Scott Reid

[Health, April 23rd, 2004]

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

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

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

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

[Official Languages Act, April 22nd, 2004]

Madam Speaker, the purpose of Bill S-4 is to make part VII of the Official Languages Act justiciable.

The most important parts of part VII are sections 41 and 43. The bill seeks to change the wording of sections 41 and 43 which, in the case of section 41 is declaratory, and in the case of section 43 is discretionary. As I indicated in my question to the hon. member opposite, my belief is that the bill is not as successful as it could be in achieving these goals.

In the time that is available to me, I would like to point out some of my concerns in this respect. I would like to start in reverse order with section 43 and then move on to section 41. Section 43 in the Official Languages Act currently reads as follows:

The Minister of Canadian Heritage shall take such measures as that Minister considers appropriate to advance the equality of status and use of English and French in Canadian society and, without restricting the generality of the foregoing, may take measures to

(a) enhance the vitality of the English and French linguistic minority communities--

(b) encourage and support the learning of English and French in Canada;

(c) foster an acceptance and appreciation of both English and French by members of the public;

(d) encourage and assist provincial governments to support the development of English and French linguistic minority communities--

It says “The Minister of Canadian Heritage shall take such measures as that Minister considers appropriate”. In other words, it is entirely at the discretion of the minister. There is no actual obligation. Similarly, it goes on, without the restriction of the foregoing, “may take measures to” do all those things that I just listed. That is purely a discretionary section. I think there is, in general, merit in avoiding such broad discretion in legislation.

Section 43 would be changed by Bill S-4 to read as follows:

The Minister of Canadian Heritage shall take appropriate measures to advance the equality of status and use of English and French in Canadian society and, without restricting the generality of the foregoing, may take measures to [do all the things I described--enhance the vitality of English and French, encourage and assist provincial governments, et cetera.]

The word “discretion” has been removed. What that means is the minister still has complete discretion insofar as one is addressing all the specific obligations laid out in sections (a) through (h) of the act, but is bound by the law in a non-discretionary manner and in a justiciable manner. One could go to court if one is unsatisfied on the most general part of the provisions.

I want to suggest to the House that this is exactly backward. What one ought to do--what is most likely to produce good policy, good regulations and actions from the minister, and some kind of coherent judicial action should any action be taken--is the reverse and leave the first part of section 43 discretionary and make the specific provisions mandatory. This is something I suggested in the Standing Joint Committee on Official Languages on March 12, 2002.

At that committee meeting we were discussing section 7. At the time, Senator Gauthier was a member of our committee. I pointed out that one could read the last part of section 43 to say “and without restricting the generality of the foregoing, the minister must take measures to encourage and assist provincial governments to support the development of English and French in linguistic minority communities”, while leaving the first part, the general part, in a discretionary manner.

That is the way that laws are normally written. That would lead to a much more coherent and logical implementation of the act and of adjudication under the act should anybody seek to make use of the remedies provided by the other changes that Senator Gauthier proposes in this law.

I want to turn to section 41. Section 41 currently reads as follows:

The Government of Canada is committed to

(a) enhancing the vitality of the English and French linguistic minority communities in Canada and supporting and assisting their development;--

This is purely declaratory. It is almost the exact wording used in the preamble to the act. I suggest it is a kind of internal preamble.

It seems to me that with the changes that are proposed by Bill S-4, we now have the following added:

Within the scope of their functions, duties and powers, federal institutions shall ensure that positive measures are taken for the ongoing and effective advancement and implementation of the Government of Canada's commitments under subsection (1)

That would be just as simple. One could take that to court if one felt the government was being inadequate in carrying out its really rather vague obligations under section 41. It seems to me that what one ought to do is to try to have very specific obligations, stated clearly, in law and perhaps something should be added in. Then one could deal with the law that way rather than giving a vague proposal and expecting that the vague instruction to the government would be justiciable.

There is a problem in fact that this may even be unconstitutional. To explain how this might be the case, I will turn to testimony.

I would like to quote what the hon. member for Outremont said when he was Minister of Justice in the Chrétien government. When he appeared before the Standing Joint Committee on Official Languages on April 30, 2002, the former Liberal justice minister said:

—when we proceeded with the full enactment of section 41 some years ago, it raised some concern from the provincial governments, because they had the feeling at the time that if we were involved with such a section we would be involved in their jurisdiction. What we said is it's government policy. The government has a role to contribute with what we find within part VII and, to be more precise, in section 41. Because of that, we've been able to proceed with the full enactment of this tool, which is a great tool. In my mind, if we proceeded with Bill S-32, we would take the risk of losing such a fantastic tool, because some people would raise more than concern: they would start to go to court in order to declare invalid section 41 and part VII.

There is the possibility, and this is the opinion of the Liberal justice minister two years ago, that this bill, which was exactly the same under its prior designation as it is today, would have the effect of invalidating the government's obligations under part 7 of the act. This seems to me to be a very serious problem with the bill and one that causes it to perhaps not be as effective as it could be in achieving its goals.

This is the kind of thing that I think ought to be discussed at committee. This is the kind of thing that means that we ought to move very carefully and if necessary make amendments to the bill, and if necessary be prepared to send it back in an amended form to the Senate.

It is incumbent upon us to ensure that we have good legislation, that all legislation that leaves this place actually accomplishes the goals that it can. This bill, hopefully, would do that in an amended form. Should it fail to be amended and fail to deal with some of the problems that I raised today, and there may be others, then it seems to me that we could very well be doing the opposite of what we intended. Our responsibility as lawmakers is to move very carefully and to seek to produce the best legislation on this topic and indeed on every topic which comes before us.

[Official Languages Act, April 22nd, 2004]

Madam Speaker, this is a somewhat unusual bill in that it has come to us from the Senate. Most bills do not come that way, although it is not unique. Also, it is a private member's bill and therefore is being sponsored by a private member rather than by a member of the cabinet.

This represents my only chance to ask the member in the House about his intentions regarding the bill. I do have some appreciation for the member's concerns. It might be late in the term of the government, very true. It might not however be late in the term of the government. We just do not know. That is something on which the Prime Minister will be making a decision. If anybody is asking me, I think the election should be called in the autumn rather than in the spring, because there is no hurry for an election, but that is just my opinion.

At any rate, what I am getting at here is that while I think the intention of the bill is something that on the whole many members would find to be reasonable and worthwhile, there may be some flaws with the bill. I do not think it is necessarily a good idea to agree, not really to let it go forward to committee, but to effectively agree that it ought to go forward to committee and come back to the House entirely unamended. The pressure for time would imply that there is no opportunity to amend the bill, to improve it and perhaps to make it achieve its goals more effectively. That would require that it go to committee, that we have witnesses and that we look at any problems that might exist with the bill as it is worded, that it come back to the House, perhaps be amended and go back to the Senate, if necessary. That is simply the way these things work because of the way the bill came to us. Had it come by some different means, that would not be necessary.

I do worry that we might find ourselves in a situation where we have to choose between the bill, assuming that it must go forward in its current state completely unamended, and voting against it. It seems to me that one ought to show some willingness to look at amendments, particularly friendly amendments that help achieve its objectives better than perhaps its initial wording had intended to do.

I ask the member if he and the sponsor of the bill in the Senate are willing to consider the possibility of looking very seriously at amendments that are intended to improve the bill. During my own remarks I will make reference to one such amendment, but there are others that could be imagined.

[The Budget, March 30th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, like my colleague, I will be speaking about the inadequacies in the budget with regard to agriculture.

About 60% or 65% of the farms in my Ontario constituency have some beef or dairy component, and many of them are primarily or exclusively beef or dairy. Among other things, this includes the production of organic beef. There is a wide variety of production. All of it, of course, has been affected by the shutting of the border on May 20 last year and the resulting collapse of our overseas markets.

Therefore I am very painfully aware, through the pain that my constituents are feeling, of the inadequacies of the budget with regard to beef and to beef producers.

I am reminded of a situation that occurred in my constituency about a year and a half ago. Members may recall the drought out west in the summer of 2002 and that farmers in this part of the country, who were enjoying a very good harvest of hay, wanted to send part of that crop out west. This became the hay west program, initiated entirely without government support, by farmers for farmers. One of the railheads at which hay was collected and sent west was in Smiths Falls in my constituency.

After the crisis had gone on for some length of time, the prime minister of the day, Jean Chrétien, came out to Smiths Falls. I received an invitation with about 12 hours notice from the then House leader for the government to come and join the Prime Minister while he made an announcement of some funds to help with the hay west program, a very small amount of funding I might add, perhaps $2 million or $3 million. The exact number escapes me at the moment. Frankly, I turned down the invitation because I felt that it was simply an exercise in grandstanding, that the prime minister would stand on a hay bale beside a train and announce what a good boy he was, and that is exactly what happened.

I realized what the purpose of that announcement had been when I was watching the weather channel, of all things, the next day. The little banner that runs at the bottom of the weather channel, which tells us what else is going on in the news other than the weather, included a reference to the fact that the federal government had tossed in a couple of million dollars.

The real point of that exercise had been so that the people who were not farmers and who would not see the hollowness of the gesture, would say that they were good guys for throwing in a bit of money. It was to satisfy the urban vote that rural Canadians and farmers were being taken care of. It was not for the purpose of actually providing any meaningful aid to farmers.

I suggest that the current Prime Minister's announcement in Picture Butte a few days ago of aid for farmers who are suffering as a result of the BSE crisis is very much of the same nature.

When the Prime Minister went to Picture Butte in the riding of Lethbridge, Alberta, my colleague, the MP for Lethbridge, was not even informed of it. The Prime Minister was surrounded by Liberal candidates as he announced the money. This was simply a way of promoting the Liberal Party and of satisfying people out in TV land that the government cares about farmers.

However farmers themselves know how inadequate and how late this aid is. The point has not been lost on them that the border closed May 20, 2003 and this package arrives in March of this year, shortly before the announcement of an election. I think the math can be worked out in the heads of most farmers.

The announcement was meant for the edification of urban television audiences. It was not meant to seriously deal with the needs of farmers. If there had been a real desire to do this, it would have been done much earlier. It would have been based on herd sizes as of May 20. After all, prices collapsed after May 20. They did not collapse December 31. If farmers had the misfortune of having been forced to sell all or part of their herd at some point prior to December 31, this aid package does not do a whole heck of a lot for them.

If the government had really cared about this issue and the impact it has had on other ruminants, it would not have fallen upon me personally to be the first person, two months after the crisis started, to raise the issue of other ruminants, of sheep, in the House of Commons. The fact is that the Minister of Agriculture never bothered to talk about other ruminants until I raised the issue.

This is typical of the attitude this government has had toward agriculture in general and toward farmers suffering from the BSE crisis in particular.

There is an endemic problem I want to draw the government's attention to as well, which I think may affect this particular aid package. One hopes it will not, but it has been the pattern, that is, federal aid to farmers is notoriously slow in coming. It is quick to be promised. It is slow to actually arrive.

We know this by comparing the aid that my provincial government here in Ontario provides and the speed with which it arrives compared to federal aid. Last year the government promised $3.1 billion of transfers to farmers. As of March 1, only $1.3 billion of that had arrived. That is typical.

[Whistleblower Legislation, March 30th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, over the course of a decade, the government ignored or killed 13 private members' bills from all parties on whistleblower protection. Now it is proceeding with a bill that denies the integrity of commissioner subpoena powers and that requires whistleblowers to go to their supervisors to get permission to go public or face termination. If this had been enacted a few years ago, it would have put Chuck Guité in charge of whistleblowing in his department.

Why should we believe that Chuckie's law will make whistleblowing cleaner and more open in this country?

[Whistleblower Legislation, March 30th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's whistleblower legislation is typical of this government. Far too little, according to Canada's integrity officer, far too late after a decade of secrecy on everything from the existence of the Prime Minister's peekaboo blind trust to the contents of Alfonso Gagliano's briefing notes.

Why did the Liberals wait until a huge scandal forced their hand before bringing forward even the semblance of legislation on this subject?

[Rural Communities, March 22nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, rural Ontario is under assault from federal and provincial Liberal governments that neither understand nor respect the rural way of life.

At the core of the Liberal attack is the belief that it is acceptable for governments to strip away the value of private property without providing compensation, or to arbitrarily adjust taxation levels in ways that amount to a confiscation of some or all of the value of private property.

In Ontario, this attack on rural property includes: the shutting of local slaughterhouses that cannot keep up with everchanging and arbitrary rules, the imposition of new sawdust disposal rules that may shut down many small sawmills, and the creation of nutrient management rules that make perfectly safe existing practices unlawful.

Finally and most egregiously, it is a year since the Liberals passed the Species at Risk Act without the amendment that I had proposed, which would have guaranteed full and prompt compensation for landowners who lose the use of lands inhabited by endangered species. The government promised that compensation would be assured in the regulations under the act. Today, it is clear that this was just another Liberal lie to rural Canadians.

Nobody disputes the right of governments to take property for public purposes or to limit its use, but depriving rural Canadians of full, prompt and just compensation is unjust and it must stop.

[Petitions, March 10th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I also have a petition to present today on the same subject.

The petitioners call upon the House of Commons to recognize the institution of marriage as being between one man and one woman. The petitioners call upon Parliament to pass legislation to recognize the institution of marriage in federal law as being the lifelong union of one man and one woman.

[The Acadians, March 9th, 2004]

Madam Speaker, it is with regret that I will vote against Motion No.382. My reasons for doing so are twofold.

One, I feel that this motion is based on a faulty premise, namely that guilt can be collective and can be passed on from one generation to the next.

Two, despite the good intentions of those who drafted it, the motion seems to attribute ultimate responsibility for the expulsion of the Acadians to the Crown, which is not an accurate reading of the events of 1755. A more historically accurate reading would lay blame with the colonial governors of New England and the pioneers they represented.

I will begin with the historical argument and come back later to the philosophical one.

Many of the facts surrounding the deportation of the Acadians are unchallenged. In 1755, the colonial authorities began a process of uprooting and deporting that part of the Acadian population which had settled on British lands, beginning with the centre of the Acadian colony along the east shore of the Bay of Fundy.

Nova Scotia's Governor Lawrence, and Governor Shirley, commander in chief of the British forces in New England, began by seizing colonists' firearms to prevent them from using force to resist. Then they took a large number of adult males hostage in order to guarantee the docility of their families at the time of deportation.

In the years that followed, approximately three quarters of the total Acadian population, or 13,000 people, were deported. Some of these people were sent to New England, others to Louisiana, and still others were returned to France.

Although we know with certainty the degree of suffering caused by the deportations between 1755 and 1763, it is much more difficult to pin down historic responsibility for them. One thing is certain and that is that governors Lawrence and Shirley were at the heart of the decision making and must bear ultimate responsibility. But nothing proves that they acted with the approval of the Parliament of Westminster. According to the most commonly accepted version of events, Lawrence acted with the authorization of the local council in Nova Scotia, and parliament and King George did not take part in the planning of the deportations.

Nonetheless, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II recently chose to address this issue, deferring a decision on any apology to the Canadian cabinet. As we are all aware, cabinet recently dealt with this issue and, in December 2003, the Governor General signed a royal proclamation regarding this issue. Excerpts from the proclamation read as follows:

Whereas the deportation of the Acadian people, commonly known as the Great Upheaval, continued until 1763 and had tragic consequences, including the deaths of many thousands of Acadians—

Therefore, Her Excellency the Governor General in Council, on the recommendation of the Minister of Canadian Heritage, directs—

—that a Proclamation do issue designating July 28 of every year, beginning in 2005, as “A Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval”.

I commend the decision of the government to issue this proclamation, one which seems entirely appropriate to me. I believe there is a legitimate expectation that all participants in the public life of a civilized society should adopt a moral attitude toward the past. A moral attitude involves recognizing and embracing those past actions which are regarded as good and just, and rejecting those which are regarded as unjust or monstrous. The acknowledgement of the “trials and suffering experienced by the Acadian people” and the designation of an annual day to commemorate this unfortunate chapter in our history is an appropriate way to address this unfortunate episode.

In contrast to the proclamation issued by the Crown, the motion before the House explicitly requests an apology for this historical wrong.

This is a very different concept based on the idea that guilt for a past injustice can be passed on, institutionally and collectively, in precisely the same way that the residual effects of that wrong continue to have some impact on the descendants of those who suffered the initial wrong. This is simply untrue.

I do not accept the notion that an institution can maintain a heritage of collective guilt which is imposed upon successive generations of those who become members of that institution or who fall under its protection. An attitude of collective guilt or responsibility, or worse yet, of expecting others to assume a mantle of guilt or responsibility for acts in which they themselves did not take part, strikes me as being of no utility at all.

A debate similar to the one taking place today took place in this House 20 years ago on Pierre Trudeau's last day as Prime Minister. He was asked by Brian Mulroney in oral question period to issue an apology for the wartime internment of Canadians of Japanese descent. Trudeau's response revealed a subtle grasp of the distinction that I am attempting to draw here today.

Mr. Trudeau said:

I do not see how I can apologize for some historic event to which we... were not a party. We can regret that it happened. But why... say that an apology is much better than an expression of regret?

I do not think that it is the purpose of a government to right the past. It cannot re-write history. It is our purpose to be just in our time—

I agree with this reasoning. With regard to the great upheaval, the parties who suffered such discrimination died long ago, as did those responsible. The British Empire, in whose name these wrongs were perpetrated, no longer exists, and the mercantilism on which it was founded was firmly and totally rejected by the crown and the British state. However, the most important factor to be considered is perhaps that the British colonies in New England, in whose name the wrongs were committed, ceased to exist as political entities over 200 years ago, when the United States claimed its independence.

Consequently, there is no one or no organization that can honestly recognize its guilt or suffer the justified indignation of others.

This does not excuse us from a responsibility to adopt a moral attitude of condemnation toward this great wrong any more than we can adopt an attitude of moral neutrality toward the monstrous evils of more recent times. As moral actors, we need to recognize the existence of these past wrongs, to identify them to our fellow citizens and to do all that we can to ensure that no modern version of this wrong can occur. In this respect, I would like to applaud the sincere efforts of the hon. member for Verchères—Les-Patriotes, whose aim is to perpetuate the memory of this tragic episode in our history.

Nevertheless, I believe that the recent royal proclamation, which recognizes the issue without making an official apology, is sufficient to express our sorrow over this past wrong and allows us, without condemning others, to indicate our determination that no such wrong will ever in the future be tolerated on Canadian soil.

Consequently, I must vote against this motion and encourage my colleagues to do the same.

[Supply, February 26th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if I can give a detailed policy response in 60 seconds.

First, I should mention the Conservative Party plan announced today does call for $75 million of federal money to go toward processing capacity, much of which has been shut down in the recent past. Reopening it will not solve all problems, but it is a way of assisting to some degree in dealing with the processing of specialty products. It would relieve some of the pressure on Canadian producers.

I am not an expert on this, but my impression is that the problem does not lie with excess profits taking place at processing plants. The reality is there are certain costs that have been imposed upon them that did not exist previously. We should not forget this.

When a cow is slaughtered, less than 30% is consumed domestically in Canada, which is the use of the middle meats of the cow. Aspects of the cow that could have been ground up and used before, and I am thinking of spinal tissue and the brain, must now be destroyed and treated as hazardous waste. Other products that would have been available for export can no longer be exported, such as tongues, organ meats, the oxtails and so on.

Therefore, we are seeing a number of costs being imposed that did not exist prior. I suggest that probably is an explanation in part as to why we see the consumer prices not going down to reflect the catastrophic drop in sale barn prices.