(1505 )
These reports are deemed referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.
[Translation]
[English]
Today in the heart of downtown Tel Aviv a terrorist yet again carried out an attack against innocent individuals. Worse still, many of the casualties appear to be children.
[Translation]
All Canadians vigorously condemn these acts of terrorism. We are with the people of Israel at this tragic time. The Prime Minister has written to Prime Minister Peres. I have also written to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Barak, to express our support.
Today, the Prime Minister of Canada asked the other heads of state meeting in Grenada to condemn the attacks in Israel and they agreed to.
[English]
Later this afternoon I will be meeting with members of the Israel committee to discuss their concerns. I will also be writing directly to PLO chairman Yasser Arafat to urge him to take all steps within his power to prevent further acts of terrorism.
I acknowledge very clearly, as we all must, that Canada must also do its own part. I will be speaking to my colleague, the solicitor general, and to other ministers to review what steps can be taken by Canada to ensure terrorists find no home here.
The issue of terrorist funding was raised in question period regarding the extent of the problem in Canada. We do not know how far, how modest or how great, but whatever the amount we know they can be important to groups themselves. Therefore we are committed to doing all we can to deprive terrorists of this funding.
We will also be discussing with our counterparts in the P-8 group of nations what further actions we can take to root out terrorism.
There is no doubt the terrorists who carried out these attacks had in mind one basic target, the Middle East peace process. It is tragic in today's world that the bad drives out the good and the extremists can force what was a positive, constructive development to turn this way.
We should remind ourselves today of all that has been accomplished in the peace process. Israel is at peace with its neighbours Egypt and Jordan. It has with PLO chairman Yasser Arafat found a partner. Now these partners must work together to defeat those who seek to destroy all the peace process has accomplished so far.
[Translation]
We think that the peace process must continue. It is the best response to terrorism.
(1510)
Mr. Peres has carried on Yitzhak Rabin's peace efforts with courage and determination.
[English]
We have learned that there are people who believe they can achieve acts of change by the sword. I think all of us in the House are of the opinion that it really is through words, discussion and dialogue that peace is brought about. The events that so deeply penetrate our hearts, just as the shrapnel and weapons penetrated bodies, we have to continue to ask why such senseless acts. We are a generation that has witnessed far too many such acts of violence and terrorism and have seen so many cut down.
I am reminded of the words of Robert Kennedy when his brother was assassinated: ``What has violence ever accomplished, what has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet. No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper or a terrorist is only a coward, not a hero. An uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people''.
We are reminded this day of how fragile our societies are and how vulnerable to extremists, fanatics and true believers each of us really is. Even in our own country we receive some overtones of this.
We offer our great hope for the continuation of that peace process. We offer to the people of Israel and to all the Middle East a great hope that this terrorism can be brought to an end and that we can all work together to bring lasting peace and stability to this very tortured and troubled region.
It is my understanding that my parliamentary secretary has discussed matters with members of the opposition and they would be prepared to entertain a unanimous motion condemning the acts in Israel and offering our support for the peace process. We will circulate those for consideration during the period of motions. We ask the House to join us in expressing our deep concern.
[Translation]
Mr. Gilles Duceppe (Laurier-Sainte-Marie, BQ): Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the official opposition, I wish to condemn this new terrorist attack against the Israeli people, which threatens the Middle East peace process.
This bombing, which killed or wounded dozens of innocent victims, is the fourth one in Israel in less than 10 days.
The Bloc Quebecois wishes to express its profound sympathy to the families of the victims, to the people of Israel, and to all Jewish people around the world, including the Jewish community in Quebec.
This gratuitous violence threatens not only the long and difficult road to peace but also the negotiations on the eventual status of the Palestinian territories. We want to stress the need to resist provocation. The peace talks must continue. The fight against violence must prevail over the fight against peace.
We cannot let Yitzhak Rabin's tragic death take with it the hope of a lasting peace between Israel and her Arab neighbours. The best response to radicalism is to continue and strengthen the peace process.
The Bloc Quebecois hopes that these tragic and violent events will not hamper the pursuit of Messrs. Arafat and Peres' diplomatic efforts to establish a peace plan in the region. The process initiated must prevail over the radical currents that flout democratic values and promote violence.
We were therefore happy to hear the PLO chairman state, and I quote: ``Today's crime reinforces our determination to pursue our policy of fighting terrorism here and abroad. We must work with Israel to destroy their structure and eradicate terrorism''.
Chairman Arafat's Sunday announcement banning the military wings of the Muslim fundamentalist movements in the West Bank and Gaza also demonstrates this commitment.
The Canadian government must offer its full co-operation in thwarting the efforts of those who seek to destroy the peace process. It can count on the official opposition's support in this regard.
Mr. Speaker, I seek the unanimous consent of the House to observe a minute of silence in memory of the innocent victims of the fundamentalist movement Hamas.
(1515)
[English]
Mr. Bob Mills (Red Deer, Ref.): Mr. Speaker, what can I say that would give meaning to the senseless bombing of civilians that has taken place in Israel for the third time in the last week? Friends and families of victims have once again had their hearts broken by despicable terrorists.
These cowardly acts are inexcusable and, while the vast majority of people throughout the world will condemn them, I would like to address those people and those countries who do not. To all those who make excuses for the bombers or who sit on the sidelines and give silent approval, you should look in the mirror. Do you like what you see? Do you not realize that you are the moral accomplices in the murder of women and children? We must hold these people accountable.
The time has come for the international community to take strong, unequivocal steps to crush terrorism worldwide and severely punish those individuals and countries that finance terrorism.
We all know that bombs, guns and supplies are not cheap. The money has to come from somewhere. Often it comes from abroad. If the world community can work together to cut off this financial backing, then hopefully many terrorist organizations will wither.
Therefore I urgently request that the Minister of Foreign Affairs take a leadership role in punishing those individuals and countries that support terrorism worldwide. The Reform Party will support him in this measure and so will all Canadians. There is no time to waste. The victims of terrorism are demanding action now, and it is through our decisive action that we will create a deserving memorial in their honour.
Once again, I would like to send my deepest condolences to the people of Israel and the Canadian Jewish community. I assure them that we will work with them to find justice for the victims and punish the terrorists who never should be allowed to hide and get away with their crimes.
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the federal NDP caucus, I would like to express our outrage at this series of events, the most recent one being a few hours ago. I would like to express our condolences to the people of Israel and say that we share with them that sense of powerlessness that sometimes comes over us in the face of this kind of terrorism, in the face of radical evil, in the face of extremism.
At the same time as we share that sense of powerlessness, we want also to share with them a determination to see the peace process through and to make sure that the terrorists do not succeed in derailing it.
We say to the Israeli people, do not be divided by this event. Do not turn on each other. Let us not hear any cries of Perez next or the kinds of things that we have heard from certain elements in Israeli society. In spite of the pain, in spite of the terror, we want to see an Israeli people united and determined to see the peace process through.
I think there is a special place in hell reserved for people who use children as hostages and who make children the objects of terrorist attacks. I do not care whether it is a Muslim hell, a Christian hell or a Jewish hell. It is a special place in hell that is reserved for people who do this.
We ought to reflect perhaps on the way in which we are all part of the same mentality when we consider the way in which we held each other's civilian populations, including children, hostage to the nuclear deterrent for 40 years. It is part of the modern age and it is something we all have to shake. When we see it in its raw, brutal, obvious form we condemn it. Let us condemn it wherever we find it.
[Translation]
The Deputy Speaker: My colleagues, the House has heard the motion put forward by the Leader of the Opposition in the House. Does the House give unanimous consent for the motion to be tabled and adopted?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
[English]
[Editor's Note: The House stood in silence.]
(1520 )
Mr. Axworthy (Winnipeg South Centre): Mr. Speaker, in consideration of these very important matters, as I indicated in my statement, I would like to move a motion with the unanimous consent of the House which would express the point of view of this House concerning the events in Israel. We have not reached motions yet but considering the timing I would ask for consent to do that.
The Deputy Speaker: The minister is quite correct, we have not reached motions yet. Is there unanimous consent to proceed with the matter?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
Mr. Axworthy (Winnipeg South Centre): Mr. Speaker, I thank the members of the House for their courtesy and response. I seek the unanimous consent of the House for the following motion to be moved and adopted without debate:
That Canada strongly condemns repeated acts of terrorism against the people of Israel, and that the Government of Canada and the people of Canada make every effort to ensure that the enemies of the peace process will not prevail.(Motion agreed to.)
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
[Translation]
Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act and the Income Tax Act''.
(Motion deemed agreed to, bill read the first time and ordered to be printed.)
[English]
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
He said: Mr. Speaker, the Parliament of Canada is limited in its freedom to pass legislation by the charter of rights and freedoms.
The private member bill I am introducing today is designed to limit parliamentarians in their ability to run budget deficits, which in effect provide benefits for voters today at the expense of unborn generations who have no vote and representation in today's Parliament.
(1525 )
The record shows that Parliament has been totally irresponsible in its disregard of the interests of future generations. My bill will make it responsible by prohibiting deficits, limiting the growth of spending and imposing fines on MPs who vote for deficit budgets and excessive spending growth.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
He said: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to reintroduce my bill dealing with government financing.
Members of the House are often required to vote on various pieces of legislation. It occurs to me that quite often members of Parliament and the general public have no idea of exactly what the cost will be or its future impact on taxpayers.
The bill would require that prior to all legislation being voted on that it be properly costed and the costing be attested to by the Governor General. I believe if we had had this type of legislation in the past we would not have the debt and deficit problems which now exist.
I am pleased to introduce the bill which will provide an awareness and a better focus among parliamentarians on some of the debt and deficit problems we have.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
He said: Mr. Speaker, it pleases me once again to reintroduce my private members' bill which I have entitled a taxpayers bill of rights. Basically the bill would provide for an ombudsman who would act as an adjudicator between taxpayers and the government.
Revenue Canada has become more and more desirous of increased revenues from taxpayers. It has used some of its authoritative mechanisms to, I believe, infringe on the civil liberties of Canadians to the extent of unnecessary seizures and other onerous acts.
This bill will protect widowers and widows from having to sell their properties in restitution of back taxes or taxpayers from having to relinquish their homes. It also provides a window of opportunity for restitution and compensation for wrongful acts by Revenue Canada. It provides for $50,000 compensation for wrongful acts by Revenue Canada on the taxpayers of Canada.
The United States and the United Kingdom have similar acts. It is long overdue here in Canada.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
He said: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to introduce this bill to amend the Broadcasting Act. As more players enter the marketplace to provide television programming services to Canadians, it is necessary that the CRTC understand that the consumer's interest is paramount.
(1530 )
To this end I am introducing this bill which will amend the broadcast policy section of the Broadcasting Act to direct the CRTC never again to permit negative option billing or other such practices.
Clearly the potential for this still exists, but in the interests of Canadian consumers the bill will level the playing field between supplier and consumer of services, something over which Canadians expressed strong opinions last year during the consumer revolt against cable companies.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
[Translation]
She said: Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure of tabling today this bill to amend the Criminal Code so that every person who testifies in proceedings relating to a sexual offence or assault, or in which the offender allegedly used, attempted to use or threatened to use violence, is afforded the same protection as witnesses under 14 years of age are currently afforded under the Criminal Code.
During this kind of proceedings, the accused will not be able to question the victim. In such cases, the judge will appoint counsel to conduct the cross-examination.
(Motion deemed agreed to, bill read the first time and ordered to be printed.)
[English]
He said: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of the bill is to impose the death penalty on adults convicted of first degree murder. Canadians are demanding fundamental changes to our criminal justice system, and almost 70 per cent have called for the reinstatement of capital punishment.
The bill provides additional safeguards against miscarriages of justice by allowing questions of both fact and law to be considered throughout the appeals process. Evidence for whether capital punishment is a deterrent for other murderers is not conclusive, but at least criminals guilty of premeditated first degree murder will not be back on the streets to kill again.
Too many Canadians have died at the hands of violent criminals who show no remorse for the victims of their crimes. These people will never be rehabilitated, no matter how long they stay in prison.
The bill also addresses the growing public concern over light sentences for violent young offenders. It calls for a range of stiffer minimum penalties for youth convicted of first degree murder.
I recommend that the government allow a free vote on the bill and encourage all members to seek actively the views of their constituents on this important issue.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
He said: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of the bill is to remove from the Canada Labour Code the provision that denies severance pay to employees who at the time they are terminated from employment are entitled to a pension under certain plans or legislation.
Currently, no matter how inadequate a pension may be, it deprives an employee of the right to severance pay. Passage of the bill would end an injustice and would end the enshrinement of age discrimination in the Canada Labour Code.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
(1535 )
He said: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased today to introduce the bill respecting the energy price commission. The bill responds to the concerns and complaints of millions of Canadians about unfair gas pricing, unjustifiable price increases for gasoline and government tax hikes on gasoline.
The bill establishes an energy price commission to regulate wholesale and retail prices of gasoline. The purpose of price regulation is to avoid unreasonable increases that affect the cost of living, agricultural production costs and depressed business activity.
The bill will facilitate reasonable consistency in prices from province to province, allowing for production and distribution costs. The regulation further minimizes the risk of collusion in pricing and prevents dominant suppliers from setting unreasonable prices.
The bill also links the issue of price control to competition. Any investigation of an alleged offence under the Competition Act that is related to gasoline pricing is remitted by the Competition Tribunal to the commission for investigation and a report to the tribunal before it makes a determination or order on the matter.
Every one penny increase in gasoline takes about $375 million out of the economy. This commission will make sure the money is either justified or not.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
She said: Mr. Speaker, the bill would amend the Competition Act by creating an offence for manufacturers and distributors of motor vehicles and farm equipment to engage in certain marketing practices with their dealers. In most cases franchise agreements provide that a dealer shall not carry any other line or ``dual'' without the written permission of the manufacturer. In practice that permission is rarely forthcoming.
The consequences of this restrictive arrangement are that the dealer's investment in one line of motor vehicles or farm equipment may substantially exceed the investment actually required to efficiently supply the sales and servicing demands faced by a particular dealer in his or her market.
By allowing the dealer to offer one or more new lines of new motor vehicles or farm equipment I believe the bill would produce two positive results. First, the investment of the dealer would be utilized more efficiently and effectively and, second, the public in the dealer's market would be better served.
I urge all members to support the bill for the benefit of Canada's business community.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
Mr. Bob Ringma (Nanaimo-Cowichan, Ref.): Mr. Speaker, I understand the motion before us is a debatable motion and therefore I would like to offer the following in debate.
(1540)
If adopted by the House, the motion would establish the membership of the standing joint committee of the House. The Reform Party does not oppose the membership of any of the committees, but we do oppose the way the committees have been run over the first session of the 35th Parliament.
We have every reason to believe that there is nothing likely to change in this regard during the second session. The main question we are asking here is why this love-in between the Liberal benches and the Bloc Quebecois. We cannot answer that question. That is why we have taken the route to have a debate on the matter to expose some of the problems we see.
This situation is particular galling when it comes to the public accounts committee of the House which can be chaired and is chaired by a member of the opposition. In spite of our efforts we have found that the Liberal benches have deliberately contrived to have that chair taken by the Bloc Quebecois.
We have nothing against the individual members of the Bloc Quebecois. They are competent, professional people. What we have against it is that they are separatists. They want to divorce Quebec from Canada and we as federalists say this is wrong. It is wrong for the government benches to be saying yes, let they have all the vice-chairs, particularly the chair of the public accounts committee.
This is being done, led by the chief government whip, in spite of some of the quotes from the Prime Minister. In January 1994 he said: ``I know very well that if members of the official opposition keep talking about separation and constitutional problems they are not living up to why they are here''.
More recently he also said: ``My blood is boiling when I see those separatists in front of me because I fought them all my life''. The Globe and Mail quotes the Prime Minister as admitting that he would rather have the Reform Party leader as his official opponent. It was one of the few times that the Prime Minister has been so publicly clear about his displeasure over the powerful separatist role in Parliament. The words of the Prime Minister obviously do not square with the actions of his party, led by the chief government whip.
During the first session we attempted to bring these concerns to the attention of the House through various points of order. Each time our concerns fell on deaf ears. The Speaker's refusal to entertain our points of order has left us in a catch 22.
When we raised questions about the election of committee chairs and vice-chairs at the committee, we were told the Liberals were simply backing the Bloc because it was tradition. We have then been summarily dismissed by the Liberal majority. This leaves us with no choice but to take the issue up as points of order in the House. Having done that, they have all been summarily dismissed to date. We have been on this merry-go-round for two years and our members are frustrated. One can tell by the look on their faces that they have had it.
It is important for me to clarify once again that this frustration is not personal but is professional. Reform members are frustrated not for themselves but for the vast majority of Canadians who support a united country yet cannot have their views adequately represented in the committee hierarchy because of the persistent, unexplainable love-in between the government and the Bloc Quebecois.
(1545)
Mr. Szabo: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. The member raised an issue which is completely contradictory to the ruling of the Chair with regard to the position of the official opposition. Given the ruling by the Chair as to who constitutes the official opposition, the rules of procedure and the House rules clearly state the provisions with regard to chairs and vice-chairs of committees. The member clearly is arguing a matter which is challenging the ruling of the Chair and contrary to the standing orders.
The Deputy Speaker: With great respect to the member for Mississauga South, I think the matter he is raising is one of debate. However, when the member for Nanaimo-Cowichan uses words like ``summarily dismissed'' it seems they are a veiled reflection that the Chair did not rule carefully on the matter. I ask him to avoid terms in further remarks that suggest the Chair was not doing its job.
Mr. Ringma: The summary dismissal I was talking of was on the part of the government benches and not of the Chair. Incidentally it may be clear that I simply do not accept the last argument put forward either.
From day one of the 35th Parliament the Liberals have displayed a total lack of regard for the legitimate election process by blindly backing the Bloc candidates while under the watchful eye of the government whip. In election after election of committees we have seen Liberals dismiss qualified Reform candidates. This trend has continued into the second session.
For example, on February 29th the procedure and House affairs committee held its organizational meeting for the purpose of electing a chair and two vice-chairs. At that meeting my Reform colleagues and I again attempted to secure the opposition vice-chair position. During the election process last week not one Liberal member attempted to determine which candidate was best
qualified for the post. There were no questions about the candidates background or character, only the same tired arguments we have heard for more than two years.
The main argument put forward by the Liberal whip in defence of his unabashed support of separatists over federalists is one of tradition. According to the chief government whip it is parliamentary tradition for the opposition vice-chair to be filled by a member from the official opposition. To hear the government whip argue this point one would think the practice of electing an opposition vice-chair goes back hundreds of years. This is simply not the case.
Standing Order 106(2) governs the election process and in part states:
Each standing or special committee shall elect a Chairman and two Vice-Chairmen, of whom two shall be Members of the government party and the third a Member in opposition to the government.No reference to official opposition; simply opposition. This standing order came into effect only in May of 1991, not five years ago. Later that month the committees were established and held elections for chairs and vice-chairs. During those elections a member of the NDP, the third party in the House at that time, was elected the vice-chair of the Standing Committee on Human Rights and the Status of Disabled Persons. A reading from the minutes of that meeting of May 29, 1991 will help illustrate my contention that this position is not reserved for the official opposition. Following the election of Dr. Bruce Halliday to the chair he stated:
I believe the new standing orders call for two Vice-Chairmen, one of whom shall be from an opposition party.Notice the chair referred to an opposition party, not the official opposition.
(1550 )
I will quote from the same chair moments later: ``We need a second vice-chairman who should be somebody from one of the opposition parties''. The minutes of that meeting then indicate the member for Beaches-Woodbine, a representative from the third party, the NDP, was elected opposition vice-chair.
The minutes of this meeting clearly counter Liberal arguments. They demonstrate a precedent and show this practice has been in effect only since May of 1991. Further research shows that since this standing order was adopted in the third and last session of the 34th Parliament there was only one round of elections. That is because the committee chair and vice-chair appointments from the initial election of May 1991 were continued until the dissolution of that Parliament through a motion adopted by the House on September 21, 1992.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines tradition as a custom, opinion or belief handed down to posterity; an established practice or custom. Given the evidence I have just laid out it is clear the Liberal claim of tradition is faulty at best. The only tradition is the one the Liberals are creating and have been creating these last couple of years, and it is a dangerous one.
I also believe it is important for unity minded Canadians to know which Liberals are supporting separatists over federalists. We will continue to keep count. At the meeting of procedure and House affairs last week, which I referred to earlier in my speech, the following government members rejected a federalist in favour of a separatists: the members for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, Mississauga West, Kingston and the Islands, Ottawa Centre, Ottawa-Vanier, Ottawa West and Edmonton North. So listen in, Canadian public, to your members who are supporting a separatist vice-chair.
I will have to throw in another little bit to illustrate some of the intrigue that goes on in committees when they are electing chairs. Committees are masters of their own fate. For example, their members can agree to a secret ballot. We have proposed secret ballots in these committees to give the Liberal backbenchers who might be inclined to support a Reform vice-chair a chance to vote without incurring the wrath of their whip or their leader.
On every occasion we have proposed a secret ballot it has been rejected and the whip has put his firm hand on the Liberals saying no secret ballot.
What we are talking about is democracy, our ability as an opposition party to function properly within the committees of the House. We are being frustrated in them and we resent it.
I move:
That the motion before the House proposed by the government be amended by deleting all the words after the words ``March 1, 1996'' and substituting the following: ``be not now concurred in, but that it be recommended to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs''.(1555)
The Deputy Speaker: The motion is receivable.
[Translation]
Mr. Gilles Duceppe (Laurier-Sainte-Marie, BQ): Mr. Speaker, I simply want to make a few comments. Let us go back to the beginning of this Parliament, after the election held on October 25, 1993, because some discussions took place between the parties at that time.
I want to tell you about two statements that were made back then. One was to the effect that the Bloc Quebecois was coming to Ottawa to impede the proceedings of Parliament. However, as we have seen for a little over two years now, those who are guilty of filibustering are not Bloc members, but Reformers.
Since the very beginning, we have complied, rather closely I would say, with British parliamentary tradition. To be sure, our views differ from those of the Liberal Party. However, we agree to play by the rules. This is obvious to me, and I should point out that Quebec's National Assembly, which is the oldest parliament in
America, agreed to follow the same rules as the British Parliament as early as 1791.
I also want to say that I participated in the negotiations that took place between the parties to bring some changes in this House. We tried to settle the issues of office allocation, and Heaven knows how long that took, House agenda, speaking order in the House, as well as committee membership. At that time, the Bloc Quebecois showed that it was very open-minded and said: ``Yes, we are prepared to give up a number of vice-chair positions''. The Reform Party told us: ``We want to provide the chairperson for the public accounts committee and the vice-chairpersons for finance, foreign affairs, national defence, agriculture and trade. Period. We will not accept anything else''. How about some apple turnover with that?
This proposal made no sense. And with its ``we take that or nothing'' position, the Reform Party ended up with nothing, because it did not know how to negotiate.
Now, we are told about a love affair between the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois. Those who see a love story between the members opposite and the Bloc Quebecois certainly do not follow current politics very closely. Sure, we respect each other, but our views and our goals are certainly different. The only such attempt took place between the hon. member for Sherbrooke and the Reform Party.
Mr. Robichaud: It was not consummated.
Mr. Gilles Duceppe (Laurier-Sainte-Marie, BQ): It was never consummated, no. Absolutely not. It was wishful thinking, but they never got together. Out of sight, out of mind. The House was not sitting when this came up.
Looking at the way things have developed since then, we see that the Liberals in committee have just about all voted the same way, with a few exceptions when they could not agree on who to elect as chair or vice-chair.
The Bloc has always voted the same way and in each of the committees Reform members have all taken the same position and voted the same way. All the same. I would imagine then, if they are able of their own free will to think things through themselves and reach the same conclusions, that others are allowed to do so as well.
What is in question here and what is more problematical, I might say even with the potential to become dangerous if taken to the extreme, is that, regardless of personal qualities, regardless of the fact that they have been elected like everyone else, what is being said is that positions will be awarded according to what people think. From the outset, it will be decided that access to positions away will be denied certain people. That is the situation. They will say: ``The people in the Bloc are competent and hard working, but they are separatists''. Such a situation would be dangerous.
(1600)
I suppose there is the risk that we would win all of Parliament over to our point of view. We do not expect that much, but we do think we have a point of view that deserves to be heard and that it is worthwhile for Canadians to hear, for the first time.
But now they have gone so far as to say that the ideas we espouse would keep us from those positions and, when it comes down to it, the whole concept of democracy is being jeopardized. What is the solution? They tell us there will be a secret vote. That is the only solution I have heard for changing the procedures, but it is tantamount to preventing the public from knowing how its elected representatives have voted. We, however, are not afraid to rise in this House to express our ideas, to be judged on our ideas, because there will be an election some day-there is one about every four or five years. We would then be told that we can sit in the House of Commons but, when the time comes to vote, we would not dare make a public statement. That is the Reform Party's position.
I think that this would be dangerous for democracy. There is an assumption that members who are not from the Reform Party cannot vote as they see fit, that we should hold secret ballots instead of publicly expressing our ideas. I will close by saying that this may be why an editorial in the Montreal daily The Gazette-which, as you know, is a staunchly sovereignist newspaper-expressed the hope that the Bloc Quebecois would win the election in Lac-Saint-Jean. Although it was an easy wish to make, The Gazette nonetheless felt that, at least, they would then be sure that the Reform Party would not be the official opposition.
[English]
Mr. Jim Silye (Calgary Centre, Ref.): Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak to and support the motion to amend the government motion concerning the list of chairs and vice-chairs of all the standing committees from the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.
The points I want to make are all about common sense and fairness. The House leader of the Bloc Quebecois seemed to be saying that we were picking on the Bloc party. That is not the case at all. At least I am not speaking on this issue for the purpose of picking on the Bloc.
I want to point out that what is important in parliamentary tradition in a democracy is fairness, common sense and looking at the total number of seats in the House. As we all know, the government of the day is formed by the party that has the greatest number of seats. In this Parliament that is the Liberal Party. Thus, we have Mr. Chrétien as Prime Minister.
The Deputy Speaker: It must be monotonous to hear, but we are not allowed to refer to colleagues by their first or last names in the House.
Mr. Silye: Mr. Speaker, I stand corrected. I would have been okay if we had had only four weeks off. That extra three weeks totally threw me and I have forgotten some of the rules.
The party that forms the official opposition is the one that has the second highest number of seats. When we came here in October 1993 that was the Bloc Quebecois and they formed the official opposition. We were the third party. Any party that has less than 12 members is not recognized as an official party in the House of Commons. Those are the rules and they are good rules. I stand by them and I would defend them.
Now there has been a drop in numbers. Representation in the House has changed since prorogation and at this time both opposition parties, the Bloc Quebecois and the Reform Party, have the same number of members. We both have 52 members. I personally do not disagree with the ruling of the Speaker as to which party should be the official opposition.
Now I proceed to standing committees. There is a difference between how the rules operate here in the House and how they operate in standing committees. As the House leader of the Bloc tried to point out, we negotiated in October 1993. The Bloc negotiated from a position where they had two more members than the Reform Party. Now we have the same number of members. When it comes to standing committees, each committee elects its own chair. It makes sense to me that the chair of each of those committees should be a member from the government side with the exception of public accounts because that would be construed as a conflict of interest. The chairman of the public accounts committee should be a member of an opposition party.
(1605)
It does not say a member of the official opposition should be vice-chairs anywhere in Beauchesne. The standing orders do not refer to official opposition, it just says opposition. I wish members opposite in the government would look that up. I challenge them to quote me differently and quote me the standing order that says official opposition.
An hon. member: It does not say official.
Mr. Silye: It has now been acknowledged that it does not say official, it says opposition party. To apply some common sense, if Reform has 52 members and the Bloc Quebecois has 52 members, somewhere along the line out of 27 standing committees just one of the vice-chairs should be a member of the Reform Party. That does not happen. Not one committee has a Reform Party member as a vice-chair. The Reform Party and the Bloc Quebecois have the same number of seats. We have never had that.
We may have negotiated away one or two vice-chairs in October 1993, and I do acknowledge that did happen, but the Bloc members then had 54 members and we only had 52 members.
The House has been prorogued, now it is back and all new members and new chairs have been assigned. Some parliamentary secretaries were fired, chairmen of standing committees were fired so new ones were needed. That has been done and all new members were assigned.
In those standing committees now vice-chairs are supposed to be picked. There is a procedure to follow. The same procedure was followed as the first time around. They did not have any kind of duly conducted election that allowed members of both opposition parties because when it gets to committee we are not talking now about official opposition and third party, we are talking about opposition parties. It just so happened that all the vice-chairs went to the Bloc Quebecois again.
In defence of this the chief government whip, and boy does he ever change his mind when he is in government from when he was in opposition. Witness his defence of Motion No. M-1 that is also being debating today and how he flip-flopped on that issue. Now all of a sudden it is democratic to do that.
He is arguing that what the government is doing in naming all of the Bloc members as vice-chairs is democratic and is based on tradition. Tradition says opposition. That does not mean official opposition. If tradition says whoever is official opposition gets all the vice-chairs, fine, but we are now tied.
The Bloc has been named by the Speaker as the official opposition but in standing committees we have 52 members, they have 52 members. Why would the chief government whip not concede or consent, in the spirit of fairness, in the application of common sense, that maybe one or two Reform Party members be vice-chairs. There is precedence for this.
I do not know if my colleague, the current whip, has mentioned this but a member of the third party was a vice-chair in a standing committee of human rights and status of disabled persons on May 29, 1991. There are lots of examples where members other than the official opposition were vice-chairs. The chief government whip's assertion that they are just following tradition is faulty at best.
In the history of this country it has never been so crucial that we have some people representing the interests of all of Canada. If the Reform Party cannot be the official opposition, that is fine because of numbers and incumbency, but at least in standing committees perhaps Reformers could have a couple of vice-chairs. That would make sure the interests of all Canadians are being looked after, not just those interests that the separatist party of Quebec now represents. They would be only dealing with those issues, only trying to get those witnesses, only asking those questions which help to tear this country apart, not to hold it together. They are only interested
in showing that it is in their best interests to break away from Canada and to break up this country. Because it is not traditional to have this kind of a quirk in parliamentary history, we have a party sent to Ottawa from a region that is unhappy with the intrusion into their lives by the federal government, and justly so. In fact they are so unhappy that they sent a lot of them here to send this government a message. The message is: Do something about our problem. Do something to protect our interests.
(1610)
That is no different from the Reform Party where the majority, with the exception of one lone Reformer from Ontario, my colleague who sits beside me, are all from the west. We were sent here to send a strong message to the federal government that it has intruded into our lives and that we want changes.
This is all about change. It is also all about change in the standing committees. It is about time that some of the government members grew up and applied a little common sense and fairness to this whole business. They cannot continue to believe in one thing and say another. I do not believe they can be in opposition and say that they believe in one thing-for instance, about reintroducing government bills after prorogation and the hue and cry that they set out here when they were in opposition-and then go over to the other side and say it is okay. At which point were they right? Are they right now and wrong when they were in opposition or are they wrong now and right when they were in opposition?
I state unequivocally that it is wrong when two opposition parties are tied, each having 52 members, that one party gets all the vice-chairs and the other party gets none. There has to be something wrong with that. Somebody coming from the outside who knows very little about it would say: ``What are the rules? How come the Reform Party has none?''
The Prime Minister has even said that he would like to see more balance in the House of Commons. As a matter of fact when I first looked into what the Liberal members said when they were in opposition they also held the view, Mr. Speaker, that in the position that you are in right now that the Speaker should come from the government, duly elected, unlike what the House leader for the Bloc said. It should be by secret ballot, which is very democratic. The Deputy Speaker should be from the government side and perhaps an assistant deputy speaker should be from the government side. However they also maintain, and there is a paper to this effect that some cabinet ministers and Liberal members have written and believe in, that the other two speakers, deputy or assistant deputy speakers should be, guess what, from the opposition parties. That is what they said in opposition.
It is now two and a half years later in the second session of the 35th Parliament. The House has prorogued and come back. The
Liberals had their second opportunity, their second chance to get it right. This is their second chance to keep the promises they made, the systemic changes they put in their red book. It is in the red book where they talk about giving more recognition to the opposition parties in Parliament. Do you know why they said that, Mr. Speaker? Because they sat on this side of the House for eight years. They were frustrated by closure. They were frustrated by time allocation. They were frustrated by how they were assigned vice-chairs and how they did things. They were frustrated by who got to sit in that chair to monitor proceedings and to make sure the rules were followed.
They made all these promises to the Canadian public and they have not kept one. On democratic reform they have not kept one of their promises.
Perhaps I should write the Prime Minister a letter on the red book and ask him where he stands on these promises. Where does the Prime Minister stand on these promises he made of changes in the House and in the deputy chairs?
What I feel as a member of Parliament is very unfortunate. There is no way that we can hold the government accountable for the promises it made until the next election. It seems to me that the Prime Minister is proud of that. It seems to me that the Prime Minister is happy that he has all this time to not keep those promises, to renege on those promises.
He will not get another chance now to fulfil the promise he made on how we should be operating the Speakers in the chair and how two of them should be from the opposition parties. He will not get another chance to keep those promises that he would protect the civil service, yet 45,000 of them were let go.
(1615)
When people make promises, when they say that this is what they plan to do, will do, given the opportunity to do it should they not do it? Should people not follow through on their promises?
Here we are with two opposition parties equal in the number of seats yet in standing committees, each and every one of them belongs to one party. Had the ruling been the other way, had the Speaker ruled that the Reform Party was now the official opposition, does anyone think for a minute that we would have asked for every vice-chair in the committees? The Bloc would have had some vice-chairs.
The irony is that here we have an important standing committee like public accounts where there are audits and reviews of the government expenditures. The auditor general submits a lot of work to that committee. I must admit right now that the member who represents the Bloc was the chair of that standing committee
and he did a fine job. He was an excellent chair of that committee. I am not picking on him as an individual. I want to make that very clear.
Having said that, I do not believe that in the public accounts committee the chair should go to a member of a party that has the equal number of seats as another party but which only represents a small regional, specific interest which is to take a part of the country out of this democracy, out of the union. I object to that. That is one area where the Reform could have been chair. Once again, the chair of that committee has done an excellent job. He was a good chair. That is not my point. I want to make that perfectly clear, because I do not want to hurt anybody's feelings.
The feelings I want to hurt are the Prime Minister's and those of the chief government whip because of the promises they made. They are the ones who are breaking their promises. They are the ones who are operating this House in a dictatorial fashion. Even the backbenchers cannot say anything. Government backbenchers cannot criticize the government. We see what happens to those members. They are left out; they are shoved out; they are put out.
That is not the way democracy should work. How can it ever hurt to have a few people who want to have a flat tax, to have a few people who want to get rid of the GST, to have a few people who want to protect the civil service? How can it possibly hurt when the government has the majority of members? It cannot.
To summarize, the tradition of the committee election process needs review. This whole issue should be reviewed by the procedure and House affairs committee. We have had filibusters in the past two years. In the year that I was the whip for this party I had to attend some fiascos in some of the standing committees.
Autocracy and heavy handedness was used by some of the chairmen from the government side, probably through ignorance because they did not know the rules. Nevertheless, they treated all members with disdain, just appointing and going through the election process without a concern. I was there. The chief government whip walked into the meeting and would say that this person would be the vice-chair: Bloc, vice-chair; Bloc, vice-chair; Bloc, vice-chair; Bloc, vice-chair; 23 times.
That is not a process whereby members of the standing committee are empowered to elect their chair and vice-chair. We know who should be chair; that is not a problem. But we could have had a couple of elections for vice-chair. We never had a serious one to put a member of the Reform Party there and we are now tied. It did not happen. It was all a sham and a scam.
No matter what the chief government whip tries to say to defend this, he knows what he told his people. The chairman of each and every standing committee, with the exception of public accounts, knows what he was told to do. What happened is a distortion of the democratic process. It is unfair now because we do have 52 members, the same as the Bloc.
(1620 )
Yes, the Bloc is the official opposition and it is welcome to the job, but in standing committees we should have a few vice-chairs. That is all we felt we should have. The signal and the sign we wanted to see from the government was that perhaps it was willing to accept the fact that some standing committees could use a vice-chair from the Reform Party. However, Liberal members were told what to do from on high and on high said no. They were not allowed to make vice-chairs of any of the Reform Party members who wanted and who sought to attain that position.
As it turns out, this government is behaving in the worst fashion. It is even worse than the previous government of the eight years before the Liberals took power. With all the things this government when it was in opposition said about the Conservative government and what it attacked the Conservative government about, prime ministerial travel, time allocation, closure, the Tory GST, nothing has changed. Only the faces have changed. We have not changed the system and until that happens, this country will pay a heavy price for it.
[Translation]
Mr. Pierre de Savoye (Portneuf, BQ): Mr. Speaker, what I have been hearing here for a little while now is both surprising and disappointing to me. I have heard two of our friends from the Reform Party claim that, because we advocate the sovereignty of Quebec, we Bloc members do not have the interests of Canada at heart, that we want to break or destroy Canada and that we are, therefore, not making a full contribution in committee but defending only very narrow interests instead.
I take issue with such statements because every Bloc member who sits on a committee carries out competently and honestly, not only as an individual but also as a representative of our party, the Bloc Quebecois, the duties that we have been assigned as the official opposition.
In committee, members take turns examining the various witnesses who come and share their views with us. Each opposition party usually has about ten minutes to examine a witness, with the official opposition party leading off, followed by the second opposition party; then, the government party, the Liberal Party, gets to examine the witness.
Sometimes our questions complement one another, they are along the same lines. Other times, one party or another asks questions which, while going in a different direction, benefit the debate and broaden our outlook on the issues raised by the people who appear before us. But in any case, we are committed to identifying the informative parts of the evidence presented to us. Of course, we are also committed to identifying those aspects
which have an impact on our region in particular. This is true not only of Bloc members, but also of members of all parties. I have seen-and there was nothing wrong with that-members from the Toronto area represent views and argue matters that were of more particular concern to the people of their ridings. That is their duty, and it is my duty to raise issues of more pressing concern to my constituents.
(1625)
When I hear Reformers claim that it is not right for me to do so, I tell myself that they have an extremely narrow view of what true democracy is all about. This concerns me; it makes me sad. I cannot accept it in this House. This is the reason why I rose today: I want to set the record straight.
Let me also say that a Bloc Quebecois member has as much right to fill the position of vice-chair as a Reformer. I have nothing against a Reform member being a vice-chair, but do not tell me that Bloc members cannot do a good job as vice-chairs because they happen to be sovereignists. I strongly object to that. This is not only totally inaccurate, it is also an insult to our integrity and to democracy itself.
Mr. Speaker, you will recall that in the days of the iron curtain, people strongly condemned those communist countries that prevented individuals from expressing themselves on the grounds that they held dissenting opinions. Some people were imprisoned. Thank goodness this is not the case here, but I refuse to be muzzled.
Mr. Speaker, you and I know-and so do many members here-that civilization and society thrive on the exchange of ideas. If everyone held the same views, this would still be the cave age. It is because someone, somewhere, said ``We must get out of the cave'' that civilization started to make progress. The Bloc's role in this House, and within the Confederation right now, is to promote an idea and put it up against other ones, in a democratic, respectful and constructive fashion.
This is why I refuse to be muzzled by Reformers, simply because we do not share the same views. I respect the fact that they do not share our views, but they should do likewise.
[English]
We have been accused of wanting to break up Canada. Nothing is further from the truth. What we have been offering and reoffering-I am bidding it once again-is a new partnership, politically and economically with the rest of Canada.
The actual political situation we live in through Confederation is outmoded and obsolete. It is very expensive and unsatisfactory from sea to sea to sea. We are offering a new vision of what the economical Canadian space could be. We want to confront it verbally and democratically with those who have other ways of seeing things. This should construct a better solution. It is not as Reform members would suggest in saying to all Canadians that we want to break up the country that they are helping the solution to be found. On the contrary, it is through constructive debate that a solution will occur.
I cannot accept the attitude of the Reform Party toward the Bloc Quebecois. The electors, the voters, the people from my riding have the same democratic values as the people from the riding of any Reform Party member. The fact that half the Quebec population thinks sovereignty is an avenue to be pursued just stresses how important this vision is and it should be respected by all members here, including my friends from the Reform Party.
(1630)
[Translation]
From a democratic standpoint, people in my riding have the same value as those from the riding of a Reform Party member. Again, I have nothing against a Reform member being vice-chair of a committee, but I ask that we respect the integrity and honesty of Bloc members; I ask that we respect democracy.
[English]
Mr. Jim Abbott (Kootenay East, Ref.): Mr. Speaker, I should like to put a question to the member for Portneuf whom I have enjoyed getting into debate with outside the Chamber. I consider him to be a reasonable person, although obviously I do not appreciate the direction he would take Canada.
I bring him back to the question at hand. He has said, and this was by translation: ``We do not accept that we be muzzled''. It is not the intention of the Reform Party to muzzle the Bloc Quebecois. Unlike the Liberals who have chosen to muzzle the Reform Party in committee, it is not the idea of the Reform Party to muzzle the Bloc Quebecois.
Is it not rational, reasonable and responsible, as put forward by the member for Calgary Centre, that if his party and my party have 52 seats each, the Reform Party should not be muzzled as is presently happening because of the collusion of the Liberals?
Mr. de Savoye: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question of my colleague. However, as he well knows, the Reform Party is not muzzled within a committee. The fact that we are a vice-chair just gives us the right to ask the first question in the first 10 minutes. After that they are second. They are not really muzzled. That is the answer to item a.
On item b, I have never believed that the Reform Party should not be a vice-chair in any committee. As far as I can see, it is up to Bloc members to decide whether they can or cannot be vice-chairs. We have one member in most committees whereas the Liberals
have many members. When the vote is taken we are not the ones who decide.
Why have they favoured us? That is the right question to ask. You should find the right answer; you might be in for a surprise. Why are we preferred as a vice-chair rather than you? What have you not done right to impress them? That is the right question. It is up to you.
The Deputy Speaker: My hon. colleague has spoken such good English that I hate to suggest he should not use the word you. He should refer to them.
Mr. Paul Szabo (Mississauga South, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I have a great deal of respect for the hon. member for Portneuf. We have worked together on committees before and on a number of other parliamentary affairs.
He said something today which I think is very important and took be aback. He said in his intervention that the Bloc Quebecois was not here to break up Canada. I believe that is very important.
There are people who purport to speak on behalf of the Bloc. This past weekend, on a political commentary panel which discusses these issues week after week, Josée Legault of la Presse said that the Bloc had been fighting. She tried to find words. It was not distinct society. It was not veto. It was not special partnership, as the member would suggest. Josée Legault said very clearly that in her view Quebec wants nationhood. That statement flies directly against what the member has said.
Would the member address the position of Ms. Legault regarding nationhood and what he said today to the House, that the Bloc is not here to split up Canada?
(1635 )
Mr. de Savoye: Mr. Speaker, we are just on the edge of the motion but it is an interesting debate. I will try to answer the problematic question my hon. colleague has put forward.
Whatever Ms. Legault thinks or writes are her own beliefs. I cannot read her thoughts so I will not try to do that. However, I know the specific agenda of the Quebec government and the one we are proposing. It is a partnership with Canada.
When the member talked about nationhood, the Quebec people as a whole are a people. As such they have a culture of their own, a way of seeing things of their own which does not preclude alliances with other people in Canada. I am not only talking about English Canada but also about the aboriginals.
We have to open our minds and find a way to build something that will answer the needs and the expectations of all people on this portion of the continent, not only for ourselves but for our children and the children of our children.
If I were to go any further I would certainly go beyond the nature of the motion in front of us, so I will stop now.
Mr. Jim Abbott (Kootenay East, Ref.): Mr. Speaker, it is important for Canadians to understand the significance of these vice-chair positions and the chair position with respect to public accounts which the Reform Party is talking about in the House.
We are talking about the group, the chair and the two vice-chairs who form the core of the steering committee for the committee as a whole. These are not just window dressing positions, or certainly should not be just window dressing positions.
Therefore the fact that the government whip and the Liberals have chosen to freeze the Reform Party out of vice-chair positions on committees is to freeze the Reform Party out of the ability to be able to act as an effective opposition in the absence or in the vacuum of an official opposition because of the specific regional interests of the Bloc Quebecois. The significance is that the Liberals have chosen to freeze the Reform Party out of the ability to be an effective opposition.
It has been said that a government is only as good as its opposition. It is for that reason the Liberals do not want the Reform Party to have any ability to come forward, to take charge and to be involved in any area of control within their jurisdiction. It is doing everything it can at the expense of our nation to freeze us out of that ability.
Lest there be any question about this point, I have in my hand the report of the public accounts committee on September 27, 1995. It is particularly instructive. I went to that committee as a member of that committee and took the floor at the start of the meeting which was convened to vote for and appoint the person who was to be the chair of the public accounts committee.
To expand on the comments of the member for Calgary Centre, the purpose of the public accounts committee is to take a look at well over $1 billion of current public spending that happens annually in Canada. The public accounts committee works very closely with the auditor general so that the people of Canada and their affairs are being looked after from a fiscal point of view.
It seemed grossly illogical to myself and to my colleagues in the Reform Party that the Liberals would be forcing a situation where we would have a separatist who would be the chair of that committee, because of the very confined and defined interests of the Bloc Quebecois as they have come to Ottawa.
We went to the meeting. We immediately put forward the name of my colleague, the hon. member for St. Albert, for the position of chair. It was really quite instructive because neither the government whip nor the Bloc Quebecois were in the room at the time I made that motion. Immediately following that there were people scurrying around, running around all over the place: ``Oh, my, what are we going to do? What is going to happen now?'' Whereupon the
government whip appeared in doorway and all was saved. Very shortly behind him came the Bloc Quebecois whip.
(1640)
We then entered into a process of debate on the issue. My colleague, the hon. member for Fraser Valley East, had the floor. For simplicity and so that we do not run afoul of the rules of the House, I will refer to the whip and I will refer to the Reform member. The whip said:
I was wondering if our colleague would entertain a brief question. If this is an attempt to filibuster the committee, and he can indicate so right now, quorum will immediately cease.Before I quote him further, the absolute arrogance of the government whip should be noted when he came walking into the room and said: ``If this is not going the way I want then I am going to cease quorum''. He went on:
There was an agreement between whips duly approved, ordered, and signed that we were meeting today to elect chairs. If this is a breach of that agreement, which it is on the verge of becoming, I'd like to know now. My colleagues and I will leave the room and quorum will cease. This meeting will not exist. Yes or no.The absolute arrogance of this man is quite astounding. My colleague said:
I don't think you can ask me questions anyway-I don't think that's your place.The whip said: ``Thank you''. My colleague said:
You can do what you like. I'm trying to address the concerns of the people-The whip said:
You don't need a Hansard any more, clerk.Now he is telling the clerk who is in charge of this committee: ``You don't need Hansard any more. I am here; I have taken over''. Terrific.
Then my colleague said:
-about the election of the vice-chairs. So it's certainly within my prerogative to do that.An hon. member said:
You can talk all day long. You're alone.Then the government whip got his members in line and they dutifully followed him out of the room. The hon. member for Fraser Valley East was continuing to talk in the meeting when the whip from the Bloc Quebecois said:
Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, I would like to see if we have a quorum. If we don't, we should end this meeting.The clerk said: ``We only have three members here. I guess everybody has left''.
We should note the absolute arrogance of the government whip representing the Liberals, coming into that meeting, taking over that meeting and saying: ``It is not going the way the Liberals wanted so therefore we are down''. For the Liberals to turn around and try to convince Canadians that they are not completely in bed with or in total collusion with the separatists is bit beyond description.
Let us talk about the Canadian heritage committee; I think that is the title of the committee. The decision was made there by the Liberals to anoint a Bloc Quebecois member as a vice-chair of that committee. Let us see what happened in that committee if only from the point of view of the record of attendance. I have in my hand the record of attendance which shows that the chair of that committee was there 13 times. Presumably there were 13 meetings.
We then have the record of myself, the hon. member for Medicine Hat and the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona, totalling 11 of the 13 meetings. We have zero for the Bloc Quebecois member from Quebec. The person who was anointed to be the vice-chair of that committee by the Liberals, the hon. member for Rimouski-Témiscouata, was there five times.
It has been reported to me by the hon. member for Edmonton-Strathcona that the Canadian heritage committee could not even have had a meeting and that there would not have been a member of the opposition had the Reform Party not turned up. Yet the Liberals have the audacity to keep on putting the Bloc Quebecois into these positions with the specific idea of freezing the Reform Party out of the ability to be able to do the job of an effective opposition. There can be absolutely no other reason I can think of that the Liberals might have.
(1645)
I believe that the Liberals want to keep Canada together every bit as much as the Reform Party wants to keep Canada together. They may not have any idea how to do it. They may keep on flying trial balloons. They may keep coming up with all sorts of wonderful ideas, flying flags and all sorts of things because they do not have anything of any substance, but I do not question their fundamental intent to keep Canada together.
What I do question is the wisdom of the government whip. I do question the wisdom of the so-called brain trust of the Liberal Party in continuing to freeze the federalist Reform Party out of the ability to be an effective opposition.
I speak in the most forceful terms. I consider the actions of the Liberal government whip to have been out of control and over the top. I would hope, because the Reform Party has brought this matter so forcibly to the floor at this time, that as we get down to appointing committee chair and vice-chair positions that they would rethink their very foolish and ill thought position.
Ms. Bonnie Brown (Oakville-Milton, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I find it strange that the previous speaker, who obviously is a new member of the heritage committee, probably appointed in September 1995, would choose to use the attendance record as reasoning behind his quest to have a member of the Reform Party as the vice-chair of that committee.
As a person who sat on that committee for the 18 months previous to his arrival, I would like to point out that should he have regarded the attendance records of the first 18 months, he would have found that the Bloc Quebecois members were most regular in their attendance and surprisingly it was the members of the Reform Party whose attendance was highly questionable.
May I also point out that the Bloc Quebecois members in the first 18 months not only attended the public hearing sessions of that committee, not only attended the briefings by department officials, but they also attended the in camera sessions when for weeks we were seriously working on a written report about the future of the CBC. It seemed rather strange to me that the Reformers came to the meetings when the press was in attendance but not one meeting when the press was not in attendance.
As far as I am concerned, I think the vice-chairs of committees must be committed not just to those sessions of the committee meetings when the press is in attendance but also when the solid, quiet work of the committee is done in camera.
Mr. Abbott: Mr. Speaker, perhaps that says something about the content of the meetings that took place last fall when only five out of thirteen meetings were attended by the vice-chair of the heritage committee, the member for Rimouski-Témiscouata. Furthermore, the member for Quebec did not turn up at all. I can only guess that in the judgment of the Bloc Quebecois, the heritage committee meetings in the first 18 months actually had some substance whereas in the second half, according to the way the member is thinking, only five out of the thirteen meetings had any significance.
Mr. Grant Hill (Macleod, Ref.): Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a slightly different attack on this problem.
In my mind, the issue of who should become the vice-chairman of a committee is one that rests with the committee. With respect to the election of a chairman and vice-chairman the standing orders state: ``Each standing or special committee shall elect a chairman and two vice-chairmen, of whom two shall be members of the government party and the third a member in opposition to the government''.
(1650 )
This can become a very partisan debate, trying to weigh one opposition party against another. Frankly I do not think it should be just that. My suggestion for the government is very straightforward, that the election of the vice-chairmen be just that, an election and not a coronation. How many Bloc members would likely be vice-chairmen in that instance? Maybe all of them.
Surely there should be an opportunity in Parliament for a proper election, an election with hands raised so that the individuals making the choice would be known. My real question is: Why not an election? Why not an opportunity to at least say that these two parties, which are very close in numbers-after the byelections we hope to be ahead-would have that opportunity? Is that not fair? Why not be fair?
To the Canadian public, why would this choice even be in doubt? Why would we not have this election? Could there be a reason that is better for the Liberal Party? Could there be a reason that is better for the country?
I drew a little graph. Down one side of my graph, I put some of the reasons: balance, a powerful federalist opposition. Would it be better for a Bloc member to be a vice-chairman? Would it actually be better for the Liberals to have the Bloc in those vice-chairs? How could it possibly be better in every case to have that party as the vice-chair? Is there no room for an alternate?
I have come to the House with a fresh view of Parliament, a view that I hope is balanced. I have asked myself what the committee structure is really designed to do. Before I came here I had heard that the committees were the spot where the real work of Parliament was done. I have stood back from that and asked whether that is true. Are committees where the work of Parliament is really done? My answer is: Not true. They are not where the work of Parliament is really done.
I am going to give an example of an experience in committee. Our committee was faced with a challenge. We had order in council appointments placed before us which were to be voted upon. These were for individuals holding positions on very important boards. I asked when there had been a review of an order in council how often the appointee had been turned down. The answer I received surprised me: never in Canadian history had that occurred. There had never been a single appointee turned down.
The obvious question I asked then was why we did the review. What was the purpose of a review if there has never been an individual turned down? The response was that this system was not like the committee review system in the U.S. I then asked, should we not be reviewing order in council appointments at the nomination stage rather than at the appointee stage? A committee was struck to review that very issue but I said it was surely something the committee could decide that day.
(1655)
It makes sense that if we are going to committee to review this issue that we bring the appointees to the committee. The committee
would look at them all and say which individuals were acceptable to the committee. The committee would go back to the PMO which would from those names pick the number of individuals needed. If the committee found that there were one or two people who were not acceptable for whatever reason, the residual names could be sent back. The power would still rest with the PMO. No power would be taken away.
However, a committee had to be struck. It sat through the summer and reviewed the issue with all the previous order in council appointments. It came to the very same conclusion in five minutes: that the review of orders in council should take place at the appointee stage rather than at the nomination stage.
I did a little review with a high school class at home. I asked them: How long would it take you to figure out at what stage to do a review of a group of people who were coming to sit on a committee of Parliament? Would you review it at the appointee stage or at the nomination stage? It took these grade 11 students about 15 seconds to decide the issue. And how long does it take the Parliament of Canada to come up with a decision? It has been six months in review.
I have watched very carefully. What has happened to the decision of the health committee on that issue since? We are now another 18 months down the road and the decision has fallen into the black abyss, the black hole of parliamentary gobbledegook. Who knows where it has gone? It was to go to the committee on procedure and House affairs. It was to be reviewed, but it is gone. And for what? So that the PMO can say that nobody can review any of the names, that the review is not real? This a problem with the committee structure. I tell that story so that no one can say I think the committee structure is perfect.
Since I am talking about committee structure problems, I watched to see how witnesses came to the committees. I sat on the HRD review committee which was looking at social program renewal in Canada. I tried to figure out who called and how the witnesses reached the committee.
I was disappointed to find that most of the individuals who had access to the committee were non-governmental agencies that had a lot of connection with government. Many received funding from the government. Many received payment from the government to come to the committee. I believe that their testimony may have been skewed. It is difficult for the average citizen who knows nothing about these issues to have a fair hearing. I do not think they have the lobby groups that would allow them to get a fair hearing.
The committee structure would be very easy to improve. It would be very easy to look at it from the standpoint of what should happen in Canada. Let me now go to what I think in a positive sense we should do to improve the committee structure.
The government is going to control the committee. The government will have a chairman and the first vice-chairman. Accept it. That is what the numbers allow. Why would we not have an election for the position of second vice-chairman which would usually go to the official opposition but might go to a meritorious individual in another party, the fourth party, another party completely? A meritorious election for vice-chairman.
(1700)
I would hope order in council appointments could be made at the appointee stage rather than the nomination stage. I am convinced we could seek witnesses at these committees who are not so biased or narrow and who are not tied into the government agenda.
Is this a partisan issue? For me it is not. This is an issue of balance and fairness, for if every single vice-chair came from the official opposition and nowhere else, on merit, I would nod my head to those members and say bien.
[Translation]
However, if a committee vice-chair absolutely must be a Bloc member, that is certainly not equality. In my opinion, it is very clear that we ought to have the opportunity to vote in order to elect another member to the position of committee vice-chair.
[English]
The Canadian people are not willing to stand idly by and watch Parliament function in a way that is not fair. That is all this issue is about.
I ask, directly to the government, to allow for, conduct, and appropriately oversee a proper election for each vice-chair. That would satisfy me. It would satisfy my party. More important, it would satisfy the people of Canada.
[Translation]
Mr. Yvan Bernier (Gaspé, BQ): Madam Speaker, allow me to be the first member to make reference to your presence as the new Deputy Speaker of this House.
In response to the representative of the Reform Party, I must state that I am somewhat astonished to see in this House today that the Reform Party is concerned about will form the official Opposition and who will be vice-chairs, when we will be engaged this week in a debate of the highest importance on the budget speech. I must say that I would have expected instead that the members of this House would have focussed their energies, or husbanded their energies, for addressing the real problems Canada is facing, that is the attitude the Liberals across the way have taken toward managing the debt. In this connection, I believe that the two parties on this side can combine their actions to force the government to move, or
at least to reflect. But I have trouble understanding how there can be a drawn out debate on the choice of vice-chairs.
I thought Canada operated according to a certain tradition, with this or that responsibility for the official Opposition. That this was normal and that was how we operated.
As far as I am concerned, I can tell you that being from Quebec , yes, and I have nothing to hide in this regard, being a representative of the Bloc Quebecois, I defend a certain ideology, whether certain people like it or not, and it is important for the rest of Canada to know that. If we have become the Official Opposition and have certain related responsibilities to assume, that is not our choice but how democracy works. So I have difficulty understanding why there is this protracted debate. It seems to me to be superfluous.
Once again, as Mr. Bouchard himself has said in this House, perhaps the Reform Party is short on ambition. Rather than focussing on becoming the official Opposition, rather than seeking what goes along with that position, they ought instead to be seeking to combat the true scourge here, in other words attacking the Liberals, the Government. But no. It might be said that they have set their sights too low.
I would like to again express my astonishment on this, but this time about both sides.
(1705)
While the third party in the House tries to diminish the importance of the work of the official opposition by saying that you do not have to be a member of the official opposition to be vice-chairman in this House, the new Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs-I think I am allowed to mention his name since he has not been elected yet, Stéphane Dion-says: ``The distinct society status is not really a special status and will not bring any special powers''.
The third party in the House says that the official opposition does not really have the attributes of the official opposition. At the same time, a government spokesperson says that what was voted on before Christmas does not really mean what it means.
So allow me to express my surprise as a member of the Bloc Quebecois and to ask: How is it that the bills that were voted on do not mean what they mean? How is it that the attributes of the official opposition, such as the office of vice-chairman, do not necessary apply because we are the official opposition? Maybe the time has come to tackle the real issue, to call a spade a spade, to go back to the basics, to look at who built Canada, that is the notion of two founding peoples, to try to understand and to respect the rules.
There are a lot of things I do not agree with in the way Canada is run, but I respect the rules. I hope that the third party in the House will respect the rules also and that we will close this debate which, I must say, I find totally useless. I hope we can get on with what is important, that is to prepare our response to the budget speech.
Mr. Hill: Madam Speaker, there is no question in this speech, but if possible I would like to read the following paragraph from our Standing Orders:
Each standing or special committee shall elect a Chairman and two Vice-Chairmen, of whom two shall be Members of the government party and the third a Member in opposition to the government-It does not say a member of the official opposition, but simply a member in opposition.
-in accordance with the provisions of Standing Order 116, at the commencement of every session and, if necessary, during the course of a session.Why is it always a member of the official opposition? It is not in the Standing Orders. I simply want a vote in private on the subject. Is it not possible? I personally think it is necessary.
Mr. Pierre de Savoye (Portneuf, BQ): Madam Speaker, to start with, I would like to congratulate you on being elected to this position you are occupying this afternoon for the first time. We are doubly fortunate in that it is an Acadian and a woman who was selected to preside, at least in part, over the proceedings of this assembly.
This being said, I would like to ask my hon. colleague a question. I assume that when he mentions that he would like the vote to take place in private, he is referring to a secret vote. However, members of Parliament are accountable to their voters. People in my riding have the right to be aware of the decisions in which I took part and to know how I voted. As soon as a vote is secret, people in my riding will no longer be able to find out how I voted and, consequently, whether I represent their interests appropriately. The whole democratic process must be transparent. Transparency requires open votes where each and every one clearly expresses his or her opinion.
If the kind of private vote my colleague is referring to was to deprive my voters, the citizens of my riding, of the ability to know how I voted, then I would say that it violates democratic principles. I would like him to clarify his position.
(1710 )
[English]
Mr. Hill (Macleod): Madam Speaker, the issue for me on this vote is so that each member might be able to vote for somebody with merit. I am trying to get away from the idea that this must be a specific party member.
Surely merit is better than party membership. The rules have said very clearly the second vice-president should come from a member of the opposition. We in Reform are members of the opposition.
The Canadian public would accept very well for every single vice-chair to be a member of the Bloc if there were an opportunity for that election to be based on merit, for surely there are members from the Bloc of great merit; but equally the chance that there might be a member in the Reform Party with some merit.
Mr. Ray Speaker (Lethbridge, Ref.): Madam Speaker, welcome to the chair. We wish you the best in your new responsibilities.
The debate before us focuses on two very basic things. One is the question of parliamentary reform with respect to committees. The question must arise of whether the committees have the authority and the independence to choose their chairs, their vice-chairs and other such formats of the committees independently of external authority either from the Prime Minister's office or through the Liberal government whip.
The other question is what we observe as this unfortunate support the government gives to the separatist party for the positions in those committees, the vice-chair positions, chair positions with regard to the public accounts committee.
The member for Mississauga South earlier said that by tradition the vice-chairs went to members of the official opposition. I can understand why he said that. The Liberal whip continually gives the impression that is the way it is, that other opposition members, representatives of the Reform Party or from the NDP or the Conservative Party, are not part of the official opposition and cannot be one of the vice-chairs. That is the presentation the Liberal whip made to his own caucus and it is believed that is the way it is.
It is not that way. Some of my hon. colleagues have pointed out very clearly in the House that it is not tradition that the official opposition gets the chair or the vice-chair positions. I make that very clear. It is just one of the ways the Liberal whip is able to again have this love-in, as I call it, with the separatist party and provide it support in having a position of authority or power in the Parliament of Canada. I do not accept that in any way.
Speaking to these two points, parliamentary reform and more independence for the committees to choose who should be their chairs and vice-chairs, that is where the authority should lie. My hon. colleague from Macleod pointed that out very clearly.
In the 33rd Parliament the McGrath report was presented. Through that report a number of parliamentary reforms were brought into the House of Commons. I commend that report. I commend the 33rd Parliament for accepting a number of those recommendations.
(1715 )
One of those recommendations related to the independence of the committee. It also said the committee could establish its own agenda without interference by the government. Prior to the 33rd Parliament the government set the agenda for the committees. Any subject or matter referred from the House of Commons by the government to the committees was discussed. The committee had no latitude beyond that to make decisions, which was wrong.
In the 33rd Parliament the McGrath report changed that so that committees could set their own agenda, call the witnesses they wanted and at the same time elect their chairs and vice-chairs in an independent way. It was set up with that mind, but did it happen? It did not happen.
My time spent on the finance committee was a good experience. The chair was a good leader and allowed for flexibility within the committee work. We carried out a number of the recommendations of the McGrath report in a responsible way. Beyond that, what was happening?
I say to the people at home watching, they should be aware of how committee chairs are chosen by standing committees. The rules allow for an election, which is the way it should be. A member is nominated and then there is an open vote. If that motion is defeated another name is put forward until someone is elected chair.
Although our committee system has evolved with respect to what a committee can do, the Prime Minister in the instances here and during the current 35th Parliament, through his whip, still controls who shall become the chair. That person is told by the Prime Minister's office. The other Liberal members on the committee have to vote for the Prime Minister's choice. We in the committee do not operate independently or have the right to choose who that person is.
The backbenchers on the Liberal side do not have the opportunity to stand for chair if the Prime Minister has not chosen them. That is it. They have no choice. There is a vote but it is just going through the exercise. Certainly that is unacceptable.
We must well recognize that the Prime Minister has a lot of authority in appointing his cabinet, in appointing parliamentary secretaries, in appointing senators and in appointing a whole range of other political appointees. That is a lot of appointees.
Why does the Prime Minister interfere with the choice of chairs for House of Commons committees? That should be the responsibility of the committees, not the Prime Minister. The format is certainly there. Some of hon. members say that it is. However, we well know that before we sit down as a committee the Prime Minister's choice will be nominated by the Liberal whip, and if anybody gets out of line the Liberal whip will deal with them later.
All Liberals members are required by edict through the Prime Minister's office to vote for his choice. The Liberal whip sees to that in a very undemocratic way. That is the way it is and that is the concern we have here as members of the House of Commons.
In what sense can a committee be really impartial when we have such an external influence on our actions? There must be a change in attitude with regard to that matter. It is time to free up the backbenches of the Liberal Party so those members can choose who they want for chair, who they want as vice-chair. It does not happen.
If we really want parliamentary reform, if we want to again implement or reimplement the McGrath report, there must be a change in attitude and we must look at things differently in the House. The Prime Minister, the Liberal government, the Liberal backbenchers must look at this in a more open, democratic manner so that parliamentary reform can be meaningful at the committee level.
(1720)
I talked about the appointment of chairs. It is the very same type of thinking for vice-chair positions. How much credibility does a committee chair or a vice-chair have if two people, the government whip and the whip for the Bloc Quebecois, get together and decide on who the vice-chair positions will be and what the committee positions will be?
Even a government backbencher should be offended by that kind of action. If I were a government backbencher and thought I would make a vice-chair, I would hope I would need only to seek the support of committee members and not have to rely on this sort of kowtowing to the government whip.
With a truly democratic process through which members would be free to vote for whomever they wanted, all choices would be acceptable because it would be done democratically. Even if a member did not support the one who got elected, it would be accepted because it was done properly.
Not all members of the House voted for the current Speaker, but all members give him the respect he deserves because it was done in a very democratic way. It was a secret ballot and not even the Prime Minister could influence members in that process when we first selected a Speaker for the 35th Parliament.
The other reform to our rules occurred in the last Parliament where for the first time there was a requirement to have one member from the opposition in either the vice-chair or the chair position. In the beginning of this new procedure and the only other time there was a set of elections outside this Liberal dominated Parliament, a vice-chair went to third party standing. In that Parliament, the third party had half the seats of the official opposition compared with the equality of seats in this Parliament.
For some reason the precedent of that Parliament is not in this Parliament. The Liberal whip and the Liberal members are convinced that the only person who can fill the vice-chair is a member of the separatist party.
There is precedent for something different. How can we continue to say in this Parliament that it should not be that way again? Since then, this Parliament has been operating on the notion brought forward by the chief government whip that electing official opposition members to all vice-chair positions was the tradition.
How is it a tradition when the only other time it was done it was not done that way? There is a tradition here, the support of this chief government whip on the other side of the House for the separatist Bloc Quebecois. That is the tradition that is really being set at this point.
We see it every day in committee and in the House. In any procedural argument the government runs to the defence of the Bloc. Even when Bloc members have little stomach for debate the government whip and his former sidekick, the member from Kingston and the Islands, come running to their aid. We saw that in an earlier debate.
They have the experience and the procedural know-how. They are absolutely happy to support Bloc members in their many efforts. Parliamentary reform was moving ahead, albeit slowly. Since the Liberals have taken over government, parliamentary reform has gone backward in time to the days of Mr. Trudeau who ruled his caucus with an iron fist.
That fist was beginning to loosen starting in the 33rd Parliament with the McGrath report and a little more in the 34th Parliament with other studies of the procedure and House affairs committee.
The Liberals do not know any means of governing except by way of past experience. No wonder this has happened. They dismissed and ignored not only all the parliamentary reform that was discussed on the floor of the House and in committee for years but also their own parliamentary reform ideas.
Let us not forget the recent reminder when the Prime Minister refused to appoint opposition members to junior chair positions as promised in the Liberal red book. This happened only a week ago.
(1725)
It is time government backbenchers had a look at what is happening. There should be some consideration for back to parliamentary reform. We should also look at freedom in committees whereby committee members are free to choose chairs and vice-chairs. It is also time in the House to stop, and Canadians want it stopped, the bias between the government and the Bloc Quebecois in all that happens on the floor of the House and in committees.
Mr. John Duncan (North Island-Powell River, Ref.): Madam Speaker, every member of Parliament knows the Bloc is being favoured as official opposition. Any objective analysis would also demonstrate and come to the very same conclusion. This is a growing, daunting realization by the Canadian public. Whenever we have that kind of circumstance there is a reaction somewhere down the road. The government should think about that very seriously.
The government has its own agenda and I am not exactly sure what it is. However, with the majority the government holds it has a unique time in our history to really create a circumstance for democratic freedom and for improving the way this place works, but it is blowing it.
We have heard some very weak arguments from the Bloc, especially in my critic area of aboriginal affairs, as to how effective they are in the rest of the country. The Bloc has been happy to run around Canada encouraging spending and the inherent right to self-government among aboriginals as long as they are not in Quebec.
At the same time, I and other members in my party have as a matter of course worked in Indian country in Quebec where the Bloc has totally dropped the ball. Do we trumpet this from the trees? Do we run around making speeches about what a great job we have done in the province of Quebec? No. This is a much more heartfelt item than that. This is beyond politics. The whole area of aboriginal affairs should in many respects be beyond politics.
There is hardly a single thing done by the Bloc where the motivation is not to further the separatist vision of Quebec.
Why should I have to go into committee knowing full well that as an opposition member the government wants to favour that other party member over me? I have sought to remedy the electoral unfairness or favouritism which I observed in committee last September. This was very difficult. Committees are supposed to be masters of their own house and, for very good reason, the Speaker is reluctant to interfere.
The problem starts with the numbers. Government members on a committee outnumber the combined opposition members. The whip can orchestrate what happens in committee.
We obviously need a secret ballot in committee. How the House of Commons, where our federal democracy is supposed to be expressed, does not adopt this bit of progress to prevent the possibility of government backbench coercion is beyond me, other than the government likes everything that happens around here to be in its full control. To elucidate some of my concerns, I would like to read a bit from my submission of September 20 last fall to
demonstrate my observations on trying to even nominate a Reform chair or vice-chair to the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs.
This committee has a history of past irregularities, including the case to which I have drawn your attention. The irregularities from yesterday are as follows.
First, as soon as the clerk's gavel fell I submitted a motion to elect a chairman. As Your Honour knows, under the standing orders the first item of business for an organizational meeting is the election of a chair for the committee. However, the clerk acknowledge my speaking and asked me to wait until he had read his first item of business. I asked that he recognize that I had given notice of a motion. After the clerk read the item of business he proceeded to recognize someone else first.(1730)
Mr. Solberg: Typical. Very typical.
Mr. Duncan:
Second, once the chair was elected my colleagues repeatedly attempted to move a motion to elect a vice-chair, but the chair appeared to be intent on stalling so that a motion to elect a member of the Bloc could be put forward by the Bloc or by the government for the so-called opposition vice-chair.
The chair stalled by insisting that we were going to consider motions for government vice-chair. This is a false distinction. The standing orders do not recognize a government vice-chair per se. The standing orders only require that two of the three positions go to the government side.
As soon as a motion to elect a vice-chair is put forward, whether to elect a government or opposition member, that motion is surely in order. The chair made it clear that he was accepting no motions from the Reform.
Third, once a member of the government moved to elect the Bloc to the vice-chair, my colleagues and I asked for debate on the motion. We were not only cut off; we were not allowed to debate at all. As Your Honour knows, Standing Order 116 makes clear that there is no limit on debate on a regular motion in committee.
Fourth, when we put forward a motion to overturn the election of the Bloc member as vice-chair, the chairman refused to entertain the motion, which was surely in order. The chairman then summarily adjourned the meeting.
We appeal to you, Mr. Speaker, to uphold the standing orders and our rights. This kind of conduct by committee chairs is surely less than acceptable.This is just one more time when we ran into this but it is one that is documented. That is why I thought I would re-enter it into the record.
Why does the government want to regulate and control every aspect of activity in Parliament? Canadians are not being served. There is no long term vision being displayed of how non-regional representation can lead to the irrelevancy of this place. In the minds of many Canadians this place is irrelevant now and by carrying on this kind of behaviour it is only contributing to that perception of irrelevancy.
Why do the procedure experts in the Liberal government take such great delight in supporting the Bloc at every move and in every one of their tricks in this place to the detriment of democracy?
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As I explained before, with the majority the government has, it has a unique opportunity, one that has not been seen for a dozen years, to implement considerable improvements in how committees work. That opportunity has not only been lost, but the committee structures, committee elections, and all that goes with it have taken a step backward. As long as this charade continues those committees are becoming more and more irrelevant.
When I go to committee I have very little influence on the agenda and subject matter to be looked into. The committee that I sit on, aboriginal affairs, has a whole classification of people who live under the Indian Act. They live under one department. There are no checks and balances beyond that department. The government is not only in control of the committee and the department, they are in control of those people's lives. If there is one place where opposition members need an opportunity to pry off the lid, to really try and get to the bottom of the serious things going on that are counterproductive to the aboriginal community and Canadian society as a whole, it is that committee.
Mr. Solberg: Right on.
Mr. Duncan: The non-partisan things that go on there are controlled and manipulated by the government. I am sorry, there is no other way for me to say it.
Our committee wasted a long time, in my opinion, looking into what was really the minister's prerogative, which was co-management in Saskatchewan. Because the minister obviously has an agenda, the opposition role becomes one of damage control rather than trying to be a productive member of the committee, particularly if we have a point of view that is obviously quite different.
This gets away from the whole system of checks and balances that are crucial to the proper operation of government on an ongoing basis. The checks and balances in the Canadian system are, assuming that the committee system worked properly, already much less than the checks and balances built into other democracies. One that comes foremost to my mind is the one due south of us.
We need to scrutinize what this place is all about and where it is going. This is a crucial time in Canada's history. We are a young country. This is the wrong time for us to be creating so-called traditions that are anti-democratic, that we have been hearing about for the last while on this debate.
Mr. Monte Solberg (Medicine Hat, Ref.): Madam Speaker, I want to speak against the motion. Like my colleagues, I am very concerned about the message that this motion sends. There is a real cynicism in the country today that is caused by many factors, not the least of which is the perception, and the fact, that MPs have become very unaccountable. Governments have become very unaccountable.
(1740 )
That perception can only be strengthened by what the government is proposing to do, continue on with same slate of vice-chairmen that we currently have in the standing committees. It is absolutely ridiculous. To illustrate why that is so wrong it is important to go back through what happened on the committee I was sitting on when we chose a vice-chair last time to show where some of the problems are.
I was sitting on the Canadian heritage committee. It is important to remember what committee I was on. When it came time to choose a new chairman and vice-chairman the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, the chief government whip, showed up at the meeting. That never happens. When the whip shows up in a committee you know the fix is in. The whip is there to keep people in line and that is exactly what happened. The whip is there to crack his whip.
The whip came in, sat at the table and the Liberal members were sitting beside him. The chair was chosen first. The chair took his place and we immediately moved a motion asking that a Reform member be nominated to sit as the vice-chair. We were told no, that was not going to happen. The chairman was not ready despite what the standing orders say, despite what the rules say, and our motion was ignored.
The Bloc motion was recognized and subsequently a Bloc member was chosen to be vice-chair of the Canadian heritage committee, the one committee that is dedicated at least in part to helping keep the country together. Where is the common sense in that?
Madam Speaker, if you go to Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Bathurst, New Brunswick, Sooke, B.C. or Brooks, Alberta and you ask people if that makes any sense at all they are going to ask what is the matter with MPs? No wonder Canadians are so cynical about this place. Should we have a separatist sit as the vice-chair of the Canadian heritage committee? That is ridiculous.
Last fall the committee was to travel across the country to hear from Canadians about how to keep Canada together. Are we really going to have a separatist chair that committee going across the country to talk about how we can keep the country together? Do you think that makes sense? Do you not think it is really contrary to what most people would regard as common sense? I certainly do.
In the wake of the referendum we heard that certain hon. members from the Bloc Quebecois were talking to members of the Canadian military about starting an armed forces in Quebec after the referendum campaign. Does it really make sense in the wake of the referendum to have a vice-chair on the defence committee from
the separatist party? That is absolutely nuts. It is crazy and yet here are these members across the way defending it.
We are sitting in Parliament, an institution that should reflect the wishes of Canadians. It should be an institution where the rules and procedures allow for the scrutiny of government, allow people to have their say through their elected representatives, first with respect to the issues, but also with respect to whom they want representing them on the various committees that are an offshoot of the House of Commons. Of course we do not have that despite the commitments that the government made in their red book.
The Liberals were elected because of the red book. They appeared in ads and said: ``We have the people, we have the plan'' and they flashed the red book around. In the red book was a commitment to change the way committees work. They said: ``We want to make them more democratic. We want to give committees more power''.
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What did they do? They said they wanted to make them more democratic and wanted to give them more power, but what they did was completely different. They brought the chief government whip in, the member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell who seems to have a love affair with the separatists. They sat him down in the Canadian heritage committee, and he made sure the Liberal members voted for a separatist to sit as vice-chair of the Canadian heritage committee. That is absolutely ridiculous.
There we go again, another broken Liberal promise. Just like the GST, just like the NAFTA and just like all the others, it is another broken promise. How cynical of them to sit over there and assert that we should accept that again in this session of Parliament. It is absolutely ridiculous.
Often we send delegations around the world to monitor elections in other countries as though we have some special expertise on democracy. What would happen if someone sat in on one of these committee meetings and watched how things were conducted, particularly when it is time to elect chairmen and vice-chairs for the committees? This is after we have seen the Liberal red book commitment which said that the vice-chairs would come from the opposition parties. We saw that even in the event of the debate over the Speaker's chair, but we need not go into that again. They made that kind of commitment. How ironic that we should be sitting here voting to send people around the world to monitor other people's elections. It is absolutely crazy. All we have to do is go to one of these committee meetings to see how ironic that is.
Not very long ago the Deputy Prime Minister, who is now the Minister of Canadian Heritage, argued that we needed to return to the spirit of 1967. She was referring to the year that Canada celebrated its 100th anniversary, the year when there was a great national celebration. We all felt very patriotic about our country and very sentimental about some of the things we valued in the country. That is a very noble idea. Some of the government's approaches toward achieving that are completely out to lunch. It seems to think somehow heritage flows from the government down to the people and not the other way around.
Setting that aside for a moment, I want to ask the Deputy Prime Minister rhetorically how this decision to have a member of the separatist Bloc Quebecois sit as a vice-chair of the Canadian heritage committee squares with her sentiment that we should return to the spirit of 1967.
Mr. McClelland: Maybe a Reformer should sit on the membership of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society.
Mr. Solberg: There is an idea. Maybe we should have a Reformer sit on the membership of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society. I do not know. Perhaps that makes complete sense. As somebody said, maybe it makes sense to have Jack the Ripper in charge of a knife store. I do not know.
That is the argument members across the way are making. We need to have the separatists in charge of Canadian heritage. It is completely ridiculous. We should have the separatists in charge of the defence committee which, in light of what happened after the referendum or just before the referendum, is something that needs serious examination. If I were the defence minister I would be a bit concerned about that. I would be questioning my own members and saying: ``Are you sure you really want to do that?'' He has a responsibility to do that, in my judgment, after what happened.
Let me conclude by saying the Liberals made some promises. They made a promise to reform institutions like committees so that they were allowed to reflect the wishes of members of the committee. In other words, they wanted to give members of Parliament more power. They denied that by giving the member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, the chief government whip, almost absolute power to go in there and say: ``If you don't support the separatists then you will be in big trouble''. We have seen what has happened to members in the past, where they have been kicked off committees because they voted the wrong way.
The second point I want to make in conclusion is that we have a situation today where people are deeply cynical about the way politics work. They are deeply cynical and very pessimistic about their futures. When we have a situation where promises of all kinds made in the red book are completely forgotten two years later we can understand why they feel that way. The government has helped contribute to the great pall of pessimism that has fallen across the land.
(1750)
Third, this is a democratic institution. In this place of all places people should have the right to elect the people they want to elect without interference from the government. We raised a question of privilege the other day on the issue of the government interfering in the business of Parliament. In that case there was a very serious accusation, but we see it happen in all ways, shapes and manners in this place because the government keeps resisting the need to change.
The fourth point I want to make is from a common sense point of view. We have a separatist vice-chair on the Canadian heritage committee, the committee that is supposed to be in charge of helping to keep the country together. We have a Canadian unity committee that has sprung out of the Canadian heritage committee and we have a separatist vice-chair who is part of that committee, who will be helping to run that committee. It is absolutely nuts. We will have a separatist as a vice-chair on the defence committee as well. In light of what has happened that is ridiculous.
In conclusion, the attitude of the government was betrayed when Mr. Speaker very wisely ruled not long ago that based on parliamentary precedent the status quo had to be accepted in terms of leaving the Bloc-
Mr. Hill (Macleod): Unfortunately.
Mr. Solberg: It was very unfortunate, but he very wisely ruled that according to precedent he had to maintain the Bloc as the official opposition.
However what happened after that spoke volumes. When members of the Liberal Party applauded it said more in a few seconds than all the members in the House could say in an eternity. They applauded because they favour the separatists in the official opposition chair, none more than the hon. member Glengarry-Prescott-Russell who has made it a point to make sure every vice-chairmanship has gone to the Bloc Quebecois, the separatists, no matter how damaging it has been to the country.
Mr. Pierre de Savoye (Portneuf, BQ): Madam Speaker, I have heard enough of this information. I have heard that separatists are unfit to vice chair the Canadian heritage and defence committees.
I pay taxes. The people of Quebec pay taxes to Canada, up to $30 billion a year. Moreover, soldiers from my riding have given their lives in Bosnia. As long as soldiers from my riding or from Quebec are giving their time, their health and their lives for Canada, Bloc Quebecois members should be and will be able to be vice-chairs of the defence committee. They have that right and no one can take it away from any Bloc Quebecois member.
Furthermore, 400 years ago ancestors of many Bloc Quebecois members arrived in this country. They started a relationship with the autochtones. The heritage we have from sea to sea to sea is not only the one they have in the west. It is also the one we have in the east and which our ancestors have built over centuries.
(1755)
Who in the House has defended culture more than the Bloc Quebecois, whether in the printing business, the CBC, Société Radio-Canada or any other subject. Culture is something we understand and have understood for centuries. My father and grandfather were from the west. They were French speaking and contributed to that heritage in French.
I believe we have a right to contribute to the defence and the promotion of Canadian heritage because a large part of it is Quebec heritage, the heritage of our ancestors.
For Quebec taxpayers, our ancestors who donated all they had to build what we have today and the soldiers from Quebec who gave their health and their lives, the member's apology should be in order.
Mr. Solberg: Madam Speaker, the hon. member will be waiting a long time. The one who should be making apologies in the House is the one who is trying to rip the country apart.
The hon. member is arguing on the one hand that they should be allowed to sit as vice-chairs on these committees because of the great Canadian heritage they have helped to uphold. On the other hand he is saying that he would take his province out of Canada.
Let us not look backward for a moment; let us look forward. Are we saying that we want to put someone in charge of the Canadian heritage committee when we are sending a Canadian unity committee of that committee across the country to talk about ways to hold the country together? That is absolutely nuts. That is ridiculous.
We would be irresponsible if we did not note that leading up to the last referendum the defence critic for the Bloc Quebecois wrote a letter on his leader's letterhead to the Canadian military in Quebec and asked them to consider coming over to them in the wake of a referendum. If we did not take some steps to protect ourselves from what could happen as a result of that, we would be completely irresponsible.
The member is talking about talking Quebec out of Confederation, but let him not think that we should accept that. In his words, because he and the members of his riding are taxpayers somehow they have the right to sit as a vice-chair on any committee to propose things that would rip the country apart. That is nuts.
[Translation]
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): There are four minutes remaining for questions and comments. Does anyone else wish to speak? The hon. member for Charlevoix.
Mr. Gérard Asselin (Charlevoix, BQ): Madam Speaker, I think that, this afternoon, the Reform Party has been attempting to skirt the issue. Before the House recessed for Christmas and before the prorogation of Parliament, they had put forward a motion in which they asked to be recognized as the official opposition. You will recall that they had asked the Speaker to rule on a motion claiming the status of official opposition.
Last week, the Speaker of the House of Commons came back with an excellent ruling, stating that the Bloc Quebecois had achieved official opposition status in 1993, after the elections, and was the second party in the House of Commons. In the event of an equality of seats, and this is purely mathematical, and of our losing one seat or of the Reform Party gaining one, they will become the second party, or we might remain the second party.
(1800)
I suggest that we wait for the result of the March 25 byelection, at which time the Bloc Quebecois' position will be consolidated, with at least 54 seats.
I think that the masks should be taken away from the Reform Party members. I think that playing this role, this afternoon, and raising this issue about the chairmanship or vice-chairmanship of committees, is basically a back-door method of showing that the Speaker was wrong and should have designated the Reform Party as the official Opposition. They are trying to send to English Canada the message that the Speaker made a mistake.
Again, I maintain that the designation of the official opposition is purely mathematical. The advantage for us of having a Bloc member as vice-chair of a committee is, as the member for Portneuf explained, that it gives us priority for the first five minutes of questions to witnesses who appear before the committee. The vice-chair also sits on the steering committee that determines priorities on the agenda.
We have wasted a lot of time. We have been discussing this issue since oral question period ended, at 3 p.m. The Reform Party makes an issue of who should be vice-chair and who should be chair.
We are told that the interest on the national debt increases at the rate of $1,000 per second. The Reform Party should realize that, while we are arguing about who should fill the positions of vice-chair and chair, the interest on the debt has gone up $10,800.
We should be discussing job creation, programs and the future of our young people. Instead, the Reform Party is using roundabout means to try to show Canadians that the Speaker erred when he ruled that the Bloc Quebecois will remain the official opposition.
[English]
Mr. Solberg: Madam Speaker, obviously I will not respond to everything because it would take too long. It is understandable that the Bloc members would like to assume all these chairmanship positions. That makes sense to me. I understand why they want that. Ultimately they want to go and become emperors in their own country. That is fine. They can pursue that.
The point I want to make and which we have been trying to make here is they should not be aided and abetted by the Liberals. They should not be turning the rules on their head for a party is committed to the separation of Quebec from this country. That party should not be using those rules to seek its own ends.
That is exactly what the Liberals have done. They have entered into this alliance, into this little intrigue with the Bloc Quebecois, with the separatists. They applauded them when the Speaker ruled that they should be maintained as the official opposition.
That speaks volumes of what is happening here about the commitment of these people to have federalists sit in the opposition and help guide the agenda. I understand where these people are coming from. We will never agree with them. We will never agree with the Bloc, but the conduct of the Liberals is unbelievable.
[Translation]
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): Is the House ready for the question?
Some hon. members: Question.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): The question is on the amendment tabled by Mr. Ringma. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
Some hon. members: No.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): All those in favour will please say yea.
Some hon. members: Yea.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): All those opposed will please say nay.
Some hon. members: Nay.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): In my opinion the nays have it.
(1805)
Some hon. members: On division.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): I declare the amendment negatived on division.
(Amendment negatived.)
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): Is the House ready for the question on the main motion?
Some hon. members: Question.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
Some hon. members: No.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): All those in favour will please say yea.
Some hon. members: Yea.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): All those opposed will please say nay.
Some hon. members: Nay.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): In my opinion the yeas have it.
Some hon. members: On division.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): I declare the motion carried on division.
(Motion agreed to.)
Taxes account for some 52 per cent of what Canadians pay for a litre of gasoline while the excise tax rose by 1.5 cents a litre in the last budget. Moreover, a parliamentary committee has recommended that this tax be further increased in the next budget. In the last 10 years, the price of gasoline has gone up by a whopping 566 per cent.
The petitioners therefore urge Parliament not to raise the federal excise tax on gasoline in the next federal budget. I am pleased to table this petition, which I think makes a lot of sense.
I would like to table a number of petitions.
[English]
The first petition is from the electors of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, petitioning not to have an increase in the tax on gasoline.
[Translation]
These people from the riding of Hull-Aylmer present these petitions through their member of Parliament, who is doing such a good job of representing them in the House of Commons, and the minister has asked me to table them on his behalf.
The petitioners urge the government to ensure that the Gatineau employment centre will continue to provide people in the Outaouais, Hull-Aylmer, Buckingham, Campbell's Bay and Maniwaki with full employment, UI and income security services.
As I said earlier, these petitions were signed by 7,150 people.
[English]
The schools are Hillside school, Bienfait school, Kennedy high school, St. Mary's school in Estivan, St. John's school, Torquay school, Langbank elementary, Glenn McGuire, Alida and Carlyle.
Mr. Mac Harb (Ottawa Centre, Lib.): Madam Speaker, my constituents are outraged at the fluctuation of gasoline prices moving up and down like a yo-yo on a regular basis. My constituents are calling on the government for action.
(1810 )
Today they have given me a petition to table on their behalf calling on the government not introduce any federal taxes on gasoline.
Mr. Paul Zed (Fundy-Royal, Lib.): Madam Speaker, I congratulate you on taking the chair. All of us from New Brunswick are very proud of you as you fulfil your new responsibilities.
I am pleased to present on behalf of motorists in and around the Windsor, Ontario area the enclosed petition with 37 names from Windsor, Amherstburg, Kingsville, Essex county, La Salle and Tecumseh, Ontario. They request that Parliament not increase the excise tax on gasoline.
Mr. Jay Hill (Prince George-Peace River, Ref.): Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I present today a petition signed by hundreds of people from my riding of Prince George-Peace River. They are completely opposed to further tax increases in the upcoming budget and specifically request that Parliament not again increase the federal excise tax on gasoline as the government did last year.
Taxes on gasoline are not luxury taxes and additional increases unfairly discriminate against northerners.
[Translation]
[English]
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): Is that agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.