Mr. McCain:

It will be good luck, my friend, because my constituents are not as ignorant as some of those who sit on your right.

Mr. Fisher:

Are they as impolite as you are?

Mr. McCain:

Stand up and speak for your country! Don't speak against it as you are doing now. Treat it with sincerity of purpose and with resolution, not with contempt. Do not treat it with contempt, you and that-

Mr. Kaplan:

Order.

Mr. McCain:

I say through you, Mr. Speaker, that that type of behaviour is what has brought contempt to this House, and it has been led and fed and guided by the activities of the Government on the right. That mace, a symbol of protection for you and all Members of this House, is no longer a symbol of democracy and the right of the people to defend themselves against their government or against insurrection. The insurrection, Sir, is taking place to your right. It is an insurrection against democracy and its structures, a democracy which is now well into its eighth century since the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215. We have put the machinery in reverse as we pass legislation of this nature.

I am one of the Members of this House of Commons who is thoroughly, completely and totally insulted by this legislation. I am not trusted, even in camera, to be a part of the conduct of the business of the security of this nation which I love and for which, though I did not get into battle, I signed up and put my life on the line to defend.

I have contempt for a Solicitor General, a government, a Prime Minister and a new leader who allows this kind of legislation to be passed which makes the House of Commons untrustworthy to conduct the business of the people. There are vehicles which can be utilized for those who become untrustworthy in the land. They should be applied to any member of any House of Commons or Senate committee who may be privy to the secrets of this land in relation to the security of the country. Those things should be applied to the ones who babble. However, the initial trust must be placed in the hands of those who are elected to govern the country.

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This is putting the security of the land at the disposition of political manipulators. It is giving the opportunity for pure partisan selection of the only committees which will have any view of the behaviour of the security system which we are setting up. We do not even have the confidence that we have been able to place in that loyal force of police officers known as the RCMP. We are now relegated to having a civilian force put in place which will be examined by political appointees of the government of the day. I do not care what government is in place. It should not have that authority. The security of the land and law and order should be the responsibility of, and should be extended to the elected Members of the people of Canada. I am not concerned about anybody from that committee babbling. If the Government uses judgment so poor that it appoints a babbler whom they cannot trust, the security agency is incompetent before it gets off the ground.

How many of us in the House have directly or indirectly already been evaluated as a security risk for one reason or another? This is a condemnation of the society and the people over whom you preside as Speaker in the House. For the life of me I cannot comprehend how the democrats of this country, those who love democracy, have remained so silent as they watch this force go into the backrooms of the Party in power for the day. To me it is incredible that they will accept that. If they do, it is because of the contempt in which we are held. The Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) once said that a Member of Parliament is a nobody when he is 100 feet away from the House of Commons. That is the opinion which the House has extended for itself through its agent, the Prime Minister of Canada. This is the exclamation mark behind that remark of the Prime Minister who did not want, does not comprehend, and never did respect those of us who were elected but were not Prime Minister.

This Act reminds me of another Act. The Auditor General is supposed to give facts to the Public Accounts Committee. He is supposed to be a check and balance upon the expenditures, allocations and use of money in general. However, if you sit on the Public Accounts Committee you will find that he has made a report. I trust totally that he will have accumulated the necessary evidence to make the necessary accusations and to put the necessary subject matters before the Public Accounts Committee. Having accumulated that evidence, it goes into a file and cannot be withdrawn. It can only be withdrawn if someone tells you exactly what question you should ask. The Auditor General is not authorized to give you that information.

The House of Commons has plodded along in the dark, depending upon someone slipping a little piece of private information unsolicited. Perhaps one would call it a leak. The Public Accounts Committee of the House has not been able to function as it was intended to function. Its intended function was to look after the expenditures of the land.

The House of Commons is now not going to be allowed to function with respect to the security of the land in the private force. We in the House of Commons may be veterans, lawyers

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or teachers, but we are Canadians all. We are not supposed to have enough interest in the well-being of our country to be trusted by the Government.

If this motion is turned down by the Government it will be a reflection upon the present Prime Minister and the one who aspires to be Prime Minister, because he is now considered to be the boss of the Liberal Party. If he is boss, between now and tomorrow night this amendment should be adopted.

Mr. Bill Domm (Peterborough):

Mr. Speaker, I rise on this occasion to speak for the first time on Bill C-9. I will try to express as simply as I can my concern about the clause we are debating now. I must relate to the situation of Members of Parliament going through their constituencies and talking to their constituents. Concern is expressed by the constituents that Members of Parliament really do not have enough say in the operation of Parliament and Government. When one sees the kind of legislation we are dealing with this evening in the last hour of report stage debate, one can fully appreciate the concern of the constituents.

The Member for Vancouver South (Mr. Fraser) is simply seeking an opportunity for Members of Parliament in the Government and in Opposition, and for Members of the Senate, to have some say in a committee that is to be set up to review the operations of the changes that are brought about by Bill C-9, an Act respecting enforcement in relation to certain security and related offences and to amend certain acts in consequence thereof or in relation thereto.

More simply put, that means that if someone, perhaps wrongly, is accused of some act of subversion or an act against the best interests of the country, and this committee is called into place to protect that person, the committee that will be dealing with the issue is nothing more and nothing less than a group of porkbarrel committee members appointed by the Government in power that day.

If that person who may be wrongly accused of actions wishes to bring his or her case to an elected Member of Parliament, that opportunity is excluded because the information is not available to the elected representatives in the House. It is not available in the presentation of information at the committee level because Members of Parliament on both sides of the House have been excluded from an opportunity to listen to the constituent who may be wrongly accused of an act. All that we as Conservatives in Opposition are asking for is an opportunity to establish a parliamentary oversight committee to review, on a permanent basis, the administration provisions and operations of this oversight committee.

I am sure that a lot of people in the country thought that after the last big Liberal leadership convention we had a new Liberal Party Leader who was going to do three things, as I thought he had assured the people of Canada. He was going to make Parliament more responsive to the people. He was going to consider the interests of the West in whatever actions might be taken, and he was going to have a more open Government.

However, what we have in reality today as we stand in our places debating this issue is an ignoring of the interest of the

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West by diluting the importance of the RCMP. The Government has taken responsibilities from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and is turning them over to a government appointed committee, while excluding Members of Parliament from representing their constituencies and having any input.

This is no different from what it was before. We have the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) who minimizes the importance of Parliament. The new Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, by virtue of bringing in closure and limiting debate on this important piece of legislation, is doing no more and no less than the old school. We are back where we were.

We were currently dealing with a piece of legislation and a proposed amendment to it, through a motion by the Member for Vancouver South. That amendment is supported by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and by the League of Rights. It is supported by the Canadian Council of Churches and it is even supported by Professor Peter Russell of the University of Toronto who was the solicitor for the McDonald Commission.

I know there are members on the government side in the House tonight who have stood up on numerous occasions in the House to speak out very vocally in support of responsible and representative government. They speak on behalf of minority groups quite often. This is simply a case of a piece of legislation that removes the protection of Canadian citizens from the scrutiny of Members of Parliament. Not one member from the government side has spoken in support of having parliamentary representation on this review committee-

Mr. Foster:

Tell us about it.

Mr. Domm:

-some from the Senate and some from the House of Commons.

Mr. Foster:

Tell us about it.

Mr. Domm:

I hear gentlemen on the government side saying "Tell us about it". I would like to hear them tell us why they are opposed to having some parliamentary representation on this review committee? If there is a good reason, why have we not heard it?

Mr. Kaplan:

But you did not go to the committee.

Mr. Domm:

None of these other organizations support the Government in its refusal for representation by Members of Parliament. The Solicitor General (Mr. Kaplan) keeps interjecting, yet there has not been one government member who has stood up and supported the exclusion of Members of Parliament from the review committee.

What is there that is new and different? We have the same thing today that we had two weeks ago. It is a government that brings in closure and a government that wants to exclude elected Members of Parliament from having input into important decisions affecting the citizens of this country. There is a bunch of sheep who are going along with the wishes of the

Solicitor General, and not one of them issues a peep on that side of the House.

I believe we should be discussing the importance of representation on this review committee so that we have voices that speak on behalf of constituents. Members on the government side were elected to become Members of Parliament so that their constituents might have a say. The Member for Vancouver South is asking for no more and no less. We are not asking for dictatorial authority to make all of the final decisions. We are asking for the opportunity to have input on behalf of citizens who, rightly or wrongly, might be accused of an Act that causes them to go through interrogation by this new police agency.

We are dealing with something far more than a review committee. We are dealing with a police agency that dilutes the power of the RCMP and removes from Parliament the right of input from elected representatives. It turns over to a group of pork barrel Liberal appointees the right to decide in the reviewing process whether something is right or wrong.

As far as I, and I suggest the vast majority of Canadians across this land are concerned, it is wrong. That is not the process they would like to see. I am sure that most people in this House would agree that support for this motion is urgently needed. It is regrettable that not one soul on the government side is interested in speaking on behalf of the citizens who will not be represented on this review committee by elected Members of Parliament, or even appointed members to the Senate.

Mr. Ian Deans (Hamilton Mountain):

Mr. Speaker, you will recall that I rose to speak on this very topic a day or two ago because I do consider it to be of major importance. I think it is fair to say that this legislation will go down in the annals of history as one of the most important pieces of legislation passed by the Government over the valid objections of those of us in the opposition who understand the important and far reaching effects of what is being done.

This legislation is important but not supportable, and I want to draw the distinction between the two. It is important because of the nature of the legislation and its potential to infringe upon the basic liberties of Canadians. It could be improved but could never be supportable.

I am surprised that the Solicitor General in many ways is betraying a longstanding publicly professed commitment to civil liberties. He now seems to be prepared to overlook or at least suppress what many in this country have long believed he stood for. He does not seem willing to listen to arguments being put to him.

This legislation could be made marginally more palatable with the acceptance of the amendment we are now debating. It is not revolutionary. It simply gives Members of Parliament that power which most citizens of Canada would anticipate they should have in any event. It gives to Members of Parliament the right to oversee that which has been given by an Act of Parliament, the most intrusive power ever granted in this country.

The other day I told the story of my visit to Moscow. I will not tell it again-

Tell us again.

Mr. Deans:

My colleague says that he would like to hear it again, but perhaps repetition is not acceptable. However, I pointed out that the people I met when I was there feared their secret service more than they feared anything else. I think that is fair to say. I am not exaggerating. I believe that to be true.

That is true in many parts of the United States where people who have an axe to grind, if you will, or hold views different from the conventional and acceptable view of the Government in the United States: they fear the CIA more than most anything else. 1 cannot help but think that we are following the worst of all examples in Canada.

Let me ask the Solicitor General (Mr. Kaplan) in the friendliest manner to consider the scenario that I put before the House the other day. Suppose that he was a visitor to Leningrad, and at the behest of families living in Canada were to make a decision to visit their relatives in Leningrad. If he were to telephone them and make arrangements to visit them in their apartments, he, being a government official, would be seen to be an agent of a foreign government. They, being citizens of the Soviet Union, would then be under suspicion for having had him visit. That is the system. They consider it right. They consider it appropriate. Those people, once under surveillance, are harassed and continually watched day and night. Their phones are tapped, their mail is opened, they are harassed at their places of work and frequently taken into KGB headquarters for discussions, if you will, about their connections with these foreigners from outside their own country.

The Government in the Soviet Union, and many people in the Soviet Union believe that is appropriate. I am quite sure in Canada you could find people who would think it appropriate here that the secret service should be able to open people's mail, tap their telephones, listen in with listening devices to their conversations elsewhere, and have access to and use of doctors' files, and all of those things. There are people in Canada who see no harm in that because they live in that wonderful naivete that somehow or other if you do not break the law, then what have you got to hide. That is how they view things.

I had the pleasure of sitting with a lady last evening at dinner. I was a guest of the Speaker. She said to me: "I do not really mind if they open my mail. I do not really mind if they listen in to my phone calls because I do not do anything wrong." I said to her: "Well, the fact you do not do anything wrong is the very reason you should mind. The fact that you are a law abiding citizen is the very reason you should be concerned. The fact that you never break the law is the very reason you should be offended that the Government has chosen to give to this agency the power to do those things to you."

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That is what makes the Bill offensive. If a person is suspected of committing a crime, of being in violation of Canada's laws, then there is ample provision for conducting an inquiry into his or her daily life, finding out and rooting out what can be the evidence necessary for prosecution. There are ample ways available for doing that. But it is those who do not harm, who break no laws, who live according to high moral and ethical standards who will be most affected, unfortunately, by casual relationships which may result in their being placed under surveillance. They have no way to seek redress. They cannot come to their Member of Parliament because the Member of Parliament has no way of seeking redress. They cannot go to the review agency. They cannot identify the people who are snooping.

Mr. Kaplan:

They can go to the review committee.

Mr. Deans:

First, they have to know that they are being snooped on.

Mr. Kaplan:

They just have to suspect it.

Mr. Deans:

That is about as naive as the lady at dinner last night. It would seem to me that by virtue of the fact that I seek public office and by virtue of the fact that I get elected, I am deemed by a segment of this society to be trustworthy. I have to live up to that trust. I believe I could be given the responsibility of sitting on a parliamentary oversight committee, and I believe I would have both the capacity and the sense of loyalty necessary to be able to make judgments about the appropriateness of the actions of the secret service. I believe that.

I would be prepared, as Privy Councillors do, to take an oath guaranteeing the secrecy of the information I get, if I had to, but we do not have that opportunity. That is what is wrong. That is one of the great fears. That is why we are so adamant in our opposition.

Not only is the concept wrong, not only is it unnecessary in our society, not only does it go far further than reasonable people would be prepared to expect it to go, but there is no clear way for those of us charged with the responsibility of administering, interpreting, understanding and representing the views of the public before Parliament to come to grips with the violations. That is why we ask again at 16 minutes past 8, half an hour before the Bill goes to bed, so to speak, that just maybe some further consideration of a Parliamentary oversight committee makes goods sense.

We ask the Solicitor General to have some faith, to trust us just a little bit, to trust his own colleagues. I want to say to you-I see, Mr. Speaker, that you are telling me that I am finished-

Mr. Kaplan:

You are.