Scott Reid

[Petitions, March 25th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, last weekend I was presented with a petition containing the signatures of 10,000 residents of eastern Ontario on the subject of the long gun registry. It had been presented to Ontario's minister of public security, Bob Runciman, but because it was a federal matter it was passed to me to present in the House, with his approval.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to take into account, when voting on Bill C-68, the fact that expenses are 500 times over budget; that the Auditor General has indicated that the government has failed to keep Parliament informed with regard to the cost of the gun registry; that a majority of long gun owners in Canada have not registered their guns; that the government has failed to provide any conclusive or verifiable evidence that the registry results in a reduction in crime; and that the registry has the effect of withdrawing resources that could be used for the reduction of criminal offences with firearms.

I present this petition to the House.

[Petitions, March 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition to present signed by a number of constituents in my riding.

The petition refers to the working conditions and the pay of rural route mail couriers in Canada who, if their pay is measured on an hourly basis, often earn less than the minimum wage and whose working conditions are perhaps not what they ought to be.

The petitioners ask and pray that the House consider giving rural route mail couriers collective bargaining rights now or to allow their working conditions and their pays to be raised to levels that are equitable with those of other postal workers.

[Canada Health Act, March 19th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to speak to Bill C-202.

I would like to begin by making a brief mention of my colleague, the hon. member for Ottawa—Vanier, the man behind this bill. He is a man of good will and great intelligence, a real spokesperson, who has distinguished himself in his battles for the Franco-Ontarian minority community to which he belongs. I have a great deal of respect for him as a spokesperson for his community.

I am therefore sorry that I must oppose this bill. I will explain why I am opposed.

Let me start by reviewing the bill's provisions. It would add linguistic duality as a sixth provision of the Canada Health Act. There are currently five provisions in the Canada Health Act which the act states must be provided in provincial health services in order to receive federal funding. Those provisions are: portability, universality, accessibility, comprehensiveness and public administration. If any of those provisions are not followed then the result is that the federal government is supposed to, under the provisions of the Canada Health Act, withhold funding from provincial health spending. That means that the Canada Health Act can only be enforced by reducing the amount of money available for health care in this country.

That is a very blunt instrument for ensuring better health care. It means that the Canada Health Act ought to be used, and not be enforced through the reduction of funds, only in the most severe cases where some practice is so outrageous in its restriction on the health care rights of Canadians that it would result in a genuine loss of health care benefits. Otherwise, the enforcement itself would result in lesser qualities of health care, longer waiting lists and, in general, poorer health indeed. If it were enforced too strictly and too many funds withdrawn one could not unreasonably expect that there would be some fatalities caused by the over stringent enforcement of the act. Therefore, we must be extraordinarily cautious how we apply this law and how we consider rewriting the law.

The bill provides for some things that seem completely unobjectionable. I will read one of the parts of the law and it would be hard for anybody to object to this in principle. The proposed bill states:

12.1(b) the provincial health insurance plan shall offer insured health services in the language spoken by the members of the anglophone or francophone minority of the province, taking into account the organization of human, material and financial resources of the province's facilities that offer such services and, where applicable, in accordance with any program ensuring access...

That does not seem unreasonable. However, in the case of a piece of legislation like this it is necessary to take a step back and ask why is it only francophone and anglophone minorities that would get this kind of protection?

Let us think very carefully. In this place we have the right to speak either English or French and to have translation provided and documents provided for us because we represent the two largest language groups of the country, and the two languages that have always been in use in this country.

However, when we are talking about a life and death service we must take a somewhat different attitude. If we do find, as we do indeed, in parts of this country that there are large numbers of people who speak some other language and are really not capable of speaking either French or English, it seems reasonable to try to provide those life and death services, emergency medical services for example, in their language.

My colleague from Surrey Central made this point quite eloquently when he spoke of his own constituency, which has the largest Indo-Canadian community in the country. He pointed out that there are 35,000 people in Surrey Central for whom Punjabi is the mother tongue and 18,700 people in his constituency who use Punjabi as their home language. Many of those people would be fluently bilingual in English, but many would not. Something similar is true in Toronto for the large Chinese community, for the Chinese community in Vancouver, and one could go on and point out a number of other very substantial language groups.

There is a precedent here. In the court system there is a common law right that if individuals are involved in a court case either as plaintiffs or defendants and are incapable of speaking the language, translation services will be provided so that the goings on would not be a mystery. And that applies not merely to English and French speakers but also to speakers of any other language.

Something similar ought to be provided where possible. When people come to a hospital for emergency services, they are frequently not in the best mental state. They are often stressed out. These are often not the conditions that would cause persons who are struggling to know either of Canada's official languages to be able to speak and convey clearly what their problems are and indeed to understand the information provided by service providers who do not have the capacity to speak their language.

That is one reason I think this is not a good piece of legislation for us to propose.

The other reason relates directly to what my hon. colleague from Ottawa--Orléans was saying in his comments. He talked specifically about the Montfort Hospital and how this relates to the Montfort Hospital. I listened with interest as someone who is a former patient of the Montfort Hospital. A few years back I was there for an operation. I was very satisfied with the service I received.

I think this piece of legislation deals very specifically with the case of the Montfort Hospital. Probably there are two or three other hospitals in Canada where this might apply. I am thinking of the hospital in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue and perhaps a couple in northern New Brunswick. What relates to these hospitals particularly is the following part of the proposed law, which I will read:

As soon as possible, the province--

--the provinces that are bound by this law--

--shall take action to ensure that the management of any facility in the province that offers insured health services is placed entirely in the hands of members of the province's anglophone or francophone minority, where the number of users from the anglophone or francophone minority is sufficient to warrant that action.

To be honest, I simply cannot see the value of this. The point of health care is to provide good health care. The point of placing someone in the role of being an administrator of health care services is to find the person most capable of providing those services, regardless of the community to which they belong and simply using merit as the principle.

I would not want to see, and unfortunately because of the way the Canada Health Act is written this inevitably would happen if it were added to the law, a situation in which the federal government would be forced, if it were to comply with the Canada Health Act, to enforce this provision of the law by withholding funds from the provinces because the administrators at various hospitals who had been appointed by the provinces were not people of the appropriate linguistic or ethnic group. That would be a very unwise thing to place in our law, given the nature of the Canada Health Act and the way it is administered. That is a very substantial problem with the law.

I want to say something else in relation to the whole question of conditions under the Canada Health Act. Perhaps we took a wrong turn when we put the five conditions in the Canada Health Act the way we did.

There is really one fundamental condition that ought to apply under the Canada Health Act. That is if the federal government is to provide money and it attaches conditions, the one condition ought to be simply that no Canadian can be deprived of quality services at an equal level to those provided by our public system to all other Canadians due to inability to pay and, I think the point has been quite well made by my hon. colleague, due to an inability to speak the relevant language of the provincial majority. I would say if one is to include that secondary right regarding languages, that right ought to include those individuals who cannot speak the majority language of the province or the other official language.

Delayed health care is health care denied. Health care that cannot be delivered due to a lack of capacity to communicate is also health care denied. That applies not merely to francophones and anglophones, but to all Canadians regardless of their linguistic background.

[Question No. 166, March 19th, 2003]

With regard to the language of menus and other services to the public at restaurants located at premises that are rented from the National Capital Commission in the ByWard Market and other locations: ( a ) since what date have standard leases required that restaurateurs and other service providers provide services to the public in both official languages; ( b ) which types of services are covered by the requirement to provide services in both official languages and at which locations; ( c ) are there any service providers who are not covered by such a provision in their leases and, if so, at what locations are these service providers located; and ( d ) what means, if any, have been used to enforce this leasehold condition with regard to the specific leases where it does apply?

[Official Languages, March 17th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, if someone sat down and tried to design as an experiment the most exclusionary system of public service hiring and promotion imaginable, it might look something like this.

First, select some skill that most Canadians do not have and declare it essential for many jobs where it serves no work related function. Second, keep tight limits on job training in this skill. Third, demote or transfer any public servant who does not meet the arbitrary and ever-changing goals. Quite frankly, that is exactly what the government is doing with the tough new bilingualism requirements announced last week.

Under these rules 24 million Canadians would be frozen out from all top public service jobs. Which Canadians are excluded? There would be the 57% of francophones who do not speak English, the 91% of anglophones who do not speak French, over 80% of immigrants, and 95% of aboriginal Canadians.

The new rules are unworthy of a country that cares about all of its citizens, including the ones who are not bilingual.

[Falun Gong, February 28th, 2003]

moved:

Motion No. 236

That, in the opinion of this House, the Prime Minister should take advantage of his upcoming meeting with President Jiang Zemin of China at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Conference to privately raise the issue of the continued imprisonment in China of thirteen Falun Gong practitioners who have close family ties to Canada, and to emphasize that Canadians would be more willing to strengthen existing trade and aid ties between Canada and China if these individuals (namely, Lizhi He; Xiuzhen Lu; Tianxiong Peng; Zhanzhong Wu; Xiuchao Huang; Bo Qiu; Yueli Yang; Yangtao Jin; Jiangang Huang; Guangshou Huang; Mingli Lin; Zhou Zheng; and Changzheng Sun) were re-united with their families in Canada.

Madam Speaker, I assure you that I have made many pronunciation mistakes of the same sort, but the people of Falun Gong are very tolerant of those of us who are not perfect in our Chinese pronunciation.

The motion that was just read was unanimously passed, with a slight change in wording, by the House on October 24. The motion that we are debating today is identical in all practical purposes to that motion.

It is very unusual, to say the least, to debate a motion in the House of Commons that has been adopted, for all intents and purposes, four months after the fact of its adoption. This provides us with the unique opportunity to review the unanimous action of the House on October 24, and to see what results it has borne.

At that time, as the wording of the motion indicates, the Prime Minister was departing for Mexico to meet with leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference, including the president of China. I drafted and introduced this motion in the belief that any clear signal from the Prime Minister to the president of China, whether delivered in public or in private conversation, as the motion anticipates, would result in an improvement in the treatment of the 13 prisoners of conscience who are named in the motion.

As I imagined it then, the process would have worked something like this: the Prime Minister would spend a moment during his private time with President Jiang Zemin, drawing the attention of the president toward the unanimous will of the House of Commons. The president would probably regard this as an annoyance, but probably he would nevertheless, following this conversation, pass on this information to some underling with the instruction to make this minor irritation go away, so that China's relations with its valued Canadian trading partners might not be impeded by the peculiarly Canadian habit of obsessing over the individual human rights of particular individuals. And in the bowels of the vast Chinese bureaucracy, through a sort of trickle down effect, the appropriate administrators would probably in turn, so I imagined, be advised at the least to improve the conditions and the treatment of the prisoners of conscience and perhaps even to cause the release of some of the individuals named in this motion, simply in order to make this irritation go away.

Other hon. members seem to have agreed with the logic of the scenario that I had imagined and so the motion was passed without the opposition of a single member of Parliament. This kind of unanimous consent is a very rare occurrence in the House. I must say that it makes me proud of all my 300 colleagues and proud to be a member of the same institution as all my 300 colleagues in the House of all parties.

I am happy to report that the unanimous adoption of the motion seems to have resulted in at least the partial achievement of its intended goal. Of the 13 prisoners of conscience named in the motion, 5 have been freed.

Bo Qiu, a 27 year old photographer whose mother lives in Canada, has been released from the Liuchangshan labour camp. Yueli Yang, a 62 year old aerospace engineer and the mother of Zhendong Yang of Toronto, is now out of prison. Tianxiong Peng, whose twin sister lives right here in Ontario, was freed and on Christmas eve was reunited with her two year old daughter.

I would like to quote, if I may, from her twin sister, Helen Peng, who lives in Canada and who writes as follows:

My wish (for my sister's release) [came true] on Christmas Eve. It is like a dream...I truly appreciate the Canadian [Parliament] and all the others for their kind help and I wish them the very best. I hope each government will help the Falun Gong practitioners persecuted in China and help end this persecution which should never have occurred.

Even more encouraging in the three names that I have mentioned is the news about Changzheng Sun and Guangshou Huang, both of whom have been freed, and allowed to leave the country. I am happy to report that both Mrs. Sun and Mr. Huang have been reunited with their families here in Canada.

Reports from China indicate that the treatment of some of the other prisoners mentioned in the motion appear to have improved since October, and the evidence suggests that this is the direct result of the fact that the motion was passed in the House on October 24.

Looking back at a distance of four months, it seems to me pretty clear that from a technical or mechanical point of view what actually transpired to cause these positive developments, after the motion was passed in the House of Commons, was something very different from what I had imagined would take place.

Based on reports that I have received from contacts here in Canada, who are themselves in contact with friends and family in China and who have been monitoring the situation of loved ones within the Chinese penal system, it seems that the most important factor was not so much the internal pressure trickling down from on high, but rather the external pressure that the Canadian embassy in Beijing was able to bring to bear with regard to these 13 specific cases.

Canadian embassy officials, acting with impressive energy and efficiency, made it clear to the relevant Chinese authorities, that is to say the governors of the prisons and the administrators of the labour camps in which the 13 practitioners have been imprisoned, that Canada's Parliament and Canada's diplomatic corps was watching. In one particularly colourful and effective gesture, the embassy mailed Chinese New Year cards last month to each of the prisoners of conscience which made a dramatic impression, as members can imagine, upon the administrators who intercepted this mail. It made the point that they were not forgotten, that people were watching and that people in positions of authority cared very much about what happened to them. In the words of one Chinese Canadian with whom I recently talked, “It was as if the people at the Canadian embassy had been given a green light to do all the things they needed to do”. It is that which has been the most effective in getting the results that we see today.

To illustrate this point, I would like to read from a letter that I recently received from a Canadian living in Toronto whose 63 year old mother was freed from prison three weeks ago, probably as a result of this motion. He writes:

At one point, [my mother] was incarcerated in [a] notorious.... Forced Labour Camp... where lots of [Falun Gong] practitioners [have been] killed. I was really worried about her, but there was no way to know if she was still alive...

The strong reaction of the international community made those in China that started the crackdown very nervous and afraid. It was from then on, that I started to hear about my mother's situation in the labour camp.

The labour camp where my mom was imprisoned started to make a list of all those who have overseas connections...

Because of the efforts of our government, our parliament, as well as the Canadian Embassy in Beijing, my mother was finally released.

...She asked me to pass on her gratitude to all those who have helped with her release. She told me that the rescue efforts overseas have had a great impact in China. Whenever there is any sign of support from outside of China, those in charge of the labour camp became very nervous... and they would go and talk to her about it.

There was one other remarkable action taken as a result of alert Canadian diplomatic officials in the wake of the October 24 resolution, which we are discussing here today. This involved Ms. Yuzmi Wang, who today resides safely in Toronto following a remarkable rescue.

As seems so often to be the case with Falun Gong practitioners, Mrs. Wang had led a quiet and productive life prior to her arrest. She owned a small computer store in Harbin, the capital of Manchuria. When she was arrested and imprisoned several years ago, Mrs. Wang was tortured and force fed.

When she came to Ottawa following her release, I had the opportunity to talk with Mrs. Wang and she described a bit of what was involved in some of the torture that she experienced. Force feeding is really a way of imposing a form of torture on someone. Whether they are on a starvation diet, it is done to torture them without officially being engaged in torture. Their mouths are forced open, a rubber hose is forced down their throat and cold water mixed with wheat flour is poured down their throat. This results in gagging, retching, severe cramps and in some cases vomiting and nausea. Its actual benefits in terms of delivering nutrition to the person in question is highly questionable.

As I said, Mrs. Wang was imprisoned and tortured. She was released from her first sentence in prison when her death as a result of her treatment seemed inevitable. To avoid taking responsibility for her death, the Chinese authorities shipped Mrs. Wang to the United Arab Emirates where she had family members who nursed her back to health. A new warrant for her arrest was issued after Mrs. Wang was sighted at the United Arab Emirates airport by Chinese authorities and it became clear that her health had recovered and that she would not remain meek and quiet about the conditions that she had suffered while in prison.

Local authorities in the United Arab Emirates were contacted by Chinese authorities and were preparing to deport Mrs. Wang back to China on the basis of this warrant for her arrest. Members of the Falun Gong Association of Canada rallied to support her and compiled the relevant documentation to present to the authorities in the United Arab Emirates to save her from deportation and from certain imprisonment, which Mrs. Wang does not believe she would have survived.

Included among the documents that were presented, both to United Arab Emirates authorities and also to Canadian consular authorities in the UAE, was a copy of the motion that had been adopted in the House on October 24. The package of materials seems to have been decisive in causing Canadian consular officials to arrange a ministerial permit for Mrs. Wang to come safely to this country where she now resides.

I would like to dwell for a moment on the question of ministerial permits and the good that they could do in the case of individuals named in this motion who remain in China, whether still in prison or in that curious state of quasi freedom that exists for someone who, like Mrs. Wang following her release, is in perpetual danger of renewed incarceration.

The importance of getting these people out of China whenever possible and to the safety of Canada where they all have family members, husbands, wives, sons or daughters, parents in some cases, waiting to greet them, cannot be overemphasized.

I would like to quote again from Helen Peng, whose twin sister is in China, out of prison but under close observation. She says, “I am sad for the tribulations my sister has endured and I hope she can come soon to the safe environment in Canada”. I hope she can too.

The only way to ensure that the treatment of these individuals and other individuals in similar circumstances, including others not mentioned in the motion who also have close family ties to Canada, and to ensure that their rights are respected is to continue to have vigilance, to continue to draw attention to them and to be prepared to issue ministerial permits to allow them to come to this country where they can become productive citizens, as have many other individuals who have been persecuted in China for their spiritual beliefs.

I want to conclude with one individual whose story came to my attention after the motion had already been placed before the House and whose story is particularly sad.

Yunhe Zhang, whose sister lives in Vancouver, is currently in prison. She has a three year old child who never got to see her father. Her father was also in prison and died there a couple of years ago. Yunhe Zhang remains in prison, separated from her child who is being raised by relatives. Her mother-in-law died, a death that members of their family believe was premature, due to the conditions that her son and her daughter-in-law were suffering in prison in China and the stress that was involved in it.

This individual has done no harm to anybody. She believes, as do all members of the Falun Gong movement, in the values that are central to the Chinese culture and to all civilized society. The principles of Falun Gong, an apolitical movement, are a belief in tolerance, compassion and truth.

These individuals have always been productive members of the Chinese society. I am confident that those who would be allowed to come here to Canada on ministerial permits would also be productive members of our society.

I want to take this moment to thank all members of the House who voted in favour of the motion when it was before the House on October 24, 2002 and made it possible for several of these individuals to find their freedom again.

[Agriculture, February 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, in recent years Canadian farmers have been plagued by floods, drought, grasshoppers, the U.S. congress, and a Liberal government that just does not care.

Now the minister, with his new APF program, is expecting farmers to provide an initial deposit of $3 billion to ensure adequate coverage.

My question is simple this, where does the minister expect that cash strapped Canadian farmers will get this money?

[Trade, February 21st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, $1.9 billion a day in commercial trade with the United States will soon be subject to a requirement for 24 hours advance notice before crossing the border. This is going to harm time dependent industries such as the auto industry, which is the heart of my province's economy. The auto sector says quite reasonably that this will be a huge problem and is seeking an exemption, but we do not seem to see any interest in searching for exemptions by the government.

When can we expect to see an exemption for the auto sector?

[Vimy Ridge Day Act, February 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure what the parliamentary secretary means by bilingual guidance. The fact is that the tickets being issued by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the Quebec part of the national capital region are still being issued in one language only. They are being issued in violation of the Official Languages Act. Everybody acknowledges it. The quotation that I gave from committee was given when the Solicitor General appeared and it was given by an expert appearing with the Solicitor General.

We all know this violation of the law is happening. On this occasion it is not possible to comply with federal law and to comply with an agreement that was signed with the government of Quebec. The federal government has a choice. Either it is in favour of the Official Languages Act, the law of the land in Canada, and will follow that law or it will follow the agreement it signed with the Quebec government, a decision that was taken in violation of the Official Languages Act. It has that choice.

Given the choice, does the parliamentary secretary support the federal government and the RCMP following the dictates of the Official Languages Act in the Quebec part of the national capital region or does she favour it illegally following this agreement, which is of no legal force and effect? Which of those two does she and her government favour? So far it has been in favour of breaking the federal law. What is it going to do now?

[Vimy Ridge Day Act, February 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it has been four long months since I first rose in the House last October to draw attention to the fact that the RCMP was engaged in the blatantly illegal practice of issuing unilingual, French only parking tickets within the boundaries of the national capital region.

This practice was then, and still is today, a violation of section 22 of the Official Languages Act which requires that:

Every federal institution has the duty to ensure that any member of the public can communicate with and obtain available services from its head or central office in either official language, and has the same duty with respect to any of its other offices or facilities

(a) within the National Capital Region.

Since that time I have had the chance to confirm the accuracy of my interpretation of the law with the Commissioner of Official Languages. She stated in committee hearings of the House of Commons that the issuing of unilingual traffic tickets within the Quebec part of the national capital region was as illegal as it would be on the Ontario side.

As well, on December 2 the Standing Committee on Official Languages heard confirmation that the decision on the part of the government to break Canada's language laws in order to enforce the mandatory unilingualism of the Quebec government, was imposed on Canada by the current Liberal government.

Mr. Marc Tremblay, the director of the official languages law group at the Department of Justice, informed the committee that, under previous governments, infractions had been issued in the Quebec part of the national capital region in a bilingual format, as they have been and continue to be on the Ontario side of the national capital region.

Specifically, an agreement was signed in 1996 between the federal government and the Parti Québécois government under the authority of section 65 of the Contraventions Act. It was this agreement that substituted the unilingual tickets required by bill 101 for the bilingual tickets required by the Official Languages Act.

It is that agreement that the Solicitor General of Canada hides behind when time after time he responds to my questions on this issue, as he did on November 1 when he said:

The RCMP complies with provincial legislation regarding the issuance of tickets.

However the fact is that such agreements are of no force and effect when they violate federal law, and this particular agreement is an egregious violation of the Official Languages Act.

Therefore, when the Solicitor General insists, as he repeatedly does in the House, that his government's agreement with the Parti Québécois supercedes its obligations under the Official Languages Act, he is incorrect. That just is not so.

Section 82 of the Official Languages Act makes this clear. It states:

In the event of any inconsistency between the following Parts and any other Act of Parliament or regulation thereunder, the following Parts prevail to the extent of the inconsistency.

That cannot be overcome unless the federal government wants to pass a separate law saying that it will change the rules so that it would no longer require federal services to be provided in a bilingual format in the national capital region.

Tickets still are being issued in one language only in part of the national capital region. This is against the law and it continues to be against the law. Will this practice stop or does the Solicitor General plan to introduce legislation to allow for unilingual infractions in the national capital region?