Rob Anders

[The Senate, March 1st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the laws say that criminals do not sit in the Senate. Michel Cogger still sits in the Senate even though he has been convicted of influence peddling. Senator Berntson laughed at reporters after he was convicted of fraud, yet the Liberals have increased the Senate's budget to $47 million this year. Why does the Prime Minister think that democratically electing senators is a bad idea but appointing—

[The Senate, March 1st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, last Thursday Senator Eric Berntson was convicted of defrauding taxpayers out of $41,000. On the steps of the courthouse Berntson was defiant, claiming he did nothing wrong. He even laughed out loud when reporters asked him if he was still going to sit in the Senate. In last month's budget the Prime Minister increased Senate spending by 6%. What is that for, a parole officer?

[Theoren Fleury, March 1st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, in June 1987 sceptics laughed at reports of a shiny new star on the horizon. “Too small to notice” and “doesn't fit the mould”, they said but they were wrong.

He was small but he was also living proof that big things come in small packages. Today the city of Calgary mourns the loss of our super hero Theoren Fleury, traded by the Calgary Flames to the Colorado Avalanche. Not unlike a political party that was born about the same time, Theoren Fleury cast a long shadow across the western landscape and won the affection and respect of Canadians from sea to sea to sea.

He was the smallest player ever to don the jersey of a national hockey league team. When the experts questioned whether a small man could ever make it into the big leagues, Fleury had the answer. He said “When you are small you have to play with heart”. He played with heart, departing as the team's all-time leading scorer.

Today I suggest to my hometown that if anybody deserves the title of honorary Calgarian for life it is Theoren Fleury. He truly is one of the biggest little men we have ever known.

[Peacekeeping, February 17th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, for the folks back home I am going to give them a thumbnail sketch of why this is going on.

This evening we are debating whether or not Canada should be sending troops to Kosovo and the Central African Republic. That is the basic gist of why we are here.

Our servicemen should be commended for their loyalty and dedication to Canada. Even though their morale is at an all-time low they should be commended for their continued commitment to the armed forces. Despite everything else, it is nothing short of outstanding when we consider what they are making do with under the circumstances. My hat tips to the Canadian armed forces and I appreciate what they do.

To give a little background on the issue, the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo is mounting an ongoing campaign to liberate Kosovo from Serbian control. The Serbs meanwhile are mounting an offensive against the ethnic Albanians in what appears to be an attempt at ethnic cleansing. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, has served notice that unless Serbian aggression toward ethnic Albanians in Kosovo ceases, NATO will use military force against Serbian military positions until the Serbs back down. Canada has been asked to participate in any NATO action in Kosovo.

Further to the issue of Kosovo, the population of Kosovo is some 90% Albanian and 10% Serb. Kosovo had political autonomy within Yugoslavia until 1989 when that autonomy was abolished. The region is of great historic and symbolic significance to the Serbs who lost their national independence to the Turks in the battle of Kosovo in 1389. I will say that date again, 1389. That is a long time ago, over 600 years. I guess some are beginning to wonder whether a few even though passionate but poorly equipped Canadians are going to be able to rectify a situation that has been more than 600 years to the boiling point.

I would like to quote someone who I think has relevance with regard to this debate, General Lewis MacKenzie. He stated that a full parliamentary debate had to be held on this issue. In his words, “I would like mothers and fathers of soldiers and spouses of soldiers if and when they are killed to feel that it was a justifiable cause that only can be determined after a public debate”.

I would also like to touch on the fact that one of the Reform caucus members, the member of parliament for Calgary Northeast and the Reform Party defence critic, has been quoted recently that if the number of our forces drops below 60,000, as some people are saying, it is unrealistic to participate in activities such as Kosovo. I am going to talk about that during my speech.

Despite how badly some of our forces would like to see time in the field, and I can certainly understand that, nonetheless they know and I know, and I am going to talk about it this evening, how they are suffering because of the lack of proper equipment which they need to be able to get the job done.

Let us run down a top 10 list, a thumbnail sketch of why there are problems and then I will put flesh on the bones of that.

First, sending our troops to Kosovo is going to put them at risk. That is always the case with military operations. Furthermore the current chief of the defence staff and his predecessor both have said that Canada is not combat ready. I repeat that, the chief of the defence staff and his predecessor have both said that Canada is not combat ready.

Why is that? I am going on to my next point. It is because this Liberal government is starving our military. That is why this is going on. How has the government been starving the military? The Liberals have siphoned off over $7 billion from the military budget since they have come to office. That is why there is a problem.

The government has cut a third of our military, over 30,000 personnel. I guess we could say it all started with Pierre Elliot Trudeau and not having a love or appreciation of the armed forces, but the song goes on with the Liberals.

The government is not giving our troops the tools they need to do the job. What type of tools are we looking at? Artillery that is 25 years old, helicopters 35 years old, tanks 35 years old. They barely have the funds to train properly never mind an insufficient budget for live firing. They cannot even do live firing. I have been on some of these ranges. It is absurd that we are training troops without the ability to do live firing with live ammunition.

To be a player in international politics we have to pay the price. If we want to have power and influence to make peace in places like Kosovo, we have to pay that price. The price is combat capable armed forces.

The Liberals have failed our hardworking military. They are starving our military the funds they need to do their excellent work. This Liberal irresponsibility, inadequate training and old equipment are putting our troops in jeopardy and the blood of our troops will be in their hands.

That is a brief thumbnail sketch. I am going to put some meat on the bones of this.

What type of Canadian contribution to a NATO force is envisaged? What size of force is envisaged? What equipment will it have? How can parliamentarians discuss in an informed way what Canada's role should be when they do not know these facts? We are being asked to send troops but because of all the problems with the funding, the equipment and everything else we are going into this blind. And it is not as if that has not been done before by this government, has it?

Political decisions are being made by the leading western powers at negotiations in France, at which Canada has almost no voice. Why do we have no voice? Because our influence in NATO has eroded so badly.

When I was in Esquimalt last year I was told that we were going to be removed from the grid for undersea mapping because we were no longer in the submarine club. The United States would love to have an ally to share that information with and to participate in games with so they could test their capability. But when we no longer have any ability to provide information for that, they can no longer justify keeping us on the grid. Because of that pressure, the government went ahead and purchased the bare minimum needed to stay part of the grid.

That is the reason Canada is a joke when it comes to things like NATO. That is a travesty.

We want to participate in a NATO military force but the forces we have are seriously deficient. We have no combat helicopters. We have no heavy lift helicopters. We have mostly light armoured vehicles, not heavy armoured vehicles. We have no ability to withdraw or reinforce our troops in a crisis due to the lack of any strategic lift. Those are serious problems with this mission. The equipment of the forces is a real disgrace. It is rusting out.

One example is the Griffon helicopters. The auditor general reported that they have inadequate lift capability. They have poor reconnaissance capability. They can lift army artillery only for very short distances. They have a buildup of static electricity. Yet these are the helicopters we are planning to deploy in Kosovo. They cannot mount guns. They are unable to be used for the purposes for which they were bought.

I list off all these things and the government is still considering going ahead and doing these things when it is not properly equipping the forces.

We have already one battalion group, 1,300 troops in Bosnia. On February 9 the deputy chief of defence staff stated before the House of Commons foreign affairs and defence committee that he could have no definitive answer to the question of how many troops could be sustained overseas. Yet we are increasing our contingent. I know the people in the armed forces would like to see time in the field. They know and I know and the Canadian public now knows that they are being sent into these operations without having what they need to do the job.

That all being considered, Canada because of all these considerations is going to be reliant on our allies for logistics in helicopter support. What other option is there? We are playing Russian roulette with the lives of Canadian troops because we do not have the proper things to give them in this particular situation.

A ground invasion of Kosovo has already been ruled out. If a ground invasion has been ruled out, what is left is an air only campaign. There is a question of whether or not that is likely to achieve the desired results. With an air only campaign, we are sending in helicopters that are ill fitted for the mission. It has already been ruled out that there cannot be a ground campaign. It will have to be an air only campaign. Yet we are sending troops into the area without having appropriate air support. I do not know how that makes any sense. But I guess that is Liberal logic when it comes to the armed forces.

I am going to talk about Canada's national interest. We do have national interests in the Balkans. We certainly have a strong interest in regional stability. We have an interest in ensuring that the instability in the Balkans does not spill over into neighbouring countries. But the question is are these vital national interests? Whether these are vital national interests has never been adequately addressed by our government.

Should Canadians die to ensure the stability of the Balkans? This is a sobering question. But we have to reflect on the fact that 17 Canadians have already died in Bosnia and more than 100 have been wounded. How big a sacrifice can Canada be expected to make if our vital interests are not at stake and especially if this government is not willing to give them the supplies, material and equipment they need to be able to make sure they are not putting their lives at any more risk than they absolutely need to?

The national interest considerations need to be at the forefront when troop deployment decisions are taken by any Canadian government. We owe that to our troops and we owe it to the Canadian people.

Reform has laid out six criteria that should be met with regard to committing and deploying Canadian troops. One, there is a serious threat to international stability and that diplomatic efforts have been exhausted. Two, that so far as possible there is multinational support for military action. Three, that there is a workable plan and strategy for military action to resolve the issue. Four, that the plan includes a well defined mission and a clear definition of Canada's role. Five, that the role expected of Canada is within our fiscal and military capability. Six, that there is a command and control arrangement satisfactory to Canada.

I have run through six questions and we do not have satisfactory fulfilment of these six criteria for the deployment of Canadian forces, all this considering that we have a crippled armed forces.

I am going to talk about some of the problems we have. This is a question that was posed a few days ago to the defence minister in the House of Commons. I quote part of it: “Since the Liberal government has come into power it has cut over $7 billion from the defence budget. The Sea Kings were grounded again and unable to fly. Pilots are taking risks, undue risks, flying old equipment”.

When that question was posed, and we all know the problems that have happened with the Sea Kings, what did the Minister of National Defence say when he was questioned on this important subject? The minister said: “We are developing a procurement strategy”. Men are dying in the field. I am happy to know that our defence minister is developing a procurement strategy. Good for him.

During the election of 1993 the Prime Minister promised he would cancel the Conservative government's EH-101 contract valued at $5.8 billion for 50 helicopters. Those are 1992 estimates. The cost of the promise was approximately $530 million due to cancellation costs and penalties.

It is ironic that the new helicopters are similar in design to the cancelled EH-101s. As a matter of fact, the similarities between the models are so prevalent that it forces us to question what the real motives behind the Liberal's 1993 election promise were. This is an important issue and it will not go away. It will only get worse.

There was a news conference in Shearwater regarding ignition problems with our 35 year old Sea Kings. There have been seven engine failures in a month, six on start-up and one on taxi. This is the same engine of the ill fated Labrador. We all remember the complications when we actually had troops die.

Now we have unreliable aging aircraft and the government is putting lives before budget dollars with this. This is a question that was posed to the Minister of National Defence. What did he say when he was asked about our 35 year old helicopters that have had seven engine failures? He said: “In this case there have been starter problems with the engines when they start them on the ground”. Bravo. Where else do you start helicopter engines but on the ground? Are we supposed to start them in mid-air? Do helicopters just start a thousand feet in the air and then plummet to the earth killing the people on board? I do not think so but our good old Minister of National Defence seems to think that just might be the case.

My conservative estimate of what Somalia cost us is $30 million although it could have been higher.

I will talk to the issue of tanks because we have terribly old tanks. The United States was willing to give us Abrams tanks. I was told this by people in the U.S. embassy and by our own Canadian soldiers. Rather than mothball them in the desert in Arizona, the American government was willing to give us these its and willing to pay for maintenance costs because we are their ally. This government turned down those tanks. It would rather have them sit in mothballs in Arizona than use this equipment, and it bellyaches about funding. Shame on the government.

In my riding CFB Calgary was closed. There were a thousand acres of land. The troops were moved up to Edmonton where there were only 640 acres of land. It does not sound like a very wise move in terms of the land space but nonetheless that was done. I have it written down that there was a $65 million price tag but there are speculations it cost a lot more than that. All this was going on yet our government continued to cut troops and put them into commitments it knows it will not be able to properly fund.

The government wants to go ahead and send our troops to Kosovo. I know some troops want to see time in the field, and I appreciate that. I could feel that when I was on the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs.

I wish I had more time. I could go on about other UN involvements we have had. For example, they have not solved the problems in Angola even though the UN tries to play international cop and does not seem to have what it takes to do it.

I could go on about who will have to pay for this. The

Globe and Mail

has talked about the fact that paying for these types of operations with a shrinking military budget means there will have to be more troop cuts, that we will have to rotate more of our troops and they will be more tired and more prone to accidents and fatalities on the job.

I could talk about the search and rescue problems we have in Esquimalt. We cannot do our own search and rescue. We have to rely on Americans because of budget cuts and because we do not have helicopters. I could go on and on but I have wrapped up my time. I wish the best of luck to our men and women in the armed forces. I only wish the government appreciated them more and funded them properly.

[Peacekeeping, February 17th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder what the Liberal member across the way thinks about the in excess of $7 billion worth of cuts his government has made to the Canadian military and whether or not he thinks that assists them in their mission overseas.

[Citizenship Of Canada Act, February 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I will tell the member about outrage. Members across the way are challenging that maybe these 16,000 deportees, or should be deportees, are not on Canadian soil. Yet I have members in my own caucus who have gone on tours with police in the city of Vancouver where we all know—and we saw it on TV with our own eyes—about problems with Honduran gangs distributing drugs. He saw with his own eyes a fellow spit out $1,700 of crack cocaine from his mouth and he did not get charged. He did not get convicted. He did not get deported. That is not even on the record books. The ones we are talking about on the record books are the 20,000 who should have been deported and had an actual determination made. That fellow who spit out the $1,700 worth of crack cocaine from his mouth into a police officer's hand did not even get on the records.

[Citizenship Of Canada Act, February 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, if the member does not understand that there are laxities and problems with the system, I guess that is the Liberal member's own choosing. We all know there are problems with the system. There are 16,000 people unaccounted for. We have no exit controls and no way of knowing.

The member says he does not have any problems with the system or he asks how we can go ahead and account for this and not play a numbers game. I will throw another number at him if he is not sick of numbers yet. In 1994 of the 230,000 immigrants entering the country only 14% were selected using the points system.

The points system as people may be aware—and I will just go over it quickly—evaluates incoming immigrants on education, job training, experience, occupation, arranged employment, age, knowledge of one of the official languages, whether or not they have relatives in Canada and whether or not they are self-employed. All these characteristics are used. Of the 230,000 we allowed into Canada in 1994 only 14% actually had anything to do with the point system.

If we want to talk about numbers, I could point to the 14% of 230,000 or the 16,000 people that are unaccounted for that should have been deported and tell the member that we have a numbers problem. If he does not believe it, he can read them for himself.

[Citizenship Of Canada Act, February 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I wish I could stand today and not have to speak on blatant patronage. Unfortunately Bill C-63 contains blatant patronage.

Under clauses 31 and 32 the duties of the current citizenship judges will be handed over to Citizenship and Immigration Canada officials. The commissioners who will be replacing these judges will have only ceremonial responsibilities and the responsibility to “promote active citizenship in the community”, thus making this position completely irrelevant for any purpose other than a reward. When this legislation is passed the current judges will immediately be reclassified as commissioners, maintaining the same salaries, benefits, et cetera, until their contracts expire. The minister stated in her December 7 press conference that the salary for commissioners would be lower than that for judges, but she had no numbers to offer. Nor did she elaborate on how many commissioners she would be appointing.

We question the necessity of the duties that will be performed by them versus the undefined qualifications required of them. The problem is elevated by the fact that these commissioners will be advising the minister on methods of evaluation for potential citizens when there will be no formal evaluation for the commissioners to pass. The legislation does not state how this advice to the minister would be accomplished.

After the 1993 election—this is another case of a broken promise—the former minister vowed that the positions of citizenship judges would be eliminated and that no more appointments would be made. What we have now is a public relations job. A short lived promise indeed, a short lived Liberal campaign promise, but then that is not the only one we have ever run across.

We have a case of clear, blatant patronage. We have a case of vote brokering with our immigration and refugee boards. That is one of the major problems we have with the bill, but I will talk about a few more. We have a broken system and the minister is unable and unwilling to fix it. We have no substantive changes in this regard.

Blatant Liberal patronage continues to happen under Bill C-63 as happened previously. We have not seen any major changes in that regard. The government is not listening to its own members, people in the government caucus who have problems with the legislation and want to see some of these changes. It is not paying any attention or heed to them. Nor is it paying attention or heed to the citizens of the country who have problems with the bill.

We have heard today that people want to see vigilance. They think that vigilance is required with regard to some of these issues. They recognize that currently we have fraud in the system, that there is a lack of consultation and that there has not been public consultation with regard to the administration of the oath or the formation of the oath. We have a behind closed doors process with no parliamentary oversight.

I am sorry, but the whole thing smells of Liberal arrogance. We have Liberal dominated immigration and refugee boards. Like I say, we go back to this issue of patronage appointments. Whether immigration apparatchiks are called commissioners or citizenship judges the are still Liberal apparatchiks. There is no difference. We can change the name but a Liberal apparatchik smells the same. What it boils down to is clear vote brokering.

We have mention in the bill with regard to language requirements, that they speak one of the official languages, either French or English. Yet we have no form of testing for it. Will we allow people to simply mark down on a form whether or not they feel they are competent in either of these languages but not have any proper form of testing it?

One of my colleagues in the House today referred an ad that ran in a trade publication. I will read it because I think it is important for the folks back home to hear what it had to say. It ran in a publication called the Latin Trade Magazine and this is the way it read:

Guaranteed immigration to Canada. With the purchase of a fleet rent a car franchise, total investment of $50,000 Canadian

approximately $30,000 U.S., you are guaranteed immigration to Canada even with a criminal record.

The word guaranteed was underlined. It provided an address and a phone number to get a hold of somebody in Toronto.

This is not the only example of this type of thing. We heard of numerous examples of these types of ads being run in foreign publications. What type of representation does such an advertisement make of Canadians abroad or when there are Canadians serving as immigration consultants who try to swizzle money off people overseas? They advertise Canada as one of the countries with one of the most lax refugee requirements in the world. They go ahead and abuse the process such that even criminals are being advertised to go ahead and immigrate into Canada. What message does that send out to other immigrants? It is terrible.

The bill has a lot of other unsavoury aspects to it. One question we have to raise is with regard to those who will be seeking refugee status. If they bear a child while they are in Canada, what happens to that child? If the parent is to be deported, what is the status of the child? This whole issue of citizenship at birth is something we have to examine carefully because it has long range complications or implications.

The quality of immigrants determines the quality of citizenship in the country. If we advertise for criminals overseas and tarnish our image that way, we can only expect that to have a reflection on Canadian society as a whole. As a matter of fact, we have so many loopholes right now that other countries are used with their systems to filter or wash people who were criminals so they can wind up in Canada eventually. That is a lax system and we have serious problems with it.

We have a Liberal administration that spends money to keep criminals in Canada rather than to assist citizens with legal aid. I remember the case of Charles Ng that happened in Calgary, somebody who gained entrance into Canada. He was well known and convicted in the United States for all his heinous crimes. Yet the Liberal government spent good taxpayer money to keep him in Canada for years and dragged the process on with bureaucratic delays. When Canadians of sane mind see something like that and know how hard they have to work for their tax dollars, they are infuriated.

It is not as though the government has not had time to look at these things and to make appropriate changes. It has had four and a half years and yet we have not seen a real substantive solution to this issue. We have bureaucratic insertions in the bill and bureaucratic delays that are part and parcel and included in the legislation. Instead of penalizing the bureaucrats we are penalizing the applicants to the process. There is something warped about that and something only a bureaucrat could enjoy.

After four and a half years where are the bills on refugees and where are the bills on criminality and the problems with the system? We have not seen anything.

The auditor general reports that we have 20,000 people to be deported. Yet the records only demonstrate that 4,000 have actually been deported. Pretty simple math tells us that 16,000 people in the country are circumventing the system, of which 80% will probably go on to continue to stay here and become citizens. Talk about image tarnishing. That is a travesty. There are Liberal lawyers who are pulling the strings and making money off the system. The whole thing smells.

I know my time is coming to a close so I will include a few more facts for the folks at home. We had a high of 400,870 immigrants in 1913 and the low was in 1942 with 7,576. We are known because of some of these laxities as being the world's most accepting country for immigrants and refugees. We have all these issues with the criminality being advertised and everything else.

We want something that reduces the amount of discretion currently in the hands of immigration and visa officers but also encourages potential immigrants to prepare themselves better.

All I can say on citizenship at birth is that Australia requires at least one parent to be an Australian citizen or permanent resident for the child to qualify. It is something we should consider as well.

[Public Works, February 15th, 1999]

Since 1994 B.C. got Royal Roads Military College and $25 million, Ontario got Downsview military site and $22 million, Quebec got St. Jean Royal Military College and $25 million. Mount Royal College in Calgary is 20% overcapacity and it turned away 1,500 qualified applicants. It needs land to expand. The federal government has land from the closure of CFB Calgary which is right beside the college campus. Why has Alberta been refused equal treatment?

[Public Works, February 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, Alberta is being discriminated against.

Since 1994 B.C. got Royal Roads Military College and $25 million—