Rob Anders

[The Budget, February 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I come here to praise the finance minister, not to bury him. For was it not the finance minister who failed to mention crime? Indeed it was. For was it not the finance minister who was able to ignore the unemployed? Indeed it was. For was it not the finance minister who cut the transfers to the provinces for health and education? Indeed it was.

This was all despite protests. What courage this man has. It was despite the protests for those who have suffered crimes and wanted to see restitution done and he was able to weather their storm and say, “No. I will not heed your concerns”. He was able to weather the plight of the unemployed and despite the fact that were promised jobs, jobs, jobs, he said, “That doesn't matter. Unemployment will remain high”. He said to those who took up the commitment that the federal government made on health care that we will pass on the buck to the provinces and not live up to our commitments.

Like I say, I come to praise the finance minister, not to bury him.

[The Budget, February 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a question. As a matter of fact, it was a bug put in my ear by a fellow colleague.

When we think back to just after the election in 1993 and even during the election, we heard Liberals across this country say that the budget could not be balanced, that it could never be balanced in three years or in a short period of time because the economic growth rate would go through the floor. They were like Chicken Little running around the country then I remember.

Liberals were saying that if Canada tried to balance its budget, the growth rates would be non-existent. We would shrink. We would go back to having children with tar on their noses, something like the industrial revolution. The economy would grind to a halt because Canada could not handle a balanced budget and the cuts in government spending that would necessitate.

I am wondering how three years later the Liberals can sit here bleating, preening and patting themselves on the back for balancing the budget and not recognize that indeed they have gone against everything they were saying three years ago. They have accomplished what they said three years ago was impossible. Then only the Reform Party was saying that the budget could be balanced.

[The Budget, February 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, we too understand the idea that Ottawa knows best and its contempt for the provinces and the fact that the federal government continually overrides provincial jurisdiction.

I found his reference to the night of the long knives in 1982 very interesting. I too feel there were things left out of the Constitution which should have been in, or provisions which should have been made concerning provincial jurisdiction.

I wonder if our friends in the Bloc could comment on what I think they have been leaders on, that is that they, to their good fortune and vision, opted out of the Canada pension plan and set up the Caisse de dépôt many years ago, realizing where the feds would go with this and how badly the federal Liberal regime would squander its resources.

I am wondering if he might be able to comment on provincial jurisdiction there and whether other provinces should choose to opt out of the CPP.

[The Budget, February 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, we hear from this government a commitment to education. Yet I remember in 1993 the Liberals attacked us for at least being willing to address these issues. They came in and cut $2 billion from post-secondary education in this country. Does the member not feel it is just a band-aid to put a couple of hundred million dollars a year back in a scholarship fund from what the government has cut?

[Canada Labour Code, February 24th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, ding dong, the union is calling. That is the way this should lead off. Bill C-19 allows for union organizers to get the lists of off site workers.

What does that mean for all those people who right now are operating in a contract capacity or outside the certification process? Their names, their addresses and their contact information will be given to union organizers. Those organizers will have access to other information available on the corporations' computers.

You ask, Mr. Speaker, by whose consent this is done. It is done by the consent of union organizers but certainly not by the consent of the employees and not by the consent of those employers.

This is all at the wish of the Canadian Industrial Relations Board. I would like to delve right into this if I might. The bill would change the name of the Canada Labour Relations Board and create this new beast, the new Canada Industrial Relations Board.

What are they really doing? What is the whole purpose behind it? They will give it a little more power and they will give it a little less accountability. As a result it creates a whole lot more abuse when the two of them are coupled. That is exactly what they are doing with a whole lot of other tribunals and boards.

They try to remove the minister from accountability and remove the ability of members in the House, including Liberal members, to make accountable these quasi-judicial boards or these governmental bodies. They make them less accountable. The members have less ability to rein in these powers. Yet the boards have more and more power put on their plates.

I would like to speak to some of the things the new Canada Industrial Relations Board will be able to do. Point number one is that it will be able to certify a union without the majority of employees actually taking a ballot, without their majority support.

When we think about that, it is a fundamental violation of democracy, the idea that a majority of employees does not have to vote in favour of certifying a union for it to be certified at that site.

I will refer directly to some of the important decisions that have happened regarding this issue and that a card based system is notoriously unreliable. The Canada Labour Relations Board has said so when confronted with two unions both claiming majority support in the bargaining unit. People can refer to Communications Workers of Canada v. Communications Union Canada, 1979.

The workers' cards are no more reliable when the contest is between union representation and no union representation. This is a great example. Two unions tried to claim majority support by cards. Each union said that by this card based system it was the appropriate union to certify the site. That is a clear demonstration of why the card based system does not work. Two unions can abuse the same card process and each can say that it has majority support. That is one fundamental flaw with the card based system.

The other fundamental flaw is that you can actually have a vast discrepancy in what is considered proper majority support. I refer to a recent Ontario Labour Relations Board decision with regard to the United Steelworkers of America as the bargaining agent for the workers in Wal-Mart Canada. The workers voted 151 to 43 against union representation. That is 151 were against union certification and 43 were in favour of certifying the United Steelworkers of America. Yet the Ontario Labour Relations Board went ahead and decided the steelworkers would represent that site.

Not only is there competition between unions that would violate this system, where multiple unions claim they have enough cards to sign people up, but there are also unions winning representation in places where there is no legitimate vote and where a majority of people have decided against having the steelworkers as their representatives. How is that democratic? It fails so many fundamental tests of what this law should pass. However, the Liberals are going to endorse this legislation which would give these powers to this governmental organization, the proposed Canadian industrial relations board.

It does not make any sense to give these types of powers. You can quote me on this one and I hope others do. No government and no quasi-judicial body asks for powers that it will not use or does not want to use. This case is just like the Canada Wheat Board case. It is asking for powers that it will use and abuse. I have given two perfect examples of how those powers have been abused by similar quasi-judicial bodies and it will be done by the Canada industrial relations board, mark my words.

Those Liberal MPs across the way will have to justify to their constituents, businesses and employees that they have passed this bill. They will go to their MP offices and say “Look what has happened to me. Look what the new monster that you voted in has done to my business or to my job”. Those MPs will have to justify it.

Not only do they not require majority consent and not only are they tossing out the whole idea of a secret ballot, which is fundamental to the concept of democracy, the union organizers will be given information on off site workers against their will. Those workers will have no consent whatsoever in this process. There is no provision in this bill that people must be asked if this should be done, no provision for obtaining their consent. It will be done against their wishes.

I have heard people in the House today refer to notice of a strike or a lockout. They have referred to the grain handling situation. They have said that a 72 hour notice of a lockout or a strike will be able to protect grain shipments in Canada. If only every union obeyed the law and never had a wildcat strike. Unfortunately we have seen too many times that a union has violated the laws and has held a wildcat strike without a proper vote from the workers for the go ahead.

We have seen unions go against their own workers' wishes and order them out on the picket lines. This happens because we do not have sufficient penalties to ensure those people do not violate the law. There is no sequestering of assets. There is no provision for putting union bosses in jail if they order people on to the picket lines without an appropriate vote.

Once again the Liberal government has failed. It has failed because this is not an appropriate guarantee. It has told farmers in western Canada that this legislation has a provision to ensure their grain will not be held up in the ports. It is a misrepresentation. It is pulling the wool over the eyes of Canadian farmers.

Indeed the government cannot guarantee it because this law has no teeth and without teeth it will not be able to enforce it. Wildcat strikes can and will occur under this legislation. There is little or no provision for ensuring they do not. The grain can still be held up.

Replacement workers are effectively banned by Bill C-19. I am sure that Liberal and NDP members will say this is not the case because it will only happen when representational capacity is affected. If we look at other quasi-judicial bodies which have made rulings on these things, indeed they have determined that representational capacity means any situation.

Once again when a quasi-judicial body asks for a power, it will use it and it will abuse it. Therefore we can bet our bottom dollar that replacement workers in this country will not be able to cross picket lines. Operations will not be able to continue. Employers will not be able to use employees who are not unionized to continue their activities during a lockout or a strike. Shame on the Liberal government.

There are some other things in the bill which really get my goat. One is the fact that the definitions are so vague. This will give significant powers to the Canada industrial relations board.

Bureaucrats have designed the legislation and Liberals have not accurately read what it will mean. They have not looked at the fine print. They do not recognize that the bureaucrats have made the legislation vague in certain areas so as to give more powers to the quasi-judicial body which it can then abuse.

I would like to touch on another area which has been mentioned today, that being the whole idea of representing a majority of constituents or union members. Forty-six per cent of all union households in Alberta want voluntary unionism. They believe they should have a choice as to whether they are forced to join a union or pay dues. Sixty-two per cent of all Albertans are in favour of that concept.

New Democrats speak about making sure they represent the majority of their constituents, but it is they who make up the party which only represents big labour. It is over a billion dollar industry in this country and the NDP only represents the top echelon of the labour movement. It no longer represents the workers.

This bill does not provide for secret ballots for union elections. It has no provision for democratic choice. I could go on and on. The bill is flawed. It has to be reviewed. It should not pass as it stands.

[Canada Labour Code, February 24th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, why does the hon. member think the NDP has now become a party that represents big union bosses rather than workers?.

Labour unions now represent over $1 billion in terms of forced dues. They are massive corporations, indeed one of the biggest. We see a lot of union bosses sitting in the NDP ranks.

Could the hon. member comment on why the NDP has lost touch with the workers? Why does it represent only union bosses? Why is it anti-democratic?

The NDP does not believe in secret mail ballots for union leadership and having them mandatory across the land. It does not believe in democratic choice. The NDP government in British Columbia revoked the opportunity for people to vote in secret ballots for certification.

Why is the NDP against the worker? What has been the change?

[Property Rights, February 23rd, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I would like to tell you a little story and it starts back around 1215. King John came back from a war in France and his coffers were empty.

He went to his barons and his lords and demanded taxation moneys from them to fill the coffers of the lands so that he could once again wage war. His lords and his barons at that time said that this was inappropriate since they were receiving nothing in return from the king. He was merely taking tax money from them with no benefit derived whatsoever on their part.

They forced the king to sign the Magna Carta in 1215. That is the first time that we know of in modern western history of a recognition of the right to own property. There have been many other precedents since that time.

Particularly noteworthy is when in 1776 a large part of the colonies on this new continent broke away from the United Kingdom and British rule because they did not believe in taxation without representation. They believed in the right to hold and to own property.

The right to hold property has several important components, many of which are touched on in this private member's bill. It recognizes that people have the right to own property, that they use and enjoy it, that they not be deprived of that right without full, just and timely compensation in due process of law. If we do not have a process of law in terms of the recognition of property, it is merely at the caprice, the will of the government.

We all recognize that laws and statutes are important. Indeed that is why we sit here today. That is why we have this assembly, this commons, so that the people of Canada understand the laws, the regulations and the rules. Without that there is anarchy. As a result, point one is that the process of law must be recognized.

Point number two is that people have timely, just and fair compensation. Without fair compensation there is no true value in property or for what people hold. For example, the Bloc member spoke to Bill C-68 and gun registration. It touches on many others such as Bill C-4 and the wheat board act. There have been several others that have been passed in this House that touch on this as well.

If people do not have a sense of fair, timely and just compensation, then indeed things can be taken from them. Something worth a dollar can be taken from them and they are given back merely pennies, a dime or a nickel in exchange for what its true value or worth is.

We see in our history not long ago where that was done. It was the Japanese internment during the second world war. It has been widely recognized in this House I think by all parties that those Japanese Canadians were done a wrong. Why they were done a wrong? Property was taken from them without fair, just and timely compensation, something we recognize happening less than 50 years ago and yet we see the importance of it. We make corrections at a later date.

Another important criterion is that it is transferable because if the property is not saleable or transferable, if I cannot pass my ability to own that property to another, then indeed is it really mine and do I have full jurisdiction over it? This touches on the jurisdictional aspects of private property. Someone should have complete and full jurisdiction of their property in order for it to be considered private property. With this comes the whole idea of transferability. Therefore the state should not be able to regulate or restrict an individual's ability to transfer that property.

We have recent developments in this country that call attention to the whole idea of the right to own property. One of these is the bill of rights which included the right to own property. It is interesting how later on when we tried to constitutionalize this in 1982 there were objections to including the right to own private property in the Constitution which later became the Constitution Act, 1982.

One of the provinces that opposed that right but claimed it was not involved in the final negotiation of the Constitution was Quebec. Prince Edward Island was another. Unfortunately due to the objections of a few of the provinces we did not see the inclusion of private property entrenched in the Constitution of this land.

As a result, what have we seen come down the pipe? Bill C-68, the gun registration act, speaks to this. In Bill C-68 there are provisions for the confiscation of private property. Somebody can own a collection of firearms and be unable to pass that on to their children, nor even be able to sell it. Why? The government has made provisions for confiscation, confiscation without fair compensation. There is not provision for what the real and true value or marketable value of those firearms may be.

Bill C-4, the Canadian Wheat Board Act, which was recently passed in this House, does not recognize the right of farmers to own the grain they produce by the sweat and toil of their own labour, to be able to sell that freely as they so choose. It violates their transferability because they are not allowed to sell that to whomever they wish. It violates their fair, just and timely compensation because they cannot get the full value and true market value of their grain. They are forced to sell it through the wheat board. They are also deprived of what I consider to be a fundamental process of law when we have people who want to exercise the transferability right and the compensation right and yet they are jailed and shackled and deprived of their machinery, fined and cannot work the family farm.

All three of these fundamental tenets have been violated with the Canadian Wheat Board Act. As I say, they were also violated with Bill C-68, the gun registration bill.

It is not that these things have been done in the past because that is water under the bridge. If we form government we hope to repeal some of those pieces of legislation. More than that, this government is also proposing and considering ideas on endangered species legislation. I would like to enlighten the House in terms of what that means.

It means that in a given section of land that somebody may own, if it is found to be that there is a habitat they did not even know existed and they are found to have potentially violated that habitat by driving in, around or near it, they can have that entire section of land quarantined from their use even though they did not know it existed. They can also face heavy fines and jail terms as a result of violating that habitat according to the way the law is defined.

What is that going to encourage? It is going to encourage people to go ahead and decimate their lands and get rid of any of those special habitats rather than to go ahead and protect them with some form of incentive. Using only disincentives will encourage people to go ahead and obliterate those lands and get rid of any of those special habitats that may exist. As a result, I do not think that helps the populations that we are trying to protect in terms of endangered species or any wildlife. I do not think that does anything to help the owners of the property. I also do not think it does anything to help advance the cause the government claims to be supporting.

When we look at all these things, I do not think the government has learned the fundamental lesson. I hope at the next election it pays the price for that. It so sorely does not understand the whole idea of private property. Nothing violates someone so badly as having their private property taken from them. I will speak about a personal experience, the reason my family came to this country.

We were farmers is eastern Europe. We had our farm confiscated and nationalized by the state. We had our granaries taken. We had our land seized. We had our horses taken. We came to Canada to seek the freedom it provides. Unfortunately 100 years later we see what is happening here by not recognizing the right to private property. It chokes me up to think the government is going to come through with this type of thing and not recognize this. It is intolerable. Other governments in the past have paid the price for not recognizing this fundamental right. Shame on them.

[Bill C-28, February 19th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, in their first red book the Liberals promised that they would not follow Brian Mulroney's ethical example. They said they would appoint an ethics commissioner who would report directly to parliament.

Well, they did not. Their so-called ethics counsellor reports in secret to the Prime Minister. Scandal after scandal and the ethics counsellor always has enough whitewash for the job.

I have a question. What is the use of an ethics counsellor if he just rubber stamps the finance minister's unethical behaviour?

[Division No. 89, February 19th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I will quickly wrap up my point with regard to the originators of this bill, the one last point being that the originators of this bill get more than $1,000 a day. I wrap up by saying that this bill should be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following therefor:

Bill S-4, an act to amend the Canada Shipping Act, be not now read a second time but that the order be discharged, the bill withdrawn and the subject matter thereof referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

[Division No. 89, February 19th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the comments in terms of the smart comments on behalf of the member for Calgary West. I would never indeed question the good judgment of the Chair. We all value your position, Mr. Speaker, and the contributions that you have made to the House.

I must however talk to the whole idea of this bill not having been considered by five official parties as represented in the House. In its place of origination since the election on June 2, it has only had the representation of two parties, and those not being in this Chamber.

I think that really speaks to whether or not this bill is actually an accountable one, whether or not it circumvents government accountability because indeed, there are five parties represented in the House. If the other three have not had a voice in this piece of legislation and if it did not originate here when it does involve something that has to do with money, then it is a very difficult matter indeed. It strains the democratic accountability of both houses and of Parliament generally.

We think this bill needs to be accountable to the constituents of five respective parties as opposed to just two parties, one of which only represents 7% of the population as it stands here in the House of Commons today.

We do not want Bill S-4 to be reflective of an archaic, unelected, unaccountable and unrepresentative body. We believe that this is a slow erosion of the power of the House of Commons.

I would like to refer to a member who sits in the other Chamber, somebody I talked to just this afternoon. Last year the Senate had 67 sittings of which many of the people in that place only sat for roughly 50% of the time. I would like to go through the math of this for a second. I think it is pertinent. At 67 sittings a year with a salary in excess of $64,000 a year that would work out—