Stephen Harper

[Justice, June 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, according to an Angus Reid and Southam News poll on criminal justice released yesterday, 82 per cent of Canadians say the justice system is too soft on crime, while only one per cent think it is too harsh.

This is the case in all regions of the country. For example, in Quebec, 74 per cent say that the system is too permissive and only 2 per cent say that it is too strict.

My question is for the Minister of Justice. What concrete measures will the minister be introducing to address these very clear concerns of Canadians about the criminal justice system?

[Supply, June 7th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I would agree strongly with the hon. member that she is confused. In fact she is so confused that I was barely able to understand the last half of that intervention.

However I will comment on the initial point which I think was important, and that is the issue of constitutional change and when and how we should pursue it.

Our party did say during the election campaign, as did the government, that Canadians were not interested in discussions of comprehensive constitutional change at this time. I would certainly agree with that. I think our priorities should be elsewhere.

Unfortunately we have to face the reality we have here. We have a party in the House which day after day is talking about the most dramatic and wide-ranging constitutional changes possible and that is the disintegration, separation, division, redivision of the federal state into two completely separate states, one which would presumably be a unitary state in Quebec and the other which as yet is undefined.

We hear this daily. We are heading into an election in Quebec where this will be an issue. Of course the separatists do not want to describe this as constitutional change because they realize it would immediately raise in the minds of the population of Quebec all the complexities and difficulties that are involved in that. The fact is that Quebecers are going to be asked very shortly to discuss constitutional change once again and to discuss it in the context of all the problems that exist with federalism.

We recognize those problems are there. We advocate some solutions to them. I am merely pointing out in my statement that we do have some constitutional perspectives here. We also have some things we would like to change about the country that can be pursued outside the constitutional framework.

The whole purpose of the motion while obviously not entering into constitutional negotiations is to raise the fact that there are alternative constitutional perspectives, including reforming ones, that do not require the kind of upheaval that separatism would entail.

[Supply, June 7th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I am delighted to rise to speak to the motion by the hon. member for Calgary Southwest that we affirm our desire for unity as a federal state. Specifically I would like to address the clause of the motion that we affirm the equality and uniqueness of all our citizens and provinces.

The equality of citizens is at the heart of a fundamental principle of democracy and one that I put to members we have drifted from in recent years, at least some would say the elite have drifted from as a country toward a concept called group rights.

In the Charlottetown accord we had this concept becoming more and more a proposal to entrench that kind of concept in our Constitution, where rights of citizens are determined not regardless of race, language, culture or gender but because of them. This commentary, this observation is not simply my own. The former leader of the Liberal Party, Mr. Trudeau, noticed this during that period when he talked about the hierarchy of rights embedded in the accord.

What this trend toward group rights has done, in our view, is not just detract from the fundamental principle of the individual and the individual's rights within the collectivity but has also had the effect, in our view, of a loss of our greater sense of collective identity as a nation.

I would reflect on Andrew Coyne's editorial yesterday in the Globe and Mail where he noted that group rights and its linkage to comprehensive philosophy of political victimology had led us to see ourselves increasingly as a nation of victim groups and ultimately as a victim nation, one without identity or power.

As Reformers we propose that we get back to the roots of liberal democracy, that we reaffirm the principles of democracy in a modern age and manifest political equality through institutional reform. Specifically we advocate free votes for the people's representatives in the Parliament of Canada, direct democracy among the population at large, introducing in the modern age with our educated populations mechanisms of referendum, initiative and recall, and even in the area of constitutional change, mechanisms like constitutional conventions and popular ratification.

The equality of citizens does not preclude the uniqueness of citizens. We hear objections whenever we raise this point. We recognize there are all kinds of communal and individual identities within the country. We are suggesting the Government of Canada should concentrate its efforts on the responsibility for the promotion of our collective identity as a nation rather than the focus it has had in the past generation on things like official multiculturalism or the promotion of Canada as a federation of two founding peoples: the English and the French.

In our view we should be going toward more race, culture, language neutral concepts of our nationhood. Defining a country as a union of founding peoples, English and French, in this day and age is to Reformers as ridiculous as it would be to define it as a nation of two founding religions: the Protestants and the Catholics.

I would also like to speak about the equality of provinces, the second portion of that clause. This refers, in our view, to what is a fundamental principle of a federation. The fact that we are a federation of provinces was clearly recognized in the 1867 Confederation constitution and quite properly so since it superseded the disastrous binational unitary state of 1841 to 1867. In Canada we have not always lived up to the concept of equality of provinces. My province of Alberta and the prairie provinces generally were deliberately created as inferior political units after Confederation, an error that was not corrected for decades.

At all times, because of the way our parliamentary system unfolded, small provinces have found themselves at the federal level subjected to the domination of the central provinces of Ontario and Quebec through the systematic skew of power in the House of Commons and the decline of the Senate as an effective political institution.

Later all provinces, even the large provinces, have found problems in the federation as an increasingly unbalanced federal spending power has been able to override clear areas of provincial jurisdiction. This breakdown of division of powers has occurred for both the federal and provincial governments.

We propose as Reformers to reaffirm our commitment to provincial equality through institutional reform and also through re-establishing a balanced division of powers in the federation. I have spoken many times in the House of our hope to reform the Senate based on the triple-E model, to restore the Senate as an effective second Chamber through electing senators and providing equal representation to the provinces. In other words, we want a Senate that is the kind of effective regional Chamber that the Fathers of Confederation had intended so that in the Parliament of Canada federal law-making is more than a simple domination of small provinces by large provinces.

This concern for regional representation is not only a matter for small provinces; it is also a concern for small regions in large provinces like British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec as well. Indeed, we hope to have a provision in a reformed Senate for regional representation within large provinces, for example, for the Gaspé and the North Shore in Quebec or for northern Ontario.

Of course, when we speak of the equality of provinces in this motion, we also speak of their uniqueness. Our critics will say, "Of course you just want to see Quebec as a province like the others." Of course not. Equality does not mean identity. The federal principle does not mean that the provinces are identical; it means that they share certain values and policies, for example, the economic criteria mentioned in the motion, but the federal principle also means that provinces have their distinct character and uniqueness through the division of powers in a federal state. Canada's uniqueness includes, for example, such things as the cultural realities in the province of Quebec, language, of course, and certain geographical realities such as natural resources in the western provinces. In a federal state, these things should be in provincial jurisdiction and the division of power should be respected in a developed federal state.

In conclusion, I have spoken in the context both of equality and uniqueness of provinces, of many things that are in Canada today and also things we would like to see changed. Some of the

changes I have mentioned are mere policy matters. Others would be more serious constitutional changes at some point.

I remind all members, in conclusion, that all serious constitutional change, all constitutional change, anything that would significantly change in our federation the status of any citizen or any province requires respect for democracy, for the Constitution and for the rule of law. It is not compatible with unilateral or illegal actions. I expect that as we debate our future in the next few months that the expectation of all Canadians will be that we continue to function in the context of a constitutional democracy and we will all respect the rule of law.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Suspension Act, 1994, June 3rd, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I am happy to answer both questions.

First, on the issue of the committee study, obviously myself as well as the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminister would expect the committee to do a wide ranging study, but in the end we have to give the public a reason to suggest why we would completely suspend and eventually kill the process that has been under way.

I would suggest that there are certain minimum parameters that would justify killing it this time as opposed to waiting for

next time. We are not going to change a couple of commas in the Elections Act and use that as an excuse, as I said before, to flush $5 million or $6 million down the toilet. I would suggest that the public itself has some fairly obvious parameters in mind.

I am rushed here but I will answer the second question which concerns my position on the Senate.

Obviously now that the Reform Party supports the bill I would urge the Senate to give it consideration and to see the wisdom in supporting it. The Senate has the constitutional power to pass or defeat any piece of legislation. That power is not conferred upon it by myself.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Suspension Act, 1994, June 3rd, 1994]

Madam Speaker, if I understood the question correctly, we recognize the demands of the public in some regions, including western regions, for regional representation in the Parliament of Canada.

Naturally, the committee can study the way to do it within the readjustment process, and we support that. However, there is a limit to the capacity to represent the regions in this House. According to the Constitution, this chamber represents the population. This is a constitutional fact.

If we want effective regional representation, we have to reform the Senate. This is our position and I believe that, in this regard, the position of the Bloc contains a contradiction. You cannot oppose Senate reform and support an effective regional representation in Parliament.

I would also like to make a few personal comments about the position of the leader of the Bloc Quebecois. I will no say anything specific, but just point out that there is another contradiction here between the public objectives for the next election and the fact that the Bloc does not intend to run in that election. This is intrinsic to their position on sovereignty. One cannot have sovereignty as the ultimate goal and pretend to be concerned about the future of the country. This is a fact.

I say to the government that the position taken by the Bloc in this debate demonstrates that we have an opposition party that has a vested interest in disagreeing with every possible proposition. We have seen it during the constitutional debates. The same applies to the electoral legislation. I am advising the government to follow the consensus of federalist parties and to be wary of the Bloc position, given its raison d'être.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Suspension Act, 1994, June 3rd, 1994]

Madam Speaker, when I rose before question period in a much noisier Chamber I was stating that our party was prepared to support the bill with some reservation, given the Senate and government amendments that have been tabled today. I was pointing out some of the concerns we had with the bill and the fact that most of the commissions have now reported or are close to reporting in terms of their particular roles.

The effects of the amendments are basically as follows. The Senate is trying to ensure that redistribution is completed prior to the next federal election and the amendments now agreed to by the government should accomplish it. They also go further. They keep the commissions that were originally to be killed by the bill in a suspended existence and allow the present stage of public hearings to be completed so that we save the money we basically had already spent on the process.

Furthermore, and this is important, the amendments will in effect serve as a safety net to the committee examining the redistribution process. They provide a backup position in case the committee is unable to reach agreement on the nature of reforms, particularly if reforms are reached that do not necessitate starting the process from scratch once again.

They make it politically difficult under the motion the House earlier passed, Government Motion No. 10, for the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to come up with a piece of work that is essentially partisan or that would lead to boundaries and a process that was not agreeable.

Also it is important this whole series of events has shown, particularly when the lower House is forced to act hastily, that the upper House can make a valid contribution. There are many problems with the Senate as it is constituted today and improvements could still be made, but I will leave that for another colleague of mine to comment on.

I point out that with the amendments the government has now introduced, or the Senate amendments that the government is supporting, particularly with the additional change that the government has made, the amendments to the bill are in substance virtually identical to what the Reform Party had proposed before the bill originally left the House.

Originally it was not our intention to see redistribution killed but this is as workable a compromise as we are going to get, given the obvious desire of the government to examine the process.

I urge the government to pursue in the future, not only with this bill, but also with motion No. 10, a really substantial all party agreement on changes to the redistribution process.

When we are dealing with the rules of the game it seems reasonable to expect that we would have a consensual approach. I urge the government to consider the opinions of the major parties in the House, the Liberal Party and the Reform Party. It should also, because elections concern minor parties, consider the effect on the New Democratic Party and the Progressive Conservative Party and whatever input they would have into this legislation.

It might be noticed that I did not mention the Bloc Quebecois in my comments. Frankly I have been mystified at every stage of the bill at the unusual Bloc position of supporting the unilateral changes in the first place. Then the Bloc engaged in a filibuster when it said it wanted the bill passed quickly and now the Bloc says it does not want changes.

We have seen in recent weeks some of the difficulties in having an Official Opposition that does not have the same stake in Canadian democracy and in Canadian institutions, not just on this issue, but on others.

As is obviously the case for many other hon. members here, the recent attitude of the Bloc Quebecois and its leader worries me a lot. But it is important to note that the Bloc claims it will not run in the next federal election. Indeed, the Bloc is not as interested as the Reform Party or the Liberal Party in a system and in issues concerning the next election.

What this illustrates, albeit in a small way, is that they cannot constantly aim at leaving the Federation and still claim to be concerned by all things Canadian.

They cannot have it both ways. This is a fact that we should take into account when considering this bill and the amendments to the Election Act.

I would like to take the last few minutes of my speech to comment on Motion No. 10. This bill suspends the process beginning in September for a period of nearly a year and government motion No. 10 charges the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs with studying a new law. It has laid out four items.

I will very quickly go over what our party feels very strongly the government should be considering. First, we had insisted and the government had accepted that this committee look at a formula to cap or reduce the size of the House. There has been

some comment on this because we have been urging, particularly in the case of British Columbia, that it achieve its fair representation.

We cannot have things every way and we recognize that. The size of the House should be capped. Maybe even the size should be lowered, but the proportionality of the provinces should be reflected. We would expect British Columbia and Ontario to increase their number of seats. Obviously this necessitates a new formula and some loss of seats for smaller provinces. You cannot violate the Constitution and forbid proportionality. At the same time you cannot cap the number of seats, as the Bloc Quebecois wants, and say that the smaller provinces that are losing share cannot decline in representation. You cannot have all of these things at once and then deny regional representation through the Senate.

That is another case where the Bloc's position makes no particular sense. Once again we would urge that the only valid reason for completely stopping this process rather than resuming it will be to come up with a new formula that will cap and reduce the number of seats which is what the public has been telling us.

Another aspect of the motion called for a review of the present method of selecting members of electoral boundaries commissions. The Lortie commission, which spent a great deal of time and money studying these issues and which on these subjects was really addressing non-ideological issues, recommended that the use of independent electoral boundaries commissions for each province and the Northwest Territories, as well as the composition and manner of their appointment, be maintained. The chairman is to be appointed by the chief justice of the province and additional members by the Speaker of the House. That is certainly what our party will be stressing.

The current commissions have not only the chief justices but also additional members who are, by and large, the academics with expertise in this field across the country. It is difficult to imagine finding more qualified people.

The motion asks that they review the rules governing and the powers and methods of the commissions and whether they ought to commence their work on the basis of making necessary alterations to the boundaries of existing electoral districts wherever possible.

Several recommendations here are relevant. If anything we would be restricting, as the Lortie commission suggested, the latitude in terms of population deviation. We should look at more frequent and partial redistribution after each general election rather than after each decennial census. Those are things we would encourage the commission to study, but we would also suggest that minor changes in those areas are not grounds for suspending, stopping or restarting the process.

Finally, the motion asks that we review the time and nature of the involvement of the public in the work of the commission. We would support strongly the Lortie commission recommendation which was that far from increasing the role of politicians, that their role be decreased, that we looked more at two stages of public hearings rather than a second stage where hearings are in the House of Commons.

Those are our concerns. They are concerns we continue to have about the process being suspended. However, with these amendments there are reasonable safeguards to protect the interests of the public as well as the interests of various parties.

At this point, I congratulate the government on finally seeing the light on some of these issues and accepting amendments that we had originally proposed and that the Senate also has proposed.

[Royal Canadian Legion, June 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, this week the Royal Canadian Legion has been holding its convention in my city of Calgary.

We have all become aware of this due to the media concentration on the issue of head-dress regulations that arose at the convention. I probably would have voted on that particular issue differently than the legion, but frankly that is not the important issue.

What we should be focusing on is the focus of the convention; the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion and the unparalleled historic contribution of Canadian veterans to our society through their bravery in those dark days of World War II.

The greatest human rights victory of this century, perhaps of history, was the defeat of Adolf Hitler and the allies of the national socialists. The unbalanced focus of the press and so-called human rights commentaries this week have been quite frankly pathetic and an insult to veterans and veterans' organizations.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Suspension Act, 1994, June 3rd, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I am rising today to speak to Bill C-18, which suspends the operation of the electoral boundaries adjustment process and to address specifically the motion that the government has brought forward to accommodate amendments that have come from the Senate study of the bill.

The purpose of Bill C-18 is, I think, to kill the electoral boundaries readjustment process. The Reform Party was opposed to that bill until now. However, I can say that with the amendments proposed by the Senate and those put forward by the government today, we can now support this bill.

As you know, Madam Speaker, we did oppose and have opposed vigorously Bill C-18. We were opposed to it to such an extent that at second reading closure was moved. We still have some concerns with this course of action, but I should begin by saying we can support this bill with the accommodations the government has made today.

Let us review Bill C-18 and some of the original problems that have been addressed. The House will recall that originally there was no demand from the public for this legislation, certainly no mention in the red book of any intention to bring in such legislation and no serious mention of the procedural concerns that had arisen when legislation such as this had been introduced previously in 1973, 1985 and 1992. Yet in late March, early April, the government came out with C-18 as their top legislative priority.

When the bill was rammed through the House with closure, it really did not present a lot of opportunity for meaningful public debate. We had begun to hear, and the Senate later heard, from provincial and territorial governments, from many academics and experts and from many individual Canadians, particularly from British Columbia, all of whom were condemning C-18 as not simply a bad bill and not simply an undemocratic bill, but an unconstitutional bill.

It was apparent that the bill had been prepared without consultation with Elections Canada. Mr. Kingsley, the Chief Electoral Officer, has stated in committee hearings that it has always been the practice of the governments of the day to consult Elections Canada when considering changes to such processes and it is what we would have expected normally on this occasion.

The mechanics of our electoral system are admired around the world and Elections Canada's advice, as we know, is frequently sought by other countries. Recently we played a role in the elections in new democracies in both South Africa and Ukraine.

The electoral process and its outcome affect all Canadians. The interests of all of Canadians must be served, not the interests of politicians, not partisan interests or political self-interest.

One of the biggest problems with the original bill was the lack of all-party consensus. The government had only the support of the Bloc Quebecois. It was opposed by the Reform Party, and I should add, opposed quite vigorously by the New Democratic Party and by the Progressive Conservative Party, although its opposition comes primarily from the Senate. We heard only within weeks of the passage of the bill that many elements of the Liberal Party were also opposed, as some members found out at their recent convention.

The reason I mention these other parties is that the support of parties, both major and minor, in this type of legislation is important for the operation of the democratic system. The support of the Bloc Quebecois is a different matter and I will address that in my later remarks.

While all this has been going on, the public hearings into the redistribution process have continued. The bulk of the dollars had been spent even before the bill was introduced and now eight out of eleven of the commissions have finished their public hearings; in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick-

[Electoral Boundaries, May 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to hear the government supports the independence of the commissions which have now virtually completed their work at a cost of over $5 million.

Surely killing the process is not a serious priority for this government. Could the Acting Prime Minister assure the House that the only reason left for stopping this redistribution again would be to follow the suggestion of my party echoed by the Minister of National Revenue that the number of seats in the House of Commons be capped or reduced?

[Electoral Boundaries, May 26th, 1994]

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

Yesterday the Senate approved amendments to Bill C-18 to ensure that riding redistribution takes place before the next election. However, the government leader in the Senate indicated that one of the problems with the current process was the lack of supervision of the independent, non-partisan boundary commissions.

Could the Acting Prime Minister explain what sort of supervision the government thinks is required? Why does the government not support the independence of the independent commissions?