dealing with. Opposition members in all parties put forward an amendment to keep the standard reporting practice in place so that there would have to be a ministerial permit and an annual report. The Liberal members across the way, the governing majority that has had no plan since the terrorist attacks in the United States and that has been coasting on cruise control, voted down an amendment by the opposition parties to keep the ministerial permit requirement in place and to make sure there was an annual report to parliament.

I see a former reporter across the way. I am sure that somewhere deep down it disturbs him that he will be asked by his government to vote for a restriction to the freedom of information given to the press and to people across the country. I ask the member to keep that in mind in terms of his vote. He has approached me personally in the past regarding matters of public record. I wonder how he feels about this matter of public record.

Not only that, there was an amendment that dealt with the entrenchment of the minister's promise in law. I guess the Liberals across the way do not like promises, because they break them and they certainly do not like entrenching them in law, and once again the Liberal majority voted against the provision, against very wise and astute amendments put forward by all opposition parties, I might add for the parliamentary secretary.

The third egregious point in terms of the nitty-gritty details of the bill is that it totally ignores the recommendation of the Hughes report with regard to the independence of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. We well know that Jean Carle, the Prime Minister and some others were involved in trying to tamper, tinker and interfere with the APEC summit. I am not sure why, because frankly some of the henchmen and violators of human rights who came into the country fully deserved some of the protest coming their way. However, our Prime Minister tinkered with that particular process for the APEC meeting and of course an inquiry resulted. Rather than listening to the Hughes report which was done as a result of the whole APEC situation, they have ignored it.

With what I have seen from the government over my last five years as a member of parliament, I cannot be that surprised. What often happens is that if there is a wrongdoing the government will create an inquiry of some sort, or a royal commission which is even nicer because it has a nice title. It will then shut down the inquiry the minute it gets a little too close to implicating the government with some of the problems and fire a couple of bureaucrats or someone else who had to carry out its orders, perhaps ending the careers of some fine RCMP officers who had to obey their political masters, in this case the Liberal Party of Canada. Conveniently the government will then shelve the report and, just like the parliamentary secretary did today, stand up as proud as a peacock and tell us it is in favour of a bill that will go against the Hughes report. Is that not special? We have another example of that happening here today.

As well, because of the Hughes report there was a third amendment that all opposition parties supported. It would have made political interference in RCMP operations at international conferences an offence. It was pretty clear. The RCMP's duty is to serve and protect the Canadian public. We want the RCMP to carry out that task without political interference from the Prime Minister's Office or any of the other Liberal henchmen across the way, including the parliamentary secretary. Instead of supporting an amendment that was supported by all opposition parties, the Liberal majority on the foreign affairs committee voted it down. Surprise, surprise.

We introduced an amendment for greater accountability that was backed by all opposition parties. The government killed that chance for accountability. We submitted a second proposal for the government to put some accountability back into the bill. It was put forward and proposed by all opposition parties, and again the government voted against accountability.

We did it a third time with regard to the RCMP, the people who are supposed to enforce the law and not the Liberals across the way. A third time we asked for greater accountability according to the Hughes report that the government said it would listen to. What did the government do? A third time in a row, three strikes and you are out, accountability went down again. That is the record.

We have a sad situation today. The government across the way is only too willing to go after websites created by Canadians. The government wants to expunge any of the material there and put Canadians through a laborious appeal process for which they do not get any specifications in terms of timelines. The government is willing to do all these things to restrict the freedom of speech of average Canadians because it is worried about terrorism.

[Business of the House, November 29th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, rise on a point of order. I have a question with regard to this. I did not hear a mention of Motion P-3 in the member's comments. Does this apply to Motion P-3 or does it apply to the bill that is being debated currently, Bill C-35?

[Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act, November 29th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary responded to my first question this morning by saying that she had a policy of zero tolerance. Let me ask her about her zero tolerance.

Why is someone who was charged with attempted murder, applied for a waiver of diplomatic immunity, had the waiver granted by the Canadian government, appeared in court and had the case dismissed, still a diplomat in Canada? Where is the zero tolerance on attempted murder?

[Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act, November 29th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, is the parliamentary secretary aware that over the last five years there have been 76 criminal charges laid, and never mind other offences where there have been no charges, with regard to those who enjoy the status of being a diplomat in Canada?

I know she would love to stick to her talking points and only talk about non-treaty organizations, but there was a terrorist attack on September 11 that left thousands dead. Ahmed Ressam was using Montreal as a base and staging ground for the Mujahedeen cult in the bombing of the World Trade Center before he was caught in Seattle.

The idea that we would allow an extension of diplomatic immunity and diplomatic privileges, particularly at this point in time, disturbs me deeply considering that a number of countries have abused diplomatic privileges in the past. Also, the provision of safe houses, money, travel documents in terms of visas or passports, any of these type of things can and have been used for the advancement of terrorist causes.

How can the parliamentary secretary, having voted in favour of a bill last night that would restrict the freedoms of Canadians in light of the terrorist attacks, stand up in the House today and argue in favour of extending privileges and freedoms to foreigners based in Canada?

[Canadian Forces, November 19th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, on the story of the Sea Kings, the minister likes to insist the military is as equipped if not better equipped than it was 10 years ago. Ten years ago our Sea Kings in the Persian gulf had various anti-missile systems. Now they are being sent in with a scant one. Ten years later they are less effective than they were then. It is a shame. The minister said something that did not come to pass three years ago even though he said it was happening as he spoke. Ten years later we are far worse off.

It is not just me that says these things. Canadians for Military Preparedness, the Conference of Defence Associations, Lieutenant General Charles Belzile, retired Major General Lewis MacKenzie, Major General Clive Addy, Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire, Colonel Brian MacDonald and the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies all say that by 2003 we may have as few as 43,000 troops. That is less than half what there was when the Liberals took power.

The list goes on in terms of the failures of the minister. The Royal Canadian Military Institute; General Jean Boyle, the former chief of the defence staff; Professors Jack Granatstein, Desmond Morton and David Bercuson; Lieutenant Colonel Doug Bland; and even the auditor general are on the list. Everyone on the list gave the minister a failing grade. Yet he has the audacity to claim he is on the job.

When our military goes on war game operations or exercises with the Americans, the Americans keep an extra squadron on standby because our equipment often breaks down. It breaks down so badly the Americans need to keep people to fill in our role.

According to the minister's numbers our military stands at 58,000. In 1990 it was 85,000. Our reserves have fallen to under 15,000. When we consider that it takes roughly 10 military personnel to support one soldier in the field our effective force is only about 5,800 troops. That is an embarrassment and the minister knows it.

Our military counterintelligence computers were so antiquated that it took the tragic attack of September 11 before the minister would respond.

People smuggling ships and those who traffic in human flesh need to be pointed out by the Americans because we do not have the resources to find them ourselves.

When our American neighbours to the south offer to protect us under their missile shield in what is the deal of the century the Prime Minister and the Minister of National Defence run for cover and hide instead of taking them up on the offer. The minister has been sticking his head in the sand in the hope that the threats would go away.

There are 10 ways I would describe the minister: neglectful, rusted out, bureaucratic, fumbling, unprepared, irresponsible, rickety, outdated, desperate and hiding his head in the sand. It is a shame. This is operation appalling.

[Canadian Forces, November 19th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal record on these matters has been operation appalling, not Operation Apollo. The first indication that it is operation appalling is that the 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, which is supposed to be sent over and is on 48 hours’ notice, is about the same size as the elite regiment formerly known as the airborne.

Rather than sending an elite regiment like we could have had with the airborne, the government for reasons of political correctness went ahead and disbanded the airborne. It is now thinking of sending a regiment that up until today it was thinking of disbanding. Shame on the minister. That is part of operation appalling.

Due to the fact that the government does not have enough troops and that there is a shortage of money and recruits, it is approaching people from Edmonton and Winnipeg to bolster the third battalion. The minister has failed to meet the recruiting targets in the white paper he so boldly talks about.

Let us imagine that. We have a regiment that was established in 1950 during the Korean war. For the sake of political correctness the minister would go ahead and disband it and poach troops from other parts of the country to bolster his sad record.

I will once again point out something I asked the minister during question period. I pointed to the sad situation where he stood in the House three years ago and said the Sea Kings would be getting their appropriate renewed communications systems. That was not the truth and the minister knows it full well.

The minister stood in the place where he sits now and told the House the Sea Kings would get their communications equipment. He said it was being done as he spoke. Three years later it has still not been delivered. The minister point blank did not tell the truth. He failed his forces.