Scott Reid

[Queensway Carleton Hospital, September 27th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I do not have the rules of the House in front of me, but I believe that in order for an amendment to be out of order, it would have to change the intention of the motion. The intention, as was made very clear in the lengthy speech of my hon. colleague, was to ensure that the Queensway Carleton Hospital is able to continue functioning.

I am aware that the hon. member disagrees with me on this point. However, I think the key point here is not the sale or lease, but it is in fact the—

[Queensway Carleton Hospital, September 27th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, my remarks will be divided into three matters. First, I want to talk a little about the importance of this particular hospital, as someone who has lived most of his life in an area that is served by the Queensway Carleton Hospital. Second, I would like to talk a little about the theme of equality of treatment for institutions on federal lands and how the Queensway-Carleton Hospital is being singled out for unfair and certainly very different treatment from other institutions on federal lands. Third, I would like to correct a couple of factual errors made earlier in the remarks by my hon. colleague from Ottawa West.

At the end of my debate I will be moving an amendment to the motion. The amendment has the approval of the mover of the motion, the hon. member for Nepean--Carleton.

Let us start with number one. This is a very important hospital. My former riding of Lanark--Carleton contained a number of very small towns. Carleton Place, where I live, with a population of 10,000, has a hospital, and a very good hospital I might add. Almonte, a smaller town, also has a hospital. Smiths Falls and Perth now have a united hospital with two campuses, one in each town. This is part of the reason for the vitality of smaller towns, having the capacity to serve people in the community.

The other part of the constituency I formerly represented was the city of Kanata, now part of the city of Ottawa, with a population 65,000 and it did not have its own hospital. It was only part of the catchment area covered by the Queensway Carleton Hospital, along with Stittsville, the Goulburn area, parts of the western part of the city of Ottawa and much of the former city of Nepean, a catchment area in total of several hundred thousand people. This is a very important institution. Perhaps I am biased a little in emphasizing how important it is by the fact that this is the hospital to which my mother was taken when she broke her hip a couple of decades ago and she received excellent service there.

Of course excellent service can be provided only when there is the financial capacity to provide that service. When moneys are diverted from health care to other expenditures, including rent to the National Capital Commission, then of course the ability to provide that money for health care services will not be there.

That is not necessarily a tremendously significant issue right now because the amount of rent being paid is not huge. Just now the Queensway Carleton Hospital is finishing up a 40-year lease that was signed in July 1973. The lease will expire in 2013. Right now the rent is not enormous, but in 2013 it could become a very substantial rent. Because of the uncertainty caused by no decision being taken to guarantee a reasonable rate of rent, a guarantee into the future, the Queensway Carleton Hospital is hamstrung. It is hamstrung now by the dithering of a government that will not deal with an issue which, sure, is eight years off in the future. In terms of this government, that might as well be a million years from now. In terms of investment and the sorts of investments that a hospital has to make, that is not a million years from now. Eight years is in fact a very short time horizon and the hospital cannot act unless it has certainty.

The second thing I want to talk about is equality treatment. Justice demands that all like facilities on federal lands be treated similarly. There are other hospitals on federal lands. This is not the only one. This is, however, the only one that faces this kind of uncertainty. This is the only hospital on federal lands that pays more than a nominal rent and which faces the danger of a potentially enormous increase in its rental payment in the future. This makes this hospital's situation very different from that of the other hospitals that are on federal lands.

Of course the example was already given of the Pine View Municipal Golf Course, a golf course in the city of Ottawa which pays a nominal rent to the National Capital Commission. An observation was made about the fact that it has certain obligations in addition to its nominal rent.

I am unaware of any lease signed by anyone anywhere--and I say this as someone who has a lease on a number of properties myself, including constituency offices. I have two constituency offices. I rent where I live. I have signed business leases. I have never heard of a lease that does not have obligations in it.

The nonsense that was thrown out by the hon. member that somehow this distinguishes and explains why there is no actual monetary revenue paid by this golf course is just nonsense. This is just a red herring thrown across the path to leave the impression that somehow the government is not engaged in a gross injustice when it imposes costs on a hospital that it will not impose on a golf course. And I say that as someone who loves golf.

This brings me to the third theme I have in my remarks today, the misstatements or the errors that were made in the remarks by the hon. member for Ottawa West—Nepean. I mentioned the golf course already which was one of them. The second one was about private facilities on hospital premises. She suggested, erroneously, and it was probably an honest mistake but I want to correct it now, that the hon. member for Nepean—Carleton in his motion had also talked about the idea of putting private facilities, for profit facilities, on the land currently leased by the hospital from the National Capital Commission. That is not so. What in fact the hon. member for Nepean—Carleton has said is that the hospital might be allowed in the future to sublease facilities to private practitioners, that is, to family practitioners in particular, in order that they can carry on their family practices.

There is the problem of a lack of family practitioners in Ontario. I for one do not have a family doctor right now. The member is trying to assist in dealing with this problem in his constituency. This is something that hospitals are doing everywhere, including in the province of Ontario. To suddenly discover that this is some kind of abuse of the health care system is an invention of the member for Ottawa West--Nepean. There is in fact a perfectly reasonable business case for doing this. There is a health care case for doing this. I think this is just another red herring the member has thrown out to distract us from the real issue of the injustice in the way in which the Queensway-Carleton Hospital is being treated.

Third is the issue of what the NCC can and cannot do, that somehow the NCC is an independent operator, operating out there with no political interference, that it is on its own and any problems that arise in the way the Queensway-Carleton is treated should be laid, the member suggests, at the door of the National Capital Commission. That is just not so. The National Capital Commission is under the control of the cabinet and of the government. The National Capital Commission can and does change things, or indeed is overridden by orders in council when the government decides to do so.

The government did decide to do so in a matter that it judged to be of urgency just a few months ago when it was discovered that a member of the Senate might be in a position of conflict of interest. The Treasury Board rules were changed regarding a building in the national capital area. When it is an issue the government judges to be of importance, it can act lickety-split and it should act quickly on this issue too, an issue that is of importance.

I mentioned that I had an amendment to present. In presenting this amendment, I just want to say that the member also suggested that the transfer of land, the transfer of ownership of the land is a major issue, that we ought not to alienate federal property and that it might some day go on to some other use. Of course some things could be written into the covenant of sale to deal with that. The other possibility is that the land could be leased at a nominal rate for a long period of time. That is what my amendment is going to suggest, that the federal government lease the land to the hospital for a long period of time at $1 a year.

We can test the sincerity of the member's commitment to actually try to provide these services and test whether or not it was just a non sequitur that she threw out when this amendment comes up for a vote.

Therefore, I move, with the approval of the original mover of the motion, the hon. member for Nepean—Carleton:

That M-135 be amended by:

(a) deleting the word “transferring” and replacing it with the words “continuing to lease”; and

(b) by adding after the word “dollar”, the following: “per annum, starting at the end of the current lease in the year 2013”.

[Democratic Reform, June 28th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, in his first throne speech, the Prime Minister announced that he would restore freedom to MPs by adopting a three line voting system.

Under this system, when a vote is designated as a three line whip, all Liberal MPs have to vote the way they are told. Ministers and parliamentary secretaries are bound by party discipline when it is a two line whip. But not to worry. Under a one line whip, every Liberal MP is in theory free to vote according to conscience.

I say in theory because the government's annual report on democratic reform reveals that not one vote has ever been designated by the Prime Minister as a one line whip. This is significant because a two line whip denies a free vote to all those new cabinet ministers and parliamentary secretaries the PM keeps creating, including both of the ministers for democratic reform.

It means that every member of a cabinet that is expanding like a prize winning pumpkin is bound on every single vote and on every single piece of government business. If the freedom of Liberal MPs is the test of the democratic deficit, the Prime Minister gets an F.

[Civil Marriage Act, June 28th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with my hon. colleague's opinion.

The invoking of closure is permitted under the rules, but to me the real travesty was the absolutely unconstitutional decision of the government to refuse to permit a confidence vote in the House until it had a chance to cause members to cross the floor, to attempt to buy the vote of one member and perhaps several others, before it had the chance to frame the debate.

The whole idea of the House needing confidence in the government is predicated on the idea that it is the House that determines whether or not it has confidence in the government. It is not up to the government to choose the time and place of a debate and try to rig the proceedings. That was unconstitutional. It was a violation of one of the most fundamental tenets and conventions of our Constitution. It was an absolute abuse. To me that will be what Paul Martin will be remembered for. He will be remembered for shame in Canadian history.

[Civil Marriage Act, June 28th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, as a general rule, the Supreme Court and indeed all courts in Canada are reluctant to rule on hypothetical cases when the opportunity exists for presenting an actual case of law before them. The courts do not like to do this, notwithstanding the lapses in judicial activism that we see more often than we ought to with our courts. The reason they do not like to do it is that a hypothetical case inevitably is a case of policy, as opposed to being a matter of deciding on law. Obviously courts do what they can to restrict the extent to which they are being forced into policy decisions, especially when it is a highly controversial decision on which a consensus does not exist in public opinion.

I think the court quite rightly sensed that it was being asked to make a political decision to get the Prime Minister out of the hot seat. The Supreme Court quite rightly said, “Look, you have other options here”. One option would have been to appeal one or perhaps several of the provincial court decisions up to the Supreme Court of Canada. The court might have, as my hon. colleague from Scarborough—Rouge River suggested, in the end decided to uphold those decisions, or it might not have done so. We will not know. That would have been the best way to go from a legal point of view.

Of course the Minister of Justice understands that entirely, as does the Prime Minister, but they were not looking for the best legal solution. They were looking for a way to get themselves off the policy hook, while at the same time pushing through their agenda on same sex marriage.

[Civil Marriage Act, June 28th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois is a sovereignist party. It is interesting that this party is in favour of Quebec's sovereignty. This support is legitimate in a Canadian context. However, it is also legitimate to point out that most federalist MPs, meaning those in favour of Canadian unity, oppose this bill. That is what the leader of my party said yesterday about this evening's vote.

[Civil Marriage Act, June 28th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo.

Let me start by indicating that I will be voting against the bill at third reading. I will be doing so because I consulted with my constituents, using a householder that contained a mail in ballot, in which constituents were asked the following question, “Should your member of parliament vote for the civil marriage act?”

We received back a total of 9,176 responses, with 7,321 advising me to vote against the bill, 1,814 advising me to vote for the bill and a further 41 ballots which were either spoiled or invalid. Therefore, my mandate is clear. My constituents want me to vote against this bill and I will respect their wish. However, speaking frankly, I am relieved that I was not asked to vote for this bill since I have grave concerns as to the implications of the civil marriage act for religious freedom in Canada.

Defence of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience has been one of the hallmarks of my own political career. My very first speech in the House of Commons in 2001 was in defence of the freedom of conscience of Falun Gong practitioners who had been persecuted in China.

In 2002 I offered a resolution, which was adopted unanimously by the House, in favour of freeing 13 Falun Gong practitioners who had ties to Canada and who had been imprisoned in China for expressing freedom of conscience. Some of those individuals are in our country today as free individuals because Parliament took a stand at that time in favour of freedom of religion and conscience.

My loyalty to this foundational principle goes beyond the defence of any one group. I have spoken out in protest against the oppression of Tibetan Buddhists and of both Buddhists and Christians in Vietnam.

One of the reasons I broke with my party to vote against the Anti-terrorism Act in 2001 was because that law effectively criminalized certain kinds of religious beliefs in certain kinds of situations, a feature that at least in theory could lead to the oppression of religious groups, most notably and obviously a danger that existed with Canadian Muslims.

When I say that I am very worried by the absence in Bill C-38 of protections for freedom of religion and freedom of conscience, I hope hon. members will understand how serious this matter is to me.

I am not unique of course in having such concerns. I will read from an article that Father Raymond de Souza, the well-known columnist, published in the journal First Things last year. He wrote, regarding the draft same sex marriage law then before the Supreme Court:

[It is likely to erode] religious liberty on questions related to marriage. First it will be churches forced to rent out their halls and basements for a same-sex couple’s wedding reception. Then it will be religious charities forced to recognize employees in same-sex relationships as legally married. Then it will be religious schools not being allowed to fire a teacher in a same-sex marriage. Then it will be a hierarchical or synodal church not being allowed to discipline an errant priest or minister who performs a civilly legal but canonically illicit same-sex marriage. All of this can happen short of the worst-case scenario specifically exempted in the federal government’s proposed law.

If Father de Souza's concerns seem a bit over the top to some hon. members, let me demonstrate that these concerns are, if anything, understated.

I will demonstrate this by giving a real life example of just how far Canada's courts have already gone to restrict or roll back the protection given to freedom of religion and freedom of conscience and the protection given to those rights under section 2 of the charter when this protection has come into conflict with the currently fashionable but constitutionally unjustifiable, highly aggressive reading of the charter's equality of rights section, section 15.

I refer to the Scott Brockie case, although there are other cases before this nation's courts that I could cite as equally effective illustrations.

In April 1996, Scott Brockie and his family's Toronto printing business, Imaging Excellence, were approached with an order for letterhead, envelopes and business cards for the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives. Mr. Brockie, who is a Christian, refused to accept the order as it contravened his religious conscience to assist an organization's activities that directly promoted homosexuality, which he believed to be a sin.

Two months later, a representative from the Archives filed a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission, asserting that Mr. Brockie had denied the individual commercial services based on the man's sexual orientation.

In September 1999, Mr. Brockie and Imaging Excellence were found guilty of what was called discriminatory conduct. He was forced to pay a penalty to the Archives of $5,000 and to provide the printing services he had originally refused; in other words, to perform an act that he regarded as being unethical or immoral.

All of this occurred despite the fact that Mr. Brockie was able to demonstrate in court that he had provided printing services to homosexuals in the past and that his objection was to the policy objectives of the organization seeking the use of his services rather than to the sexual orientation of the representative who approached him.

Later, the Ontario Supreme Court rejected Mr. Brockie's request to overturn the decision. The Superior Court had initially awarded Mr. Brockie $25,000 in costs, a decision that the Human Rights Commission and the archives successfully appealed to the Court of Appeals. As a result, Mr. Brockie must now foot a legal bill of $40,000.

In upholding the initial decision of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the Ontario Superior Court engaged a logic that, if fully applied, would mean that freedom of conscience has no meaning under Canadian law, except that with which it is endowed by judges who more often than not will not share the religious or ethical beliefs of those upon whose right to act according to conscience they are ruling.

The court started in paragraph 51 of its ruling by citing with approval an earlier case in which the Supreme Court of Canada had “expressed some of the elements of freedom of religion and necessary limits on it”, that is, freedom of religion. It went on to state:

The further [a given] activity is from the core elements of the freedom, the more likely the activity is to impact on others and the less deserving the activity is of protection. Service of the public in a commercial activity must be considered at the periphery of activities protected by freedom of religion.

The court went on to say, “Mr. Brockie's exercise of his right of freedom of religion in the commercial marketplace is, at best, at the fringes of that right”. It then made an argument in paragraph 56 of its decision that deserves to be quoted at length:

If any particular printing project ordered [of] Mr. Brockie...contained material that conveyed a message proselytizing and promoting the gay and lesbian lifestyle or ridiculing his religious beliefs, such material might reasonably be held to be in direct conflict with the core elements of Mr. Brockie's religious beliefs. On the other hand, if the particular printing object contained a directory of goods and services that might be of interest to the gay and lesbian community, that material might reasonably be held not to be in direct conflict with the core elements of Mr. Brockie's religious beliefs.

Let me start by making the obvious observation of the astounding arrogance of this claim. How can the court know what Mr. Brockie's core religious beliefs are? How can it determine what is core and fundamental to his conscience? When he says certain things are core to his beliefs, how can the court say that no, they are not, that he misunderstands what his own beliefs are and the court will dictate them to him?

There are so many examples from history of this. Let me cite just one example where something that appeared peripheral was actually core to people's beliefs.

I studied Russian history. In the 1600s, in an attempt to modernize the Orthodox church, the czar of Russia instructed that certain changes would occur. For example, the manner in which the sign of the cross was made would be done using three fingers instead of two and certain other apparently limited rationalizations took place. The so-called old believers, and there were hundreds of thousands of them, maybe millions in Russia, were so distressed by these changes they fought them. Sometimes it cost them their lives. Whole congregations allowed themselves, for example, to be burned alive rather than to change to the new rationalizations.

These may seem like peripheral beliefs and practices, but they were not peripheral in the minds of the old believers. I would argue that it is arrogant to assume that any court has the capacity to reach into the minds of other people to determine what is core to their belief systems.

This is as outlandish as the court determining that a Buddhist has no right not to print menus for a restaurant that serves meat. It is as ridiculous as instructing a Muslim that he has no right not to allow the Gideon Bible to be placed on bedside tables in a motel he runs. It is as inappropriate as saying that it is not against the core belief of a Mennonite to refuse to print a pamphlet promoting a war. This is simply inappropriate and arrogant action on the part of the courts. Unfortunately, it is something that could get worse and indeed is likely to get worse under the direction that the government is going.

Kevin Bourassa who runs the website equalmarriage.ca has publicly stated the following warning to religious officials who disagree with his viewpoint. Mr. Bourassa, of course, is in favour of same sex marriage. He stated:

If you are at the public trough, if you are collecting taxpayers' money, you should be following taxpayers' laws. And that means adhering to the Charter....We have no problem with the Catholic Church or any other faith group promoting bigotry.

By that he means opposition to same sex marriage.

We have a problem with the Canadian government funding that bigotry.

In other words, we have a problem with the Catholic church being able to have charitable status but not with the Unitarian church.

I myself am a Unitarian and was raised as a Unitarian, as part of a church that supports same sex marriage. I do not think it is my right to dictate that the Catholic church or any other institution which says that same sex marriage is not moral should be deprived of its equality and its right to speak freely and proselytize its views, any more than I happen to think that the Catholic church should be restricted from saying that divorced persons, like myself, cannot get married in a Catholic ceremony. It is not my right; it is not the right of any person to dictate what some other person's core beliefs are and to say that that person does not have the right to express those beliefs I dictate as being non-core.

This is protection that is completely absent not merely from Bill C-38, but from the entire legislative agenda of the government. It could be central to its agenda, but it is not. I regret that very much. I urge every member of this House to vote against this bill and in favour of protection of freedom of religion and conscience in Canada.

[Petitions, June 27th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am presenting a petition that was just approved this morning. It is on the matter that is before the House, the definition of marriage.

The people who have signed the petition state that traditional marriage is the best foundation for raising families and children. They observe that the majority of Canadians favour the traditional definition of marriage as between one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. They encourage Parliament rather than the courts to be the reinforcer of the traditional definition of marriage.

[Veterans, June 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, in conflicts from World War I to Afghanistan, Canada's veterans have risked their lives in the defence of our country, the freedom of Europe and Asia and for liberty itself.

Last year thousands of our veterans passed away with insufficient recognition from the government. Not one of the caskets of the heroes who departed this world in 2004 was covered with a flag provided by the Government of Canada.

The governments of many other countries provide flags for the caskets of their departed veterans. This practice would do honour both to our fallen heroes and to the flag itself.

In 2005, the Year of the Veteran, I call upon the government to give long overdue recognition to the heroes who still walk among us by immediately initiating a program to bestow upon each of them a Canadian flag as a symbol of the appreciation of a grateful nation.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 20th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the hon. member left me a few moments to respond, although he ate up more than half the available time with his question by repeating several points over and over again.

Let me start with his question regarding whether there are Progressive Conservatives still in this party. I am looking around the room right now. The House is not as occupied as it often is, but nonetheless I see a former president of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, one of my hon. colleagues who has been listening with rapt attention to every word the hon. member for Yukon said, one of the men with whom I helped negotiate the merger of the two parties, the hon. member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl. He would never have joined a party or reached an agreement that did not take into account very seriously the values of the party that he then represented. I could go on and on.

With regard to the issues that the member points to, housing, education and so many other excellent priorities, I have two thoughts. One is, if these are such important values, why were they not in Bill C-43? Why was it that the New Democrats had to impose them on the government? That would be a legitimate question for a New Democrat to be asking me. Perhaps if one of the New Democrats had raised that question, he would have a point.

The fact is that this was forced on the Prime Minister, who was desperate to save his government and did not give a hoot for any of these priorities a few months ago. He only developed this exquisite concern he now has after he realized that it was his ass on the line. I think we should not get too high on our horses about these being high Liberal priorities. They were not priorities of the Liberal Party at all.

Let me add the fact that the reason there is a shortage of funding for some of these priorities, all of which are in provincial jurisdiction, is that the government took so many billions of dollars out of the hands of provincial governments over a period of a decade while the current Prime Minister was the minister of finance. The Liberals should hang their heads in shame for the mess they made of this nation's finances.