Scott Reid

[Points of Order, April 12th, 2005]

You're a bigot, Joe.

[Petitions, April 12th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the petition I present today is one of many that I have received on the subject of marriage.

The petitioners draw to the attention of the House the fact that marriage is the best foundation for families and the raising of children, that the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman is being challenged and therefore ask Parliament to pass legislation to recognize the institution of marriage in federal law as being the lifelong union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.

I note, in conclusion, that this petition is entirely consistent with Conservative Party policy.

[Question No. 69, March 21st, 2005]

With regard to the motion adopted unanimously by the House of Commons on October 24, 2002, which requested that the Prime Minister raise with President Jiang Zemin of China the issue of the imprisonment in China of 13 Falun Gong practitioners who have close family ties to Canada, since that time, what concrete measures have been taken by the Prime Minister, by Canadian officials at Canada's embassies and consulates in China, and by officials at Immigration Canada to ensure compliance with this motion, and in particular to ensure that all 13 of the individuals named in this resolution be granted visas to enter Canada if they so requested?

(Return tabled)

[Food and Drugs Act, March 9th, 2005]

For shame. You should hang your head in shame.

[Food and Drugs Act, March 9th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I am appalled by that shameful response.

I am talking about a man who was tortured while he was in a prison in China. No one doubts the facts of his case. No one doubts that he was tortured, that he was in pain and that he is under intimidation by the Chinese authorities today. No one doubts that if a ministerial permit were issued on compassionate grounds and the compassionate grounds were there for all to see, that he would make a model citizen.

No one doubts that this House did talk in the motion about the reuniting of families. What does the parliamentary secretary think we meant, that the family should be shipped back to China? Of course we meant that they should be reunited here in Canada.

He talked about somehow bringing Mingli Lin to Canada and about issuing a permit. I am just so angry at this attitude, as if issuing a ministerial permit on compassionate grounds is in contempt of the House. That is a contemptuous answer.

Mingli Lin should be allowed to re-enter this country. He should be allowed to join his family here on these shores as Parliament unanimously decided he should be allowed. He should be allowed to do this for the compassionate reasons that are the very foundation of ministerial permits.

[Food and Drugs Act, March 9th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I am rising today to follow up on a matter that has been before this House since October 2002.

On October 24, 2002, the House voted unanimously to support the following motion which I had placed before it:

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 [13] Falun Gong practitioners who have close family ties to Canada and to emphasize that Canadians would be more willing to strengthen existing ties between Canada and China if these individuals...were reunited with their families in Canada.

The motion named the 13 individuals, one of whom, Mingli Lin, is the subject of my special concern today.

Following the passage of this motion, many of the prisoners were freed and were issued visas to join their families here in Canada.

One of the 13 was denied a visa. Mingli Lin was freed by the Chinese authorities in 2003. Since that time, however, our consulate in Shanghai has repeatedly denied him a visa to come to Canada. The reason offered for the refusal by the officials responsible is that Mr. Lin might wish to stay here permanently.

I cannot say whether he would want to stay permanently in Canada. Frankly, if I were Mingli Lin, I would certainly want to stay in this country until such time as the danger of persecution in my native country had passed.

I should mention that no other Falun Gong practitioner among the 13 named in the motion passed unanimously in 2002 has been denied entry into Canada on this basis.

I note that every single one of the practitioners who has been admitted to Canada has been a model citizen of this country. This includes Mingli Lin's brother, Shenli Lin, who is also a Falun Gong practitioner who was arrested and imprisoned in China and was admitted to this country nearly three years ago.

For this reason, I asked the former immigration minister in a letter last March and again in the House in November if she would consider issuing a ministerial permit to admit Mingli Lin to rejoin his family here in Canada.

Each time I asked her, she gave me a vague response and then did nothing. I note that the lack of compassion shown by the former minister, who resigned in disgrace two months ago, does not reflect the general will of her cabinet colleagues.

In a letter written in March 2003, the Minister of Canadian Heritage wrote:

--I would like to add my voice to...other Canadians from across the country who are demanding the immediate release of all Falun Gong prisoners in China, and decry the continuing violation of human rights that Mingli Lin's imprisonment represents.

In a speech before this House on February 28, 2003, the Minister of Justice said:

--I call upon the Chinese authorities: to release the...Falun Gong practitioners with a Canadian and family connection from their imprisonment, and permit them to be reunited with their loved ones here in Canada....

The irony here is that although Mingli Lin still lives in fear of the Chinese government in China, it is the Government of Canada that for the past two years has been responsible for putting him in harm's way, subject to ongoing persecution in China.

Let me read to you from a letter that was sent to me last month in which a friend outlines Mingli Lin's current state, as reported by his brother Shenli in Toronto: “Mingli is still in a very difficult situation. As you may recall, while he was incarcerated in the forced labour camp they ruptured his esophagus while trying to force-feed him. He endured a lot of suffering during the two years of incarceration he was forced to go through. After his release, he was still kept under constant surveillance, routinely harassed and intimidated by the Communist authorities. He has no personal freedom to talk about”.

Mingli Lin still wants to come to Canada. His family in Canada wants to be reunited with him. Parliament voted unanimously to bring him here. Ministers of the Crown have spoken in favour, in this House, of bringing him here.

Will the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration do the right thing and issue a ministerial permit to permit Mingli Lin to rejoin his family on our shores?

[Justice, February 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, earlier this week the government reversed half a century of Liberal policy by declaring that the Minister of Justice favours retaining the power of disallowance, under which his cabinet can unilaterally strike down provincial laws.

It was explained that his position is that the federal Liberals are prepared to use this power under what were described to the House as extraordinary circumstances. I invite the minister to explain to the House which provincial laws, actual or hypothetical, he would categorize as being sufficiently extraordinary to be disallowed by his cabinet.

[Zimbabwe, February 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, since Zimbabwe's last election, opposition MPs have been subjected to human rights abuses ranging from destruction of property to detention and police torture.

In response, Amnesty International and Oxfam Canada initiated a twinning program between Canadian and Zimbabwean MPs. Along with 15 other MPs of all parties, I am a member of this initiative, which seeks to protect parliamentarians by drawing enough attention to their situation to cause the authorities to back off.

Sometimes this works and sometimes it does not. Last year my twin, opposition MP David Mpala, died of injuries sustained under police torture.

Given the rise in state sponsored violence which seems likely to occur in the run-up to the March 31 Zimbabwean elections, Foreign Affairs must abandon its hands-off approach to human rights and appoint a special representative to Zimbabwe.

Only a strong response from Canada will prevent my new twin, MDC National Youth Chairman Nelson Chamisa, and other brave opposition MPs from being subjected to the same kind of human rights abuses.

[Constitution Amendment, 2005, February 15th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I hope that Liberal members will not vote against this. I have a number of reasons to hope that.

One is the fact that prominent Liberals have in the past been very supportive of this. A number of members of the current Liberal caucus were here in 1992 and therefore voted in favour of the Charlottetown accord which included among other things, a removal of the power of disallowance and reservation and a number of prominent Liberals, not the least of them was Pierre Elliott Trudeau, were strongly in favour of getting rid of these powers.

I think that members of all parties have a history of being supportive of this and we should see a consensus on this issue.

[Constitution Amendment, 2005, February 15th, 2005]

moved:

Motion No. 194

the Power of the Queen in Council under section 56 of the Constitution Act, 1867, to disallow Acts of the Parliament of Canada is not compatible with Canada’s status as a Sovereign State, and has therefore fallen into Desuetude;

WHEREAS the Power of the Queen in Council under section 57 of the Constitution Act, 1867, to deny Assent to Bills of the Parliament of Canada is not compatible with Canada’s status as a Sovereign State or with the direct Relationship between the Queen, the Parliament of Canada, and the Queen’s Canadian Ministers that exists under the terms of the Statute of Westminster, 1931, and has therefore fallen into Desuetude;

AND WHEREAS the Power of the Governor General under section 90 of the Constitution Act, 1867, to disallow Acts of the Legislatures of the several Provinces and the power of the Lieutenant Governors of the Provinces to reserve Bills of the legislatures of the several provinces for the signification by the Governor General of the Queen’s Pleasure are powers that are not compatible with the political maturity that has been attained by the Provinces of Canada, and have therefore fallen into Desuetude;

NOW, THEREFORE, the House of Commons resolves that Her Excellency the Governor General be authorized to issue a proclamation under the Great Seal of Canada in accordance with the schedule hereto:

SCHEDULE

AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF CANADA

1. The Constitution Act, 1867, is amended by deleting section 56.

2. The Constitution Act, 1867, is amended in section 57 by deleting the following words: “in Council”.

3. (1) The Constitution Act, 1867, is amended in section 90 by deleting the following words: “the Disallowance of Acts, and the Signification of Pleasure on Bills reserved,”.

2) The Constitution Act, 1867, is amended in section 90 by deleting the following words: “and for a Secretary of State, of One Year for Two Years,”.

1. This amendment may be cited as the Constitution Amendment, 2005 (Disallowance and Reservation) and a reference to the Constitution Acts, 1867 to 1982, shall be deemed to include a reference to the Constitution Amendment, 2005 (Disallowance and Reservation).

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on the 40th anniversary of the adoption of Canada's maple leaf flag to move a resolution to authorize Her Excellency the Governor General to issue a proclamation to amend the Constitution under section 41 of the Constitution Act, 1982. The amendments that I propose today would drop the final vestiges of colonialism from our Constitution under which Canada is still technically a self-governing British colony rather than a mature and independent state.

This resolution will, moreover, end the antiquated power of the federal cabinet to treat Canada's provinces as if they were self-governing colonies of Ottawa.

The amendments that I am proposing today to the Constitution of Canada will, if adopted by the Parliament of Canada and the legislatures of each of the provinces, have the effect of simultaneously marking Canada's full emergence into national independence and the final accession of Canada's provinces to the status of mature and fully self-governing states with the same formal status and independence that has been enjoyed for many years by the states of Australia and the United States, and by the cantons of Switzerland.

More precisely, the resolution being submitted to the House today would modify three provisions of the Constitution of Canada.

First of all, section 56 of the Constitution Act, 1867, would be deleted. This is an archaic provision which allows the British Cabinet to disallow acts of the Parliament of Canada within two years of their enactment.

Second, section 57 of the Constitution Act, 1867, would be amended to do away with the power of the Governor General to set aside or “reserve” bills enacted by both Houses of Parliament, so that they may not become law until assented to by the British Cabinet.

Finally, section 90 of the Constitution, Act, 1867 would be amended in order to do away with the power of the federal cabinet to disallow acts of the provincial legislatures and to study bills for which royal assent has been reserved for that purpose by the Lieutenant Governor of a province.

The idea of abolishing these powers is nothing new. A series of constitutional reforms 35 years ago, known as the Victoria charter, included a provision aimed at doing away with these powers of disallowance and reservation. That Victoria charter was supported by the Trudeau government and all provincial premiers. It was, however, eventually rejected when Quebec premier Robert Bourassa withdrew his support for reasons that have nothing to do with the powers we are discussing today.

Thirteen years ago, there was another proposal to eliminate these powers of disallowance and reservation in the Charlottetown accord. In the end, the people of Canada rejected that accord, but once again the imposing series of constitutional reforms was endorsed for reasons having nothing to do with those powers.

In recent decades, then, abolition of the powers of disallowance and reservation has been raised by the Government of Canada on two occasions. Each time all provincial premiers were unanimous in their approval. Then, each time, it ended up out of the constitutional program because it was part of an ambitious series of reforms that could not be given universal assent.

It is in recognition of this historical fact that I propose with the resolution before the House today to return to the pattern of constitutional debate which prevailed in Canada prior to the omnibus packages at Meech Lake, Charlottetown and Victoria. Resolution M-194 and the amendments that it proposes will stand or fall on their own merits, and not as part of a larger constitutional package.

This is the way constitutional amendments are done in the world's other great federations: in Australia, Switzerland and the United States. In these countries each potential amendment is considered on its own merits rather than as part of a packaged deal. Horse-trading plays no role in the ratification process and as a result the process of amending the Constitution is characterized by a distinct absence of the threats of national catastrophe that have been all too common in Canadian constitutional debates.

It is in the same spirit of modesty and reserve that minimalist language has been used in drafting the amendments under consideration today. The amendments have been drafted to strip away as few words as possible from the existing text of sections 56, 57 and 90 of the Constitution Act, 1867, and no words at all have been added to the Constitution, thus preserving untouched key institutions of Canadian life such as the Governor General and the Monarchy.

The two prior attempts in 1970 and 1992 at amending these sections have been somewhat more ambitious. The Charlottetown accord, for example, rewrites section 90 using gender neutral language, but the goal this time around is to make no changes at all to the Constitution except those that are absolutely unavoidable.

It may seem strange to Canadians that our Constitution could ever have been written to contain provisions making this country a self-governing colony rather than a sovereign state, and to seriously compromise the independence of our provinces. It is certainly true that none of the other three federations that I have mentioned gives the central government powers of disallowance over the laws of its states or cantons. But a generous regard for the wisdom of the Fathers of Confederation causes me to observe that the world of 1864 and 1865 in which they drafted and debated this country's Constitution was a much different place than it is today.

In the mid-1860s democracy and liberty worldwide were much more tenuous than they are today. The most egregious abuses of human liberty, including human slavery, were widespread. Democracy and the rights and freedoms which were the birthright of British subjects seemed to be very delicate blossoms indeed. When the Fathers of Confederation met in Quebec City and London to negotiate our Constitution, there was only a single stable democratic state in the entire world, and that was the United Kingdom.

There was at that time no Supreme Court of Canada, no Charter of Rights and no united conventions on human rights. Slavery had been abolished in the British colonies only 30 years earlier over considerable local opposition, and such recent developments as the creation of a vast new republic on the North American continent dedicated to the preservation and expansion of slavery made it reasonable to presume that basic liberties would require extraordinary protections, administered directly by the imperial government in London.

Thus, there was widespread agreement at the time that the rights of Canadians could be best guaranteed by granting the government in London the right to strike down Canadian laws, and by giving the new government in Ottawa the power to do the same with provincial laws.

As well, federalism itself was a new experiment within the British Empire. In the absence of a clearly delineated court of appeal to rule on jurisdictional disputes between the Dominion and the provinces, a power of disallowance seemed like a practical, if awkward, means of resolving such disputes.

The imperial power of disallowance and reservation over acts and bills of the Parliament of Canada seems to have worked more or less the way it was intended. Only one act of Parliament, the Oaths Act of 1873, was ever disallowed by the British cabinet, and the final occasion on which a Governor General exercised the power of reservation on a Dominion bill was in 1886. After this, the imperial powers gradually faded into disuse and their active use was disavowed by the British Parliament in 1931, by means of the Statute of Westminster.

From the very beginning, however, there were concerns that the federal power of disallowance and reservation over provincial laws were too broad, that unlike the imperial power of disallowance, they would be exercised at the behest of politicians who were active participants, rather than impartial observers, in the Canadian political scene, and that as a result these powers might be used erratically with either a regional bias or a partisan component.

Both these fears turned out to be valid. The federal power of disallowance was used 112 times between 1867 and its final use in 1943: 10 times to overturn acts of the legislatures of maritime provinces, 16 times to overturn acts adopted by the legislatures of Ontario and Quebec and 86 times to overturn acts passed by legislatures in the four western provinces.

There is an almost exact inverse ratio between the population and political weight of the province in question and the likelihood that its laws would be overturned by the federal cabinet. Moreover, the greater the partisan distinction between the government in Ottawa at any given time and the party in power in the province, the greater the possibility that the laws of that province would be challenged. Hence, the laws of British Columbia were a favourite target when B.C. had a non-partisan government prior to 1900.

The final occasion on which disallowance was seriously considered by a government in Ottawa was in 1945 when the Liberal government of Mackenzie King was only prevented from overturning the entire legislative agenda of Saskatchewan's new CCF government by an aggressive petition and letter-writing campaign coordinated by Premier Tommy Douglas, who had learned his lesson about how to fight back while watching the federal government annul one statute after another next door in Alberta between 1937 and 1943.

The most striking example of the willingness of federal governments to act arbitrarily and inconsistently came in 1937 when the federal minister of justice, Ernest Lapointe, acted promptly to strike down a series of Alberta statutes after refusing to disallow Quebec's notorious Padlock Law, under which the government of Premier Maurice Duplessis had given itself draconian powers to silence its opponents.

This double standard prompted Eugene Forsey to write the following in the June 1938 edition of The Canadian Forum , “It took less than one day's consideration for the Minister to recommend disallowance of the Alberta Acts, without any petition from anyone, and just one day for the government to offer a reference of the same Acts to the Supreme Court. In the case of the Padlock Act, nearly fourteen months have elapsed since the Act was assented to...more than eight months since the first request for disallowance; nearly four months since the first formal petition, six weeks since the hearing of counsel in support of the petition”.

If the episode is so shocking, it may be due to the following reason: less than one year after these events, this legislation in both Quebec and Alberta was struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada, which declared it to be ultra vires , meaning outside the legal jurisdiction accorded the provincial legislatures by the Canadian Constitution.

Canada had matured a great deal since 1867 and had established a Supreme Court with competent and enlightened judges to rule on such disputes over jurisdiction, which corresponded exactly to the demands of the provincial premiers at the Interprovincial Conference in 1887, in place of the federal powers of disallowance and reservation. It was clear from 1940 on that disputes over jurisdiction could be resolved without the power of disallowance.

Despite this, even if the federal government had a terrible record when it came to defending civil liberties against abuses by provincial government, there was always a valid reason to preserve the powers of disallowance and reservation as the means with which to strike down any provincial legislation violating fundamental human rights.

After the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, it was suggested that the power to revoke be used to strike down any provincial legislation that would contravene this fundamental legislation.

As late as 1960 it was suggested the federal government should consider using the power of disallowance to strike down any provincial laws that violated John Diefenbaker's new Bill of Rights, thereby unilaterally imposing a sort of national standard in human rights upon the provinces, even though the Bill of Rights was a federal law that placed no restrictions on provincial actions, but the 1960s were an era of change.

In 1965 Pierre Trudeau circulated a paper in which he made the following proposal, “A Bill of Rights could be incorporated into the constitution, to limit the powers that legal authorities have over human rights in Canada. In addition to protecting traditional political and social rights, such a bill would specifically put the French and English languages on an equal basis before the law. The protection of basic rights having thus been ensured, there would be no danger in reducing the central government's predominance in certain areas (for example, by abolishing the right of reservation and disallowance)...”

It was this proposal that was incorporated into the Victoria charter five years later, and that the Trudeau government attempted once more in 1978 with its constitutional amendment bill. It was really only by oversight that the package of amendments that were enacted in 1982 did not include the termination of these powers, which now served no useful purpose at all.

The inclusion of the powers of disallowance and reservation in the Charlottetown accord in 1992 was regarded as a matter of constitutional housekeeping and was completely non-controversial. Even the Reform Party, which had strongly opposed the Charlottetown accord, shortly thereafter added the removal of the powers of disallowance and reservation to its policy statement.

There is still a lively debate in Canadian academic circles as to whether the powers of disallowance and reservation are now dead from disuse or merely dormant. If the former is true, then on today of all days we should recognize that our Constitution is as important a symbol as our flag and dispense with these tokens of our colonial past. If it is the latter which is true, then these remain dangerous powers which are opposed by all shades of respectable opinion and they should be done away with.

Canada is as proud and independent a country as any in the world and Canada's provinces are as mature as any state anywhere. Let us make our Constitution reflect those facts.