Scott Reid

[Canada Elections Act, April 26th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I will be dividing my time with the hon. member for Surrey Central.

[Health, April 6th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, an outbreak of foot and mouth disease would shut down Canada's beef exports and that could cost the country billions of dollars.

The CFIA is only now developing a communications plan with Canadian travellers. It has failed to communicate its contingency plans to Canadian livestock producers. Good communications is one of the most valuable tools for keeping this disease out of Canada. It is crucial to contain foot and mouth disease if it arrives on our shores. Why has it taken the government so long to develop any communications plan?

[Health, April 6th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency tells us that it has put together a comprehensive plan to deal with an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Canada. Unfortunately it has not advertised and circulated this plan to industry stakeholders. This means that municipalities, local veterinarians and farmers do not know how they fit into contingency plans to contain an outbreak.

Yesterday at committee the CFIA stated that its plan would be put on its website before the end of the day. It was still not available this morning. Why is the CFIA still failing to adequately inform all industry stakeholders about its responsibilities in the event of an outbreak?

[Canada Elections Act, April 5th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak today in favour of the amendment put forward by my hon. colleague, the member for Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière.

The member suggests that the committee reviewing any possible electronic voting or voting changes would only seek consultation from the Senate and that the committee of the Senate would not exercise a veto over any proposed changes to the voting.

This is an excellent idea. A similar amendment, which I thought was a good idea, was proposed by members of the Bloc Quebecois in committee. I believe the suggestion was actually an improvement over what was suggested when the bill was being reviewed in committee because it allowed the committee of the Senate to actually provide some guidance.

We can benefit from the wisdom in the Senate. The Senate was originally understood to be, as we all know, a chamber of sober second thought. In fact, this might be sober first thought, as it were, but nonetheless a sober commentary, not an actual veto. I think that is a very profitable thing to do.

However, giving a veto over changes, which is the way the relevant section of the proposed law is currently worded, would give a committee of an unelected chamber actual control under the law of Canada over a part of the election law of the country. I think that is a precedent that has already been set, but it is a slippery slope down which we do not want to continue where unelected people have greater and greater control and those of us who are elected, and therefore those who elect us, are less and less in control of the political agenda. This is particularly true when we are speaking of the actual election law of the land, surely the most sacred of all our democratic institutions.

The suggestion I would make is that the Senate actually would have a valuable role and a Senate committee ought to have a veto over any election law changes if the Senate itself were elected. When the amendment came up at committee meetings, I raised the point that it would be very advantageous if in the future we were to allow for greater control from the Senate if it were ever elected. I know I differ from my colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois and the New Democrats in favouring an elected Senate as opposed to the abolition of it, but there is a valuable role a second elected chamber can play, particularly when it is elected on a different basis from the House of Commons.

Many countries around the world have an elected second chamber. I am thinking here for example of Switzerland, the United States, Australia and Germany which use different systems. We forget sometimes that prior to 1867 the united province of Canada did have an elected second chamber. Perhaps one of the greatest steps backward that occurred at the time of confederation, when so many other good measures were put forward and set in stone, was that we went from an elected to an unelected second chamber.

My colleagues from the Bloc Quebecois are particularly sensitive to the problems of having an unelected body practising a veto over the electoral law because of the fact that Quebec has not that long ago had the experience of having its own unelected second chamber. It was only in the 1960s that a constitutional amendment was passed removing that unelected second chamber in Quebec.

I recently had the experience of going through an old issue of a magazine, I think it was the French version of MacLeans published around 1965, which listed all the then incumbents in Quebec's second chamber. It included the dates members were appointed and their ages. One member on that list had been born in the 1870s, a man practically as old as confederation itself. This was an unelected member sitting in that chamber and serving out his time. As it turned out, he was a very long lived gentleman who had been appointed back in antediluvian times and continued to serve as a member of that chamber. I have no idea of his attendance record or of his mental state but he continued to function and, along with a small group of colleagues, to have the ability to block all the laws of the province of Quebec.

In fact that upper house sometimes did block laws when its own privileges were being attacked. It was very concerned about its own privileges. I do not think we want to see that kind of power, which already exists to some degree in the Senate, in Canada. We do not want to see that kind of power being used by committees over business that relates purely and entirely to this Chamber.

It is very important that we have that distinction as long as this is the only democratic Chamber in the country. As long as the country does not have any form of referendum law, citizen initiative, recall law or any of the basic accoutrements of a democratic society, as found in the more democratic societies of the world, then surely we do not need unelected bodies having direct control over changes that would make this place more democratic and the manner in which members are elected to this Chamber more democratic.

I want to briefly refer to the concept of electronic voting and other types of voting that was suggested in the original text of the bill. That is actually a very valuable provision. We should be considering the possibility of electronic voting for citizens.

When I was seeking election there were a number of people unable to cast ballots because they were ill, incapacitated or out of the country. Proxy voting allows to some extent for this problem to be dealt with, but it is an awkward system. It is possible that it could be improved upon. I know all members would want to see any improvement in access to voting for Canadian citizens to go forward. The idea of having some provision that permits for the potential for electronic voting for Canadians is something that should be encouraged.

[Income Tax Act, April 4th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I am rising to follow up on a question that I asked on March 14 which dealt with the ongoing existing crisis in Canadian agriculture.

Today I want to turn to an incipient crisis, a crisis that all Canadians and parliamentarians of all stripes want to avoid and to prevent by any means available to us. I am speaking of the potential for the foot and mouth outbreak in Europe to spread to this country. The risk from foot and mouth disease can scarcely be overstated. The economic impact the disease could have if it were to spread to Canada can scarcely be overrated.

Just looking at the province of Ontario 1996 production figures, we see that 24% of all farms in Ontario were beef farms and that 14% were dairy farms. Looking at my own riding of Lanark—Carleton, 60% of the farms in Lanark county, which make up about half the riding, were either beef or dairy. There were 130 dairy farms, 364 beef farms and 28 farms described as livestock combination and probably included one or the other.

In the part of my riding that has now been incorporated into the megacity of Ottawa, the township of West Carleton, a little over 50% of agricultural production is in beef or dairy. A disease that affects ruminants would have a tremendously damaging impact on my riding.

Looking at the 1952 outbreak in Saskatchewan of foot and mouth disease, which very fortunately hit only 42 farms before it was contained, caused $7 million of damage in today's dollars. However things have changed. The impact of this disease would be far more severe if it happened in Canada today because beef is such a prominent export for us. We could expect that borders would be shut for exports of Canadian beef.

Some countries, if faced with a foot and mouth outbreak, can continue to supply their domestic market, but in the case of Canada such an enormous amount of beef is exported that it is a crucial part of our industry. We would see tremendous damage done if there were to be an outbreak here. As a result I take this issue very seriously.

I attended the debate last night and listened with great interest to all speakers. I was involved last week in a press conference in which a number of Canadian Alliance MPs spoke to the issue. This week I am running ads in two newspapers in my riding on the subject to advise farmers of some of the things they can do. This includes alerting them to the government website that deals with taking preventive measures on their farms.

What I see being done is excellent in terms of slurry mats at airports, the turning back of British military vehicles and so on. However I am very concerned with the consistency with which these measures are being applied. We hear reports that they are not applied across the board. That worries me greatly as I know it does all members.

What is being done to ensure consistency of the application of these measures? Moreover, what is being done to ensure that information on measures individuals can take is being disseminated to Canadians?

[Bélanger-Campeau Commission, March 23rd, 2001]

Madam Speaker, first, I would like to say a few words about the Clarity Act.

The question of the clear majority was mentioned by the hon. parliamentary secretary. That provision of the law, it deserves to be said here, is very unclear. It is important to point that out because the law is often presented as a model of clarity. However that part of the law does not specify what a clear majority would be. It only says that we would hold hearings after a referendum has occurred and after 50% has been achieved in deciding whether a majority has been clear.

When I was a private citizen about this time last year, I came as an expert witness before the committee looking at Bill C-20. I made this observation and suggested that provision of the law be changed. I regret that my advice was not taken.

I suggest, however, that what the government has done is given more credibility to the 50% plus one model while taking away from that sense of validity. The government has, therefore, in passing this law, perhaps achieved the opposite of its objective.

I will also read the motion we are debating today, because I want to make a point with regard to it:

The motion reads as follows:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should recognize the conclusion of the Bélanger-Campeau Commission, which proposed, in 1991, that the National Assembly of Quebec adopt legislation on holding a referendum and the offer of a new partnership, and that no federal legislation or regulations should be incompatible with achieving this conclusion.

That is not quite historically accurate. The last part of the motion which follows the last comma does not accurately reflect what was said by the Bélanger-Campeau commission in its report.

The Bélanger-Campeau commission made four pages of recommendations. The four pages were primarily in the form of a proposed law to be put before the National Assembly of Quebec. Part of the proposed law, which was adopted by the national assembly, called for the establishment of a parliamentary commission of the national assembly for the review of an offer.

I can find nothing in the recommendations that suggests no federal law or regulation ought to be adopted contrary to those recommendations or contrary to the offer to be made. We ought to be clear that we are not debating an historically accurate motion today.

The hon. parliamentary secretary had a good point when he said that the real function of the motion was to suggest that the clarity act was illegitimate. It is an awkward way of approaching it. If I were to regard it as illegitimate, I would attack some of the contents of the act, such as the part to which I just made reference. I find other parts of the act to be quite valuable, particularly the requirement that a clear question be asked.

The subtext of the motion makes reference to or hints at a proposal put forward by Jean-François Lisée in his book Sortie de Secours . He proposed to put forward one part of the supreme court's decision in its reference, Renvoi relatif à la sécession du Québec, and I will read the section:

A clear majority vote in Quebec on a clear question in favour of secession would confer democratic legitimacy on the secession initiative which all of the other participants in Confederation would have to recognize.

This has been read by Mr. Lisée as meaning that not only could a proposal on secession put forward and voted upon by the people of Quebec be taken to the Government of Canada as grounds for mandatory good faith negotiations, but so too could a proposal for some form of new partnership.

It is an interesting reading of the court's reference and not one the court intended. The court is always happy to make readings of the constitution that bear no resemblance to the meaning put there by the original writers of the constitution, so perhaps fair is fair.

It seems Mr. Lisée's intention is to have a referendum question on a new partnership put before the people of Quebec, one that would seem reasonable to the people of Quebec but would be worded in such a way that it would not appear reasonable to people in the rest of the country. It would create some form of negotiations that would be impossible to resolve, much like the negotiations that took place during the Meech-Charlottetown period in our history. This would cause the kind of crisis that the Parti Quebecois government is having so much trouble generating on its own, no matter how many comments about red rags are made by the premier of Quebec.

We must be aware that the subtext is in the motion. If it were a votable motion, we would have good grounds to vote against it and to reject its proposals. I also want to make reference to the fact that there is something legitimate in what is being said.

I will turn to another group that is proposing changes to the Canadian constitution. I am referring to the group led by Stephen Harper, Ken Boessenkool, Tom Flanagan and others known as the Alberta 6. In its open letter to Ralph Klein about two months ago, it proposed that Alberta:

Use Section 88 of the Supreme Court's decision on the Quebec Secession Reference to force Senate reform back on the national agenda. Our reading of that decision is that the federal government and other provinces must seriously consider our proposal for constitutional reform endorsed by “a clear majority on a clear question” in a provincial referendum.

Referring directly to the premier, the group said:

You acted decisively once before to hold a senatorial election. Now is time to drive the issue further.

It is saying that provinces need to have some sort of means to force on to the national agenda issues which are currently only on the provincial agenda but which are legitimate. That is a legitimate point they are making.

That point would be equally legitimate in the case of the concerns of Quebecers. Their concerns are unable to make it on to the national agenda, largely because they get tangled up in the whole question of separation versus remaining in Canada, and the partisan divide that exists in Quebec, as it does everywhere, because of our highly partisan political structure.

Referendums do break through that. We saw that demonstrated brilliantly when we in fact had a crisis in the country. It looked as if the crisis would drive the country apart. A referendum was held nationwide in October 1992, largely because of the Bélanger-Campeau commission recommendations.

Canadians realized that it was a great deal more complex than they had thought it was. The issue was not simply a matter of those rotten separatists, those rotten people in Ottawa or in the rest of the country who would not listen to us and give legitimacy to our positions.

We realized that the constitutional proposals offered were in a vast unworkable package deal. A majority of Quebecers voted against those proposals, as did a majority of people in a number of the other provinces. The issue itself faded away and the unity crisis that could have broken up the country also passed.

It is my own reading of that time. I was an active participant on the no side in that referendum. We were in greater danger as a country in 1992 than we were three years later in 1995 when the provincial referendum in Quebec was held.

While I am a supporter of direct democracy, I am probably the strongest supporter of direct democracy in the House, with the possible exception of my hon. colleague from Vancouver Island North. Nevertheless, I have some reservations about this sort of back door method of introducing the concept of direct democracy, and of putting regional concerns through a referendum on to the national stage.

I would suggest reasons for this kind of reservation by way of reference to one of the great constitutional thinkers in the British parliamentary tradition. I am referring to Albert Venn Dicey who wrote the brilliant work Law of the Constitution in the 1880s. It was then updated until his death in 1915.

He talked about the role of referendum and plebiscite in the British parliamentary system and whether it was compatible with the system. He suggested that the plebiscite, as practised in France, was incompatible with it. This is the kind of referendum we are talking about here. What he meant by plebiscite was: initiated by government usually on some vague proposal as opposed to specific legislation such as an order to negotiate.

By contrast, he suggested the Swiss model of citizen initiated referendum on a specific legislative means. That would be the most productive way of achieving the kind of goals that might unite us all, including my hon. colleague who suggested the motion.

[Figure Skating, March 22nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday in Vancouver, Jamie Salé and David Pelletier were crowned world pairs figure skating champions.

This inspiring example of perseverance and determination shows what a fellow from Quebec and a girl from Red Deer, Alberta, can accomplish when they decide to work together.

I have but one comment: Congratulations.

Indeed last night the figure skating duo of Salé and Pelletier beat the Russian and Chinese teams to become the world figure skating champions.

They showed Canada and the world what great things can be accomplished when people from Quebec and people from Red Deer, Alberta, get together and work hard toward their goals.

I congratulate them in the name of all Canadians and tell them that they have done well and we are proud of them.

[Modernization Of House Of Commons Procedure, March 21st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member talked about how this place is very democratic and how he worries that, and I believe these are his words, there would be anarchy if we did not have the status quo. I may be wrong but that is my understanding of what he said.

I will make a few observations about this place and then talk about some other places that do not have the kind of party discipline that exists here.

To date I have seen very few occasions on which members on any side of the House, and that would include Liberal and opposition sides, have not voted the will of their party. There have been very few. It is our understanding that there was pressure applied yesterday to a member on the opposite side to make sure he voted with the government, because he has voted against the government too often and it has become an embarrassment. We all know there are tremendous pressures put on members by the party whips. I wonder how that can be described as democratic.

When we had a system of open votes in Canada there was tremendous pressure on people to vote with the governing party. Sometimes people were paid by being given alcohol. That is why liquor sales were prohibited on voting day. It was the first attempt to deal with the problem. The secret ballot was introduced, but methods were found to ensure voters would still reveal their ballot.

Someone might have been given a ballot by one of the parties as he or she went into the poll. The pre-marked ballot would be handed in and the ballot that had been issued upon entering the poll would be returned to the party operative waiting outside. A bottle of liquor would be given as a reward.

Counterfoils such as numbered ballot sheets and so on were developed to promote genuine democracy by creating a system of fairness and secrecy. That seems far superior to what we have here.

Literally thousands of other legislative bodies in the country do not have party discipline or parties, and there is no anarchy there at all. I am thinking of our municipal governments. I fail to see any anarchy there.

Looking at the 10 municipal governments plus a county council that exist in my own riding of Lanark—Carleton, I see that they are far more efficient, collegial, effective and frugal bodies than is this place and this government.

I look as well at the governments in two of our territories, which are run not on a partisan basis but on a collegial basis. That seems superior to the method in which the House is run. When I look at Britain's parliament in the 19th century, the golden age of parliament, although there was a party system it was in fact a very loose system.

I wonder if the hon. member would agree that perhaps there are alternative models that are superior to this one and that perhaps our model is not quite the paradise he has painted it as being.

[Modernization Of House Of Commons Procedure, March 21st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member raises a good point. I do not think that the exact method is necessarily the important thing. It is some form of review prior to, as opposed to after, appointments have been made, some form of questioning, that would be profitable. Committees are certainly a good place to start.

There is always a problem with these things when the votes take place openly because then we get, effectively, some kind of party discipline or pressure being applied to the decisions that are made and to the questions that come up. However, I am afraid this is probably all that is available to us and it is a good starting point.

I have struggled with the question of how we deal with patronage appointments, ensuring that they are in fact based on merit. Absent the presence of a philosopher king who always chooses exclusively on merit and who is virtually omniscient in being able to choose the best people, we need to have some form of delegation. I would think that the nominations going forward to whoever is doing the review ought to as well be coming from a bit broader source than merely the Prime Minister's Office.

I say this with some reservation, because there may be problems with this, but I think that perhaps we should consider the possibility of excluding certain classes of people from patronage appointments, such as people who are defeated candidates for a party in the prior election until a period of time has passed, or people who have perhaps donated more than a certain amount of money to a governing party, or people who have served in some other capacity that would make them obvious candidates, unless they go through some sort of special further review to ensure that they really are being chosen on their merits and that their political allegiance is purely coincidental.

[Modernization Of House Of Commons Procedure, March 21st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member who has just spoken for bringing a very serious matter to the attention of the House.

It will be a very interesting test when Bill C-9 comes before the House. The hon. government House leader is also the minister sponsoring Bill C-9. It will be the first bill back which will apply the recently adopted motion. We will see him occupying several roles I guess. We will watch with great interest to see how enthusiastic he is about allowing for a full range of debate in this place on potential amendments that were not brought forward in committee.

We will also be able to get a sense of the sincerity with which he is intending to apply the motion we are currently debating. To what degree is the motion sincere as opposed to the degree to which it is meant as window dressing, merely to divert attention from the ongoing erosion of democracy. That erosion is contained in Bill C-9 and the series of rather pernicious laws, of which it is merely the latest, designed to limit access of third parties during an election.

Bill C-9 is intended to restrict the ability of Canadians to participate fully in referendum campaigns, which can only be called at any rate at the behest of the government, and to limit the ability in the case of this law of small parties to participate in election campaigns on an equal footing with those larger parties represented in the Chamber. I hope we will discover that the government House leader is very sincere. I fear we may find the opposite, but we will find out and we will be watching with great attention.

The last member to speak did so on a very narrow but important topic. It is my intention to draw from some of the same themes but to speak in a very broad sense. I will also dwell upon some of the broad themes of democracy that the motion addresses or hopes to address.

I am thinking here of the spirit that motivates the 1867 Constitution of Canada and the words found in its preamble. It begins “...with a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom—”. The Constitution of Canada is a written constitution, whereas that of Britain is not. The Constitution of Canada is federal and Britain is a quasi-unitary state and was entirely unitary in 1867. There were no regional assemblies in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

The essence that was being captured in that preamble was the notion that Canada would be similar to the United Kingdom in having certain understandings as to how Canadians would be treated by their government. It was an idea conceptualized in the imperial parliament at that time in a law called the Colonial Laws Validity Act, which attempted to make clear limitations on what colonial assemblies, including Canada at the time, could do in terms of restricting the rights of their citizens.

Any law that was repugnant would be repugnant to the laws of England as applied in England and would also be invalid in a colonial legislature. That was used with limited success as an argument against racist laws in Australia that were meant to exclude non-whites from immigration from other parts of what was then the British Empire.

The preamble was also meant to make it clear that Canada would be adopting many of the conventions that existed in Britain. The most important of those conventions was the party system which at that time was starting to gel in Britain. The convention that the ministry was responsible to, its House of Commons, and this had already taken place to some degree in Canada in the form of responsible governments. We are being true to our own independently developed traditions which paralleled those which developed in Britain.

This empiricist tradition is at the base of our political system and is the basis of the great success of our democracy or, as I like to say and have said on other occasions in this place, of our republic. I mean republic in the traditional Aristotelian sense; a mixed government in which there is a monarchial element, an aristocratic element and a democratic element. This is the basis of the success of our system and I worry when I see it eroding.

An alternative system has been used widely in the west and has done a great deal of damage over the past two centuries. This is the tradition that developed through Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This is the concept of a general will which is expressed not through institutions such as this one, not through rules of order and not mediated at all, but a will which is expressed. It is different from the mass of individual wills. It is, in some respect, a common will felt by the people which is interpreted almost intuitively by a leader who is in mystical union with the people.

We saw this developed by Rousseau and saw it actualized in France in the regime of Napoleon Bonaparte and later on by Napoleon III. We have also seen it in action in other countries. In Argentina, it was known as Peronism. We saw it develop into a cult of personality in a number of countries like fascist Italy, Portugal and Spain.

The danger is that these institutions, which have been developed so carefully in Canada and in countries like the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, and also which in a very different way were jelled and set down in constitutional stone in the United States following its revolution, will erode over time. The American founding fathers worried a great deal that the natural course of things is for power to centralize in the hands of a few or eventually of one ruler.

The tendency has been for power over time, in the absence of some sort of cataclysm which resets everything back at its republican origins, to centralize.

We see this developing in the United States, for example, in the so-called imperial presidency in which to some degree, to a minor degree but to a growing degree, we have seen effectively an elected monarch with a four year periodic election of that monarch. This is something we have seen drawn to the public attention at various times. The phrase “the imperial presidency” comes from the time of Richard Nixon.

In Canada we see the centralization of power in the Prime Minister's Office and in the hands of the Prime Minister. We even see, to some degree, members of cabinet, except for those very central members of the inner cabinet, frozen out from power. We also see the House being turned into what amounts to an electoral college in perpetual session simply reaffirming the Prime Minister, who is in a very genuine sense simply our elected king, reaffirming him in office periodically through these forced votes.

This is something which absolutely must be fought against. Of course the first step in doing this is to try to create more democracy in the House. This is of course why I feel so strongly and why I do hope that the motion here is meant sincerely, that the committee will come back with some very practical suggestions which will indeed return some autonomy to the House so that it serves as the democratic check on the monarchical power represented by the Prime Minister.

As well of course, we would like to see the Senate turned into an aristocracy as it was originally meant, that is to say a natural aristocracy, the best among us selected to represent the wisdom by which the decisions made here are mediated before they become the law of the land.

Very briefly, because I know I have just a few moments left, I want to draw the attention of the House to one possibility that I think the committee should consider as it meets to decide how it will change the way in which this place operates, and that is the secret ballot. The secret ballot, of course, is used here only for the election of the Speaker. I think all members are happy with that system. I think it works well.

I wonder if we could not broaden the system and use it as well for electing the Deputy Speaker, chairs of committees and also commissioners reporting to parliament, who are after all, at least nominally, to represent the will of parliament and to be responsible to us as opposed to the government.

I also wonder if we could not perhaps solve the problem of supreme court justices being non-representative if they were to be elected by secret ballot in parliament from perhaps a list nominated by the government or proposed by some other method.

Finally, I wonder if patronage appointments could not be ratified, perhaps in groupings, by means of secret ballot.

I would suggest that if we do this we consider using some means of voting that is a little more expeditious than the method used in the election of the Speaker, that is to say something that takes less than a day to execute. Perhaps electronic voting is appropriate. Perhaps a single transferable ballot is appropriate.

I simply present those options for your consideration, Mr. Speaker, and for the consideration of the House.