Stephen Harper

[Firearms Act, June 12th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, this will be the only opportunity I have to address Bill C-68 in the Chamber. I was not able to speak to the bill at second reading because there was time allocation then. Now there is time allocation at report stage and time allocation again at third reading. There has been time allocation at every stage of the bill. It is unfortunate that in the end most members will be lucky to have 10 minutes to speak to this bill.

It is my intention to oppose the bill at report stage and at final reading unless substantive amendments are made. I have mentioned before that in the last election I made certain commitments to represent Calgary West in the House of Commons and to do so on the basis of Reform principles and policies. All Reformers ran on those principles.

Among those principles and policies is a commitment to ascertain the views of our constituents and to vote those views where they can be ascertained. Specifically, on moral issues and on the issue of gun control, I have made a particular commitment to discover and to vote the wishes of my constituents. I have followed a process in attempting to do that.

Through my householder I surveyed the general opinions of my constituents on gun control prior to the tabling of Bill C-68. That survey covered three general areas that are included in the bill. It covered the area of registration of all weapons, tougher penalties on gun crime and also the area of further restrictions and prohibitions on various classes of weapons. All of those things were supported in principle by a large majority of those who responded to the survey. That was prior to the tabling of Bill C-68. Consistent with that I supported Bill C-68 at second reading despite my own misgivings about some elements of it.

At that time I sent out a second survey to my constituents giving a little more information on the bill and asking very specific questions about the contents of Bill C-68 as well as giving my own views on it. Those questions, which were much more complex, asked about elements of the bill. As well they asked for their overall feeling on the bill. It came back with a somewhat different result that I think reflects not only greater knowledge of the bill but a change in public opinion that has occurred in Calgary in the past few weeks.

While some elements of the bill remain strongly supported by the population I should say that both my householder survey and the scientific survey I have conducted have indicated that there is still broad support for the general principles of the bill. However there are some very severe concerns about specific matters, about some of the penalties for non-registration, the confiscatory elements of the legislation and the cost concerns.

Some areas are supported and some are not. In the end the households that replied indicated about 60 per cent overall disapproval of the bill. I will reflect that in my vote.

From my own personal standpoint I believe there are elements of gun control and specifically of this bill that could be helpful. The government has over reached in a number of areas of the bill and it is unfortunate that we cannot get a more modest package.

Let me make some comments from my perspective as intergovernmental affairs critic of the Reform caucus because there are several areas of the gun control package that deserve some comment. We know that the Department of Justice retains overall responsibility for gun control but the program is predominantly administered by provincial and territorial governments, through chief firearms officers and local police agencies.

In 1993, the auditor general concluded that delays in reaching financial agreement with the provinces and territories under the authority of section 111 of the Criminal Code could well weaken the gun control program. Financial agreements had been initiated in 1979 and extended several times. The agreements expired on March 31, 1993 and now new agreements have been signed only with the maritime provinces.

I have been told the funds that the provinces received are not adequate to cover their costs. For example, in the case of Saskatchewan, it has not received payment for its administration of existing gun control programs since April 1, 1993 and it appears that little progress toward resolving this conflict has been made.

The federal government's latest offer amounts to only about two-thirds of the actual cost incurred for these programs. Agreements with the provinces are also mandated under section 108 of the Criminal Code to ensure maximum co-ordination with regard to administration of gun control.

We know that several of the provincial and territorial governments, and I include here Alberta, Saskatchewan, the Yukon territory, the Northwest Territories and now Ontario are not supportive of the bill. Clearly a high degree of provincial support is needed if this program is to be implemented with any degree of success.

Many amendments have been suggested to the bill, including the creation of a new level of bureaucracy, gun control inspectors, for which no cost estimates are available and about which all provinces are very concerned.

It would seem to me that a government that wanted to have its provincial counterparts on side would slow down and consult with them more on the bill, on the amendments and on its implementation. Instead we have a situation where at least two provincial governments, Saskatchewan and Alberta, are considering constitutional challenges or perhaps even refusing to administer gun control programs. That is unfortunate but it is part of what I talked about earlier in my speech where we have a situation where in many areas the government has over reached itself. In some cases it raised some very legitimate areas of concern and in other areas raised concerns where concerns were not necessary.

My own feeling, having talked to many people in my riding about this, people who own guns and do not own guns, people who are for the bill and who are against the bill, gun owners who are for and gun owners who are against, non-gun owners who are for the bill and non-gun owners who are against it, is that there is a fairly broad consensus on the kind of gun and crime control that is needed.

Many citizens would be more than willing to register their weapons and co-operate with police if they felt that in so doing this would affirm the legitimacy and respect for their responsibly used property rights and for responsible gun ownership.

Unfortunately there has been a pattern of legislation in the past decade where registration has been followed by increased regulation, ultimately by restriction, prohibition and then by confiscation, often without compensation. This has led to fears that some may say are unfounded but which do have their grounding in people's experience with gun laws.

These are people who have tried consistently to obey the law. That is unfortunate. Government has reinforced that impression by concentrating on the issue of gun control. Most people see a role for gun control but we have a government that refused to move in most areas of criminal justice reform.

The Young Offenders Act remains unreformed. Sentencing remains not reformed satisfactorily. We have ongoing debates about capital punishment and other areas of the criminal justice system which the government has not touched at all.

All in all, the government's fairly one dimensional determined agenda in this area has probably cost it the support of many Canadians who might otherwise support this legislation.

I will be the first to admit that it is very difficult to measure public opinion on this bill. Certainly when this bill was originally brought before the House my constituents were overwhelmingly in favour of its general direction. There has been a shift in public opinion. That shift has been away. The fact of the matter is that no clear consensus now exists for many of the measures in this bill. For that reason, I will be supporting a wide range of the amendments to the bill, and if those amendments are not adopted I will oppose the bill on the final vote.

[Pensions, June 12th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question.

The House will notice that minister did not offer to reveal the real cost of MP pensions. We know that some Liberal members must opt out of the pension scheme in order to fulfil campaign promises made in the last election.

If the government will not commit to publishing the benefits of the MP pension plan, will the minister at least agree to publish a list of those members who opt in and those who opt out or is he trying to hide that information too?

[Pensions, June 12th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Prime Minister.

The cost to taxpayers for individual MPs' expense allowances, travel expenses and salaries are available for voters' scrutiny in the Public Accounts of Canada, volume II, part II. However, the cost of individual MP pensions is not there. The information commissioner is being forced to take recourse to the courts just to obtain a list of MP pension beneficiaries.

Why is the government trying to hide how costly the MP pensions really are?

[Bill C-69, June 9th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure how many friends I have in the Senate.

In the Ontario election last night premier-elect Harris defeated the Liberals partly by proposing that there be a 25 per cent reduction to the number of seats in the Ontario legislature. If the government is not willing to at least let the redistribution go

ahead, would it consider combining the redistribution with the modest 10 per cent reduction to the number of seats that the Reform Party has proposed?

[Bill C-69, June 9th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, almost since this House began sitting early in 1994, the government has been attempting to redo the redistribution of boundaries in the House of Commons. This latest bill, C-69, which has been bouncing back and forth, is coming back to this House. It will increase the size of the House and add $6 million in redistribution costs. We saw last night in Ontario that the people of Canada do not want to spend this kind of money on the House of Commons.

I would ask the government House leader if he would now consider doing the right thing by withdrawing Bill C-69, saving $6 million, and allowing the redistribution to go ahead?

[Members Of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, June 9th, 1995]

This amendment in fact reveals the strength of their convictions on this objective.

Bloc members' intention to guarantee their own Canadian pension or participate in this retirement pension plan indicates a lack of confidence in the possibility of separation. I suppose there is an element of sacrifice in the sovereignty project. Interestingly enough, the Bloc Quebecois is proposing putting Quebecers in a position to lose the benefits of Confederation, including pension benefits, but is pushing here for the adoption of the Parliament's pension plan.

I would suggest that one way to show their good faith in the matter would be to vote for this amendment and to support the idea that things like pensions need to be negotiated, if, by chance, Quebec should really separate after the referendum.

It will be interesting. I doubt the Bloc will be prepared to take such a daring step in the House of Commons.

The effect of Motions Nos. 1 and 6 are to change the opting out provisions so members of future Parliaments can make a one time decision to opt in or out of the plan during the first 60 days the House sits after they are elected. Reform MPs will save taxpayers over $38 million by opting out and clearly in the absence of substantive changes to the plan future parliamentarians must have this option as well.

We will keep in mind that the failures of the government are starting to add up. While it may reject some of the populist measures used by my party I expect the next federal election to

be very much a referendum on issues like MP pensions. I do not believe by any means this issue will go away even if government members defeat this amendment.

We will see as in the Ontario election this is a hot issue and will still be a hot issue in the next federal election. Voters will ask for members to cut their pensions without any increase in pay, a suggestion which I think is perfectly reasonable.

Motions Nos. 2 and 3 change the bill so that a member who dies before the expiry of the 60-day decision period is assumed not to have opted in. Bill C-85 automatically opts these people in. I guess Reformers would rather assume the best of people than the worst of people.

It seems strange the government would make the default option here an assumption of action of opting in. I understand a lot of pressure is being placed on backbench Liberals to opt into this plan so the driving forces of the plan, the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, do not look too bad. Forcing dead MPs to opt into the pension plan is taking the idea of party discipline to new heights or to new depths even for the Liberal Party.

We know who will bear the brunt of the public backlash of this in the next election. It will be the Liberal backbenchers who did not really support the plan, who were told to participate and who if they lose the election will lose all pension in any case. This is really a remarkable coincidence of both lack of intelligence and lack of integrity coming together on an issue.

Motions Nos. 5 and 7 change the bill to allow all members to opt out completely. Under Bill C-85 MPs who as of October 1993 already had six years of service could only opt out of benefits earned after the last federal election, thus creating the terms trough regular and trough light which we like to refer to, the two tier system.

We have talked already about how this inability for longer serving MPs to completely opt out of Bill C-85 creates the two tier system. However, this is a minor issue in my opinion. The real issue is the two tier system between MP pensions and what is available to other Canadians.

One of the witnesses who testified before the committee which studied this bill, and I use the term studied very loosely, Mr. Brian Corbishley of Edmonton, testified the pension proposed under Bill C-85 is about seven times more generous than a typical public sector plan and four times more generous than a typical private sector plan. Mr. Corbishley's testimony and others should be listened to much more carefully and much more seriously than some of the government members seem to take this issue.

In Alberta Mr. Corbishley's firm, Peat Marwick, proposed a pension scheme for MLAs much less generous than that which existed in Alberta at the time. The plan in Alberta at the time was almost identical to what the government is now proposing.

In the heat of the pre-election build up in Alberta the government refused to significantly alter that plan to deal with the objections of taxpayers and citizens and it was increasingly looking like that government would face defeat in the election. Ultimately Mr. Klein ended up abolishing the plan, a major factor in his winning the election and doing some of the good things in Alberta he is now trying to do.

What is interesting about this, and I urge Liberal members to consider it very carefully, is ultimately a half hearted attempt to reform the MLA pension plan in Alberta resulted in MLAs in Alberta having no pension plan whatsoever, a situation which I do not think is ideal but which will result if the government follows the course it is on.

I urge members once again to consider some of these amendments. They will significantly alter the bill to make it more acceptable to the public. Ultimately the public will find this bill unacceptable. We know the MP pension plan will die because of the unreasonable form it is in today. It will die in any form and there will be no increase in compensation that the members on the other side so earnestly desire and do not deserve.

In any case, I ask them to consider these amendments and I thank them for their patience.

[Members Of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, June 9th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to debate Bill C-85, the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, and the amendments the government proposes. I am doing it in the short time that remains, given the closure and time allocation tactics of the government.

The amendments to the bill submitted under my name and under the name of the member for Calgary Centre have four main functions. First, to bring the members of Parliament pension plan into line with the private sector, both for MPs and Senators. Second, to allow MPs in this and in all future Parliaments to fully opt out of the pension plan. Third, to impose a Canadian citizenship requirement on all plan members. Fourth, to subject members pensions to the same clawback provisions that exist to old age security, something the Liberal government had opposed when it was in opposition but now seems to believe is fully acceptable for ordinary Canadians.

We are debating the first set of motions. Motion No. 4 provides that if a province separated, members of Parliament from that province would not automatically draw a pension from the Canadian government. This is the effect of proposing a citizenship requirement. We will be very interested to see whether it is the intention of the government to guarantee pensions to members who eventually may not be citizens of the country.

I have heard some comments from members of the separatist party in the House that they do not care what is happening in the House because they will not be here in the fall anyway. I happen to think they are wrong and they may be here much longer. In any case this raises an interesting question.

It is because the members of the Bloc Quebecois are insisting that Quebec is going to separate in the coming year, I suppose.

[Supply, June 7th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I also give my consent, provided my name is added to the list of those in opposition to the motion.

[Questions On The Order Paper, May 31st, 1995]

With regard to the multiple cheques issued by the government to individuals within a short period of time, for example OAS, CPP, civil and military service pensions, ( a ) what consideration has been given to combining all of the cheques sent in a month to an individual into a single payment, ( b ) how much does it cost to issue and mail each individual cheque and ( c ) has the possibility of issuing a single cheque to married couples been considered?

[Committees Of The House, May 31st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, a point of order.

I bring to the attention of the House that unanimous agreement on Bill C-85 includes only the Liberal and Bloc Quebecois members. Reform members did not agree with the one-day fast tracking of Bill C-85, and refused to participate in the 12-minute clause by clause.