Rob Anders

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, October 29th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I have heard about political interference today and it bothers me greatly. I challenge the member for Medicine Hat.

He talked about political interference and about retribution. Indeed that goes on. He talked about regulation and protectionism and the Liberals in this country being wall builders. But the thing the member did not touch on, the thing the member left out of his speech, was the type of corporate welfare we have in this country, the type of corporate welfare the Liberals have been engaging in. The Liberals cut health care and education and they give billions of dollars to their friends such as Bombardier.

I would like the hon. member for Medicine Hat to touch on what goes on in this country in terms of corporate welfare and subsidies.

[Nunavut Act, October 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, this amendment to the Nunavut Act gives rise to the question of whether or not it was properly thought out in the first place by the government. It is talking about a different system of justice, something separate from what the rest of Canadians enjoy. Certainly, then, there would have been room to go ahead with a different system for selecting people in the Senate. They will have to make a new seat for this territory.

[Extradition Act, October 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, that is a good question. The sad thing is that I think my hon. colleague is right.

That prominent urologist would probably have a better chance of staying in this country if he were a serial rapist or a serial killer. The reason for that is sad: it is politics, political intrusion. That is exactly what has happened in situations a number of times. If the government feels it is a hot potato, it does not want to touch it with a 10 foot pole. Even if it were a promise in the red book, a promise in the election and a promise in the leadership campaigns, the government avoids it like a 10-foot pole. It is terrible. The Liberals toss that hot potato around and never deal with it. That is a shame.

I will address the question that was posed to me previously regarding how bad does it have to get. There was a senator who was only serving 2.6% of the time. That senator should have been extradited to Canada to serve his time here. We have other senators who only serve 10% of their time—

[Extradition Act, October 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, members bellyache across the way, but I remember in Calgary when we had Charles Ng, a repeat murderer and rapist in the city of Calgary, and this government lollygagged and did nothing to make sure that man went back to serve his time in California.

Albertans and Calgarians know too well the problems with extradition in this land, or expedition in this land, as the hon. member will have it. But it is also wrong for somebody to go down to Mexico and have a safe haven just the same way that there was a safe haven for Charles Ng in my community.

[Extradition Act, October 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I have news for those across the way. This bill is about extradition, not expedition. The “x” in Federal Express and Fedex is not about extradition, it is about expedition. So if the member wants to talk about Federal Express or UPS or Purolator or whatever, she is more than welcome to do so.

I support extradition and so do the constituents in Calgary West. We want to see people extradited when they are violating Canadians, that they do not have a safe haven down in La Paz, Mexico. What is wrong with this country, that somebody can go to Mexico and get away from their Canadian responsibilities and obligations to taxpayers here at home.

[Extradition Act, October 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, those types of low comments across the way indicate to us the lack of respect that the people of Alberta get in this institution and around this place when proposing these types of fundamental changes.

Let me talk about extradition in Bill C-40. It is about extradition. It is about international crime and international criminals and havens for crime. It is about slowness and the complexity of the extradition process and the judicial process in general. Bill C-40 is about modernizing the law and bringing it up to speed with the current day. It is about flaws in the actual mechanics of the law. It is about political intrusion in the process.

That is what Bill C-40 is about. That is what we are addressing today. We have all those problems in spades with what is going on with regard to extradition in this country. It is a crying shame in this House today that we have Liberals who have reneged on their promises which they made in 1990, Liberals who reneged on the promises they made in their red book because they said they wanted to see a transparent and open process. We are not seeing that because I am not even allowed to present these petitions on behalf of the people of Alberta who would love to see somebody extradited who is spending their time down in Mexico and violating Canadians by not doing what they should be doing when they are receiving a salary on behalf of the people of Canada. I will have to find some other way to address these things, to bring them forward and to make sure that the Prime Minister is able to peruse through these petitions as the hon. members across the way should have the ability and should also have the duty and the responsibility to go through these petitions and consider what Albertans have to say about this issue of extraditing criminals who are serving outside of Canada in safe havens away from Canadian law and from the responsibilities here in Canada.

[Extradition Act, October 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, once again it was up to this government to define and it has failed to do so with regard to a host of other justice issues. But it should be a crime for somebody to take a salary in this land and only serve two days a year. That should be a crime. That speaks to the Criminal Code. Should the justice minister and the parliamentary secretary not be concerned about that?

[Extradition Act, October 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, that is unfortunate. I had hoped these people from Alberta would have had the chance to have their views heard in the House. The people of Alberta would like the opportunity to submit the petitions, to have them recognized and to have their voices heard. That is only fair. They took the time to write down their names, to send in faxes and to compose e-mails. They took the time to make the phone calls and do everything. To have them denied the ability to have the rest of the members of the House take a look at these petitions and peruse through them is a real denial of the fundamental justice. Is this what we have to put up with while we are in Ottawa?

I would like to speak about how we obtained these petitions. They were given to us by Dave Rutherford on behalf of the people of Alberta. Many of the responses are from clip-outs that ran in the Calgary and Sun newspapers. There are many different forms of the petition but I would like to read briefly what a few of them have to say. They are addressed to the Prime Minister. They say on behalf of these people who have written in that they demand that the Prime Minister and his government respect the will of Albertans for choosing their own senators.

That is a pretty simple, straightforward request and it speaks to the issue of jurisdiction and justice because we have jurisdictions across the country. We have 10 different provinces and two territories and they believe they should have fundamental justice and have the ability to choose for themselves who represents them in the other place. They are being denied that today because these petitions are not allowed to be presented. We were denied unanimous consent to present them on behalf of the people of Alberta who have taken the time to fill these in.

I would like to talk about the extradition that we should have performed. Today we are talking about extradition, about justice and about the whole idea of jurisdiction.

Not so long ago there was a character I will call extradition Andy. He was not in Canada. He was in another place which we will call Mexico. In the criminal sentence the maximum he would have to sit was 65 days a year. He gave himself his own parole. He gave himself his own walking papers. Instead of serving the 65 days he should have he served only two. He served one in the spring and one in the fall. What penalty did Andy get for all this? He got a salary, $64,000 a year. That is what he got in return for only showing up once every spring and once every fall.

On top of that it was not just a salary. He had a tax free allowance of $10,000. He also had a budget with regard to his parliamentary staff on the Hill. All these things were the sentence that Andy had to serve while he was in the other place. But that was too much to ask of Andy, 65 days a year for a salary of $64,000 and a $10,000 tax free allowance. It was too much and Andy figured that he only had to serve two days of that sentence. As a result he spent the rest of his time in a safe haven down in Mexico, his hacienda that cost him about $300,000. Most Canadians cannot afford that but he certainly had that luxury.

Today we are speaking of the idea of international crime of people outside the jurisdiction of Canada, people we want to be able to bring back to serve their time in this country. Andy did not serve his time. Andy was not serving the people of Ontario. Andy was not serving the people of Canada and that is a real travesty. There should have been extradition to bring back Andy from Mexico but that did not happen, did it?

We have stood up in this place time and again and criticized the slowness and the complexity of the extradition process. This was one of those times when there should have been a much faster process, but year after year Andy was not extradited. Andy was in Mexico serving a sentence to his own fitting at $64,000 a year and never a word from the government in terms of extraditing Andy. Andy was never asked to come home during all those years. Year after year he spent his time down in Mexico in his hacienda and the government did not say a word, not a whisper about extradition for this type of crime that Andy was committing against the people of Canada and the people of Ontario, misrepresenting them. That is a shame. That is something this government should hang its head in shame for. It is not just that it was something that was right to do.

The Prime Minister, when he was running for the Liberal leadership in 1990, made promises that this type of thing would not happen. He said he believed in reforming the Senate. He promised the people of Alberta, the Liberal Party membership and the people of this country that he was going to go ahead and reform the Senate so that we would not have to consider extradition for some sort of truant like Andy. But that did not happen. It was another broken promise yet again that was not fulfilled, one of those red book promises that was not made good.

The people of Alberta took the time to draft and compose 7,000 different petitions, letters and e-mails to address this issue and today it has fallen on deaf ears of this government—

[Extradition Act, October 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately a lot of them are in the form of letters, e-mails and faxes and as a result are not in formal petition form. Therefore it would be much easier to submit them this way with unanimous consent of the House than go through the process through the Clerk. Can the question be now put?

[Extradition Act, October 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to the bill which deals with profound issues of justice and jurisdiction. We would all like to see Canada not used as a haven for criminal acts and we oppose other countries or other places being used as havens for criminal acts.

Numerous times we have talked in the House—not only myself, not only the opposition, but the government across the way—about the need for a fair process. The member for Edmonton West has stated that “Canada needs modern legislation to succeed”. She went on to add “laws over 100 years old no longer allow us to deal with” and then went on to describe the problems with the status quo. We need some change with regard to the issues of justice and jurisdiction, and I think it is good that she recognized that.

Calgarians and Albertans know this issue only too well. I think back to the issue of Charles Ng where there were serious concerns with regard to justice and jurisdiction. I could list off others.

Before I get into the meat of my debate I would like to have consent of the House to table 7,000 petitions that I have with me which deal with the issues of justice and jurisdiction so that all members can look through them to see what real Canadians feel about the status quo.