Scott Reid

[Citizenship and Immigration, May 10th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, on October 24, 2002 the House of Commons unanimously voted in support of a motion that called for the release of 13 Falun Gong practitioners with family ties to Canada, who at the time were imprisoned in China. It was passed with the specific intention that these prisoners of conscience be reunited with their families here in Canada.

One of these prisoners, Mingli Lin, was freed on March 26, 2003. However since that time, our consulate in Shanghai has repeatedly denied him a visa to come to Canada. While the Chinese authorities have respected the requests of Parliament as communicated through the former prime minister, our own consular officials are refusing to act upon the stated and unanimous directives of the House.

I call upon the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to respect the express and unanimous will of the House of Commons by allowing Mingli Lin to enter Canada to be reunited with his family.

[Criminal Code, May 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the motion to send the bill to committee for further review and study.

Bill C-32, which is an act to amend the Criminal Code with regard to drugs and impaired driving, seeks to extend the testing provisions that currently exist for alcohol to also be used for other drugs. Alcohol testing can be done by police officers when an individual is pulled over to the side of the road with ease because of the fact that alcohol can be traced through breath and therefore a very non-intrusive breathalyzer test is possible.

This is not possible for other substances. Really law enforcement authorities frankly in Canada and elsewhere have been very lucky that alcohol is so easily tested through a breathalyzer device.

Therefore, what the proposed law does is allow police officers to require an individual to submit to a blood test and impose penalties for refusing to take that blood test to establish whether or not some degree of substance has been ingested that causes the individual to act in an impaired manner.

Significantly, this has nothing to do with whether is it an illegal substance. It has to do with whether the amount in the person's blood stream is sufficient to cause the person to act in a manner that essentially is negligent and endangers the general public through driving. On the whole that is a very good thing.

Right now the situation is there is no method legally available to police officers to allow them to require an individual to provide a blood sample in order for that sample to be tested to confirm whether the individual's driving is impaired.

The drug recognition expert test, to which my hon. colleague referred, is available and used in three provinces currently: Quebec, British Columbia and Manitoba. However, it is only where the driver voluntarily participates. As we can anticipate, those who themselves feel that they might be in violation of the impaired driving laws are the most likely to refuse compliance with the request of an officer. Therefore, in practice, we can prosecute for the use of a legal drug, alcohol, but not for the use of illegal drugs in a way that causes the individual to be impaired.

Police officers are typically put in a position where it is necessary for them to rely on external evidence; that is behaviour of the individual with erratic driving patterns prior to the automobile being pulled over or by witness testimony, if they can find where the individual came from and are able to have someone report that the individual was using some form of substance in a substantial enough quantity that an individual's driving behaviour was likely to be impaired. In other words, it makes it very difficult to actually carry out prosecutions of those who endanger the public.

This is significant. All of this is taking place to some degree in the context of a debate over another bill, Bill C-10, which would decriminalize the possession and therefore in practice the use of at least limited quantities marijuana. Therefore, as this discussion goes on, we are also talking about a semi-legal drug, its status and how we respond to that.

Sometimes there are individuals, myself included, who refer to the consumption and use of marijuana as a victimless crime; that is, someone uses marijuana but they do not create a victim out there. However, that stops when individuals use marijuana or some other substance, including a prescription drug, and proceed to put themselves essentially at the control of a large and dangerous machine and take actions which could endanger the safety of others. At that point, the public interest becomes involved and potentially there are victims of what essentially boils down to being at the very least a kind of gross negligence. In some cases we see impaired drivers going out when there is almost a certainty they will wind up having an accident. We can argue that when someone is harmed, it is a form of manslaughter.

When I have written on the subject of decriminalization of drugs in the past, I always have stressed the importance of ensuring that we have laws in place that guarantee that negative externalities, the imposition of pain or suffering upon others, are carefully prevented and any form of reduction in the penalties for the use of any mood or mind-altering substance ought to be accompanied by protections for the public.

In October 2001 I wrote an article on the subject of marijuana decriminalization and drugs in general. I wrote the following with reference to the public good and public interest. I said:

--most of us would recognize the need for sanctions against violent behaviour and against the grossest forms of negligence towards others, and it is perfectly reasonable to expect some form of legislated limitation on what economists would describe as the “negative externalities” (harmful or annoying side effects to others) of all personal behaviours, including drug use. Which is, of course, precisely what the state does in the case of legal recreational drugs. Driving or boating while under the influence of alcohol is a criminal offence, as it ought to be.

The same would be true for driving or boating while under the influence of marijuana, a prescription drug, an illegal drug or some mix of those substances. The bill as it stands now would allow for this kind of rule to be enforced in a meaningful way, and that is a positive step.

There are some things, however, that deserve to be mentioned as caveats. One is the fact that it is not as easy to find a consensus on what represents a dangerous level of other substances in the bloodstream. Whereas we have a pretty clear consensus on what represents a dangerous level of alcohol in the bloodstream. That is work that I think we can achieve.

I have great hope that in committee hearings we will hear witnesses who can draw our attention to some of the science on this so we may begin to develop the necessary knowledge to allow ourselves to carry out this kind of law effectively and ensure that those who are not impaired are not facing prosecution and those who are genuinely impaired do not get away from facing prosecution. That is a balancing act and I have hope that we will be successful in finding the solution through this.

I also want to mention that we should not regard this law as being a panacea with regard to the problems raised by Bill C-10, the marijuana decriminalization law.

Bill C-10 has problems that are not addressed by this legislation. Most notable, it seems to me, Bill C-10 simultaneously reduces the penalties for the consumption of marijuana. That means inevitably the consumer demand would increase while at the same time it would increase the penalties for the possession of marijuana for production purposes as measured, for example, by the number of plants one has in one's possession. This could have the consequence of causing simultaneously demand to rise while the penalties also rise and the temptations of risking those penalties also rise, which may result in more prosecutions and more people being tempted into a position where they can be prosecuted than would otherwise be the case. I do not think that is a positive thing and it remains a real concern with Bill C-10. There are other concerns, as well.

However, this proposed and the measures it recommends are very positive. I would encourage members to send the bill forward to the committee.

[Constitution Act, May 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, there is a genuine problem with representation in Canada and with the loss of representation by population in the House of Commons.

As the formula is currently structured, all the provinces with the exception of Ontario, Alberta and B.C. have their numbers frozen due to a variety of formulae, one that says no province shall have fewer members of Parliament than it has senators and another that says no province shall have fewer members of Parliament than it had in 1985. Since seven provinces fit within the category covered by those two provisions, the result is that seven provinces are no longer under the representation by population formula. That is a very severe problem, and it is one which one might have hoped this bill would address.

However, it does not do so, quite frankly. Instead, it worries about what I regard as an almost immaterial problem: the problem of the number of members of Parliament. I am not sure on what basis we think it would be a problem if we had, as the sponsor of the bill says, the population of the United States, in how we would deal with formula.

We are not going to have the population of the United States, now or at any time in the near future. Given the fact that the representation formula has been amended on average once every decade or two over the past century, I am not too worried that by the time we achieve the population the Americans currently have, if we ever do, we will not have had an opportunity to come up with a formula to address it. But this formula does not do it. It worries about capping the numbers in the House of Commons at 308.

Just to give an idea of how bad the current formula is, right now Quebec's population is only marginally larger than the combined populations of British Columbia and Alberta. Quebec has 75 seats, but the two westernmost provinces have a combined total of only 64. Manitoba and Saskatchewan have the same number of seats that Alberta does despite the fact that their combined populations are a million less than Alberta's.

The right way to address this problem would be to change the formula to allow the size of the House of Commons to grow to ensure that Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario citizens are not underrepresented. That would involve a larger number of members of Parliament, not the astronomical number the member is talking about but a somewhat modestly larger number. That is all it would require.

That would produce representation by population for our larger provinces and their residents who are currently underrepresented, a matter about which I feel deeply because, in the entire country, I happen to represent the constituency in which the largest number of votes were cast in the last election, 63,600, which means that, by way of example, a vote in my riding of Lanark--Carleton was worth one-sixth as much it was in the riding of Labrador where only 10,300 votes were cast.

I do not mean to suggest that we ought to cut the number of seats for Newfoundland or adjust the boundaries of the riding of Labrador or in Prince Edward Island or any other province where the population is protected by existing formulae. What I do mean to suggest is that we ought to say representation by population is more important than some abstruse principle like the sacred size of the House of Commons at 308, which has grown to twice the size it had when Canada came into existence and which is only currently half the size of the House of Commons in London on which we are based, which incidentally is in a smaller room than this one. So it is very easy to deal with kind of thing in a fair and principled manner.

The bill says that rule 2 of the current law on representation, section 51 of the Constitution, would be changed, specifically, the rule that currently states that for the total number of the members of the House of Commons the formula will be adjusted to ensure that a bottom is kept for smaller provinces. That is to ensure that no province drops below the number of seats it had in 1985. The bill states that this rule will be removed and will be replaced by this cap of 308.

I tried doing a little calculation based on the member's bill. What we would have to do is use rule 1 of section 51 of the current Constitution, which is an odd rule. It says:

There shall be assigned to each of the provinces a number of members equal to the number obtained by dividing the total population of the provinces by two hundred and seventy-nine--

Why 279? Because that was the number of members in the House of Commons at one point and the rule was fixed at that. Rule 1 continues:

--and by dividing the population of each province by the quotient so obtained, counting any remainder in excess of 0.50 as one after the said process of division.

We need a calculator to go through this. Let us do this and then throw in the rule proposed by the hon. member, which would cap the number at 308. I tried working through his formula. There are several different ways to do formulae under his proposal and, presumably if this were passed, they would wind up being the source of constitutional litigation. But I think we can start by dividing the population of Canada, minus the territories, by 279. That gives us a quotient of 107,219. Then we divide the population of each province by the resulting number. But we have to start a secondary calculation in which we subtract the populations of provinces where the population is below a number that would result in them losing the protection they get by the guarantee in the Constitution that they will not have fewer seats in the House than they have in the Senate.

This is not said in his rule but I assume this is what is meant, because his amendment to the Constitution does not remove the Senate floor. So we would have to remove Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, P.E.I. and Newfoundland and Labrador from that total, recalculate, and also, I assume, subtract the number of seats they hold, although his amendment does not say that either. This means that now we would divide 27,628,586 by 275 with a resulting number of 100,467. That is the size of the average riding in all these provinces.

This produces the following results based on the 2001 census. There are some differences between the representation we currently have in the House. Instead of 7 seats in Newfoundland and Labrador, there would be 6. Instead of 11 seats in Nova Scotia, there would be 10. Instead of 75 seats in Quebec, there would be 72. In Ontario, we would go up from the 106 we now have to 113. Alberta would go up by one and British Columbia also would go up slightly.

I also took the liberty of taking a look at Statistics Canada projections for the year 2021, or what it refers to as its medium growth projections, for populations of the various provinces in the census that will take place 15 or 16 years from now, in order to get a sense of what results we would get at that time in terms of representation.

I will not go through a list of all the provinces, but I would point to a few highlights: Newfoundland and Labrador remains at 6 instead of the 7 it is at currently; Nova Scotia remains at 10 instead of the 11 it is at currently; Quebec drops from 75 seats to 59 seats; and Saskatchewan drops from its current 14 seats to 8 seats. Members get the picture. There is a substantial redistribution.

In a way, the member's bill would achieve part of what I have said we ought to have in our representation here in the House, which is representation by population. He has done it by capping the number of ridings, allowing their size to greatly increase and raising the size of ridings not merely in places like Ontario and B.C., where they are going to grow anyway, but also in Quebec, Saskatchewan and elsewhere.

I suggest, based upon our history, that this has never been acceptable to Canadians. The reason we have a provision in our Constitution that says there will be a floor on the number of seats based upon the number of seats in the Senate is that around the time of the first world war Prince Edward Island was on the verge of losing the number of seats it had. There was a great deal of consternation on the Island, so that rule was set in place.

The reason that we have 75 seats in Quebec right now is because of a problem that occurred in the 1940s, when Ontario's number of seats was going to decline unless the number of seats for Quebec was raised to 75 from the 65 it had been allocated. The number of seats was raised to permit Ontario's representation not to drop. The reason that Quebec has 75 instead of some smaller number now is because of a later change made in the 1970s to ensure that it would not drop.

What I am driving at here is that there is a legitimate problem with representation by population being lost. It already is lost in the House of Commons, to some degree. That problem gets worse and worse in the future under the current formula, but the proposal the member is putting forward I believe addresses this in a way that history shows is unacceptable to Canadians and, therefore, I suggest, would be rejected by them. And I will go further: I think it should be rejected by them.

[Whistleblower Legislation, April 30th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, last Tuesday in question period I pointed out that Bill C-25 contained no provisions whatever for disciplining persons who engaged in reprisals against whistleblowers. The minister responded by telling me to take a look at clause 9.

Clause 9 of Bill C-25 contains provisions for disciplinary action, including termination of employment, but this is for whistleblowers themselves who make disclosures to the public service integrity commissioner without getting prior departmental approval.

Would Bill C-25 not have mandated the minister to fire Allan Cutler for not asking Chuck Guité's permission to go public?

[Whistleblower Legislation, April 30th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, in committee yesterday a public service integrity officer, Edward Keyserlingk, trashed the whistleblower bill. Among other things, he observed that Bill C-25 was missing an independent investigative body, had no mechanism for reporting to Parliament, and provided no protection against reprisal for whistleblowers.

I ask the minister, will he amend the bill to add these provisions which Professor Keyserlingk has highlighted?

[Whistleblower Legislation, April 27th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, prominent whistleblower advocate Ken Rubin said yesterday that the whistleblower legislation, Bill C-25, was a cruel and contemptuous hoax that would accelerate distrust and intimidation, and would end up hurting public employees turned whistleblowers who were doing their jobs.

One reason the bill is so bad is that clause 15 says that “No person shall take any reprisal against a public servant”; however, the bill imposes no penalties whatsoever for violations of this provision.

Will the minister commit today to imposing penalties for the violation of those rights?

[Whistleblower Legislation, April 27th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, today Ralph Heintzman, the government's top official on the whistleblower file, is reported as saying that Bill C-25 is not a whistleblower protection act at all. He says it is actually an internal disclosure bill designed to impose penalties on whistleblowers in order to prevent departmental reputations from being publicly tarnished. Moreover, Mr. Heintzman feels, as Martha Stewart would put it, that “that's a good thing”.

My question is does the President of the Privy Council agree, and can he explain how the act of reporting confidentially to the public sector Integrity Commissioner could publicly tarnish any reputations?

[Petitions, April 23rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is one that relates to natural health care products. The petitioners call upon Parliament to provide for freedom of choice in health care products. They point out that these should be classified properly under our food and drug regulations as a food and not arbitrarily classified as a drug. They also point out that much benefit can be derived from the use of natural health care products through a self-regulated system.

[Petitions, April 23rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present today. The first petition is in relation to Steven Truscott who in 1959, and I believe all of us know, was charged, convicted and sentenced to be executed because he had been found guilty of murdering a neighbour.

The petitioners draw to the attention of Parliament, as many petitioners have before, the unusual circumstances surrounding the case, and suggest that Mr. Truscott was found guilty unfairly. They call upon Parliament to ask the Minister of Justice to re-examine the case within a reasonable period of time and to ensure that justice be restored to Mr. Truscott and that he be pardoned.

[Health, April 23rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, six years ago the federal and provincial governments signed agreements to provide care, not cash, to those who contracted hepatitis C through the blood system before 1986 or after 1990.

Under this agreement, $55 million was given to the Ontario government. However none of these funds have yet been allocated to the delivery of health care services. Instead, the Ontario government insists that it is still studying the problem. As a result, some people, who have been disabled with hepatitis C and can no longer work, are being forced to pay out of their own diminished income for health care.

I would invite Health Canada to investigate this lack of cooperation and, if it cannot induce the province to act on its word, to claw back the transfer and instead provide the funds directly to hepatitis C victims.

The fact that Canadian citizens contracted hepatitis C through the blood system is a national tragedy. The fact that 15 years later there is still no enforceable national standard for assistance to these victims is an embarrassment and a shame.