Mr. Robinson (Burnaby):

Mr. Speaker, first of all there are certain questions about the relevance of this misstatement of fact with respect to the Bill before the House. More important, Mr. Speaker, I believe the people of Canada know that it is the Tories who vote twice as often with the Liberals than the NDP do. So the record should be put straight.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Herbert):

That, of course, is not a point of order. It is a point of debate. However, the Hon. Member for St. John's West may try to get back to Bill C-9.

Mr. Crosbie:

Yes, Mr. Speaker. What I am saying is that the New Democratic Party is responsible for this Bill. Those Hon. Members made it possible for the Liberals to form a Government in Canada and they have to bear equal responsibility with the Government for the legislation which comes before this House. The NDP are here in a hypocritical pose, bewailing the fact that their partners whom they put in power have brought in this legislation that they do not like. If these gentlemen stop interrupting me I will get from point to point and you will follow my reasoning and you will be fascinated with the tenuous connections that follow between all the points.

Mr. Kaplan:

We already are.

Mr. Crosbie:

Mr. Speaker, as I say, I have no great knowledge about this Bill. It is enough for me to know that the present Solicitor General introduced it to make me shudder at the effect it might have if it goes through the House. One thing that particularly annoys me is that the Government will not agree to a parliamentary oversight committee. We are to have a review committee which, as I understand it, is to be composed of persons who have been Privy Councillors. That was bad enough. We have had some persons sworn into the Privy Council of Canada who I would not want reviewing anything. Once we successfully got them out of power, I certainly would not want them back reviewing anything else. The fact that you have been a Privy Councillor does not mean that you are going to be attentive to your duties or that you have the capacity or interest to properly oversee the security service, or look at the rights of the public and make sure that abuses do not occur.

It is bad enough that this House will not have a parliamentary oversight committee, I am further advised that the Government has stated that if it wishes to appoint someone to the review committee who is not a Privy Councillor, it will simply

Security Intelligence Service

swear him into the Privy Council and then appoint him to this review committee. If anyone thought there was some particular value to having been a Cabinet Minister and sworn into the Privy Council, that is all gone. It was a thin hope in any event, but the fact that someone could just be taken off the street-

Mr. Crosby:

Michael Pitfield.

Mr. Crosbie:

Yes, he is one possibility. Or Trotters McCarthy. It could be Tommy Toe. It could be anyone brought in off the street, sworn into the Privy Council and appointed to the review committee. That is not my idea of assurance to the people of Canada that they are going to have an oversight committee with the courage, independence and resourcefulness to see that this really works.

Just compare us with the United States of America. Compare the miserable state this House of Commons is in, this legislative body, with the United States. It has been emasculated and Members are without power. The only people in this House who have any power at all are Members of the Cabinet. Today they do not have any power; they are all sitting around stewing and wondering if Pierre Elliott Turner is going to take them into his Cabinet or not. They have had their safe berth with the present Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) who is very lackadaisical about performance. He does not care whether they perform or do not perform.

But now there is a new Liberal Leader so even the present Cabinet Ministers do not have power at the moment, except for the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. MacEachen). He slithered across the convention floor on Saturday to make sure- now, I am addressing the Bill, Mr. Speaker, because I am talking about security. The Deputy Prime Minister wanted some security last Saturday and he saw his security blanket sitting in the Turner box and he slithered over, as I said the other day, just like a worried crab that spots a dead herring in the moonlight. He went right for the old rotten herring. Once again he illustrated the fact that he is the most security conscious Member of the Government.

The Minister of Justice (Mr. MacGuigan) was not far behind, of course. He could hardly wait for the first ballot to be counted before he made his break for security. He showed his intelligence. There were several other Members not so security conscious. They are more intelligent. They went with the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Chretien). God knows where they are going to end up. They may end up as members of this review committee or some other big job like that.

In any event, here we have a situation which epitomizes the low estate of the Canadian House of Commons, the legislature in Canada, if we compare it with the U.S. Their parliamentary system has survived to the present day with the legislators having some real power. When President Reagan and the executive branch wish to encourage an invasion of Nicaragua or finance some irregular troops or former Nicaraguans, or whoever they might be, to invade and interfere with the internal security of Nicaragua, they have an oversight committee in the U.S. Congress which has some powers. It is com-

June 21, 1984

Security Intelligence Service

posed of Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senator from New York, the big Irishman-

Mr. Darling:

Patrick Moynihan.

Mr. Crosbie:

-Senator Moynihan, just by his threat to leave the vice-chairmanship of that committee, was able to bring about a change of policy in the U.S. and have the Government state that it was no longer going to use subversive techniques to try and overthrow the Government of Nicaragua. That is something meaningful. The members of that legislative body have some meaningful power and influence. That is what we should have in this legislation. This should apply not only with respect to the security intelligence review committee, it should happen with all committees.

Why does the Government not want help in controlling the bureaucracy? It is not just that we need to control the security intelligence service. We have to have special techniques for that because a lot of their work must be secret. But the Government generally needs assistance in controlling the bureaucracy as a whole. Why not use the 282 Members we have elected to this House for that purpose? Why should the Government carry on, satisfied, with the Members of the Opposition having no real authority or power? Yes, when Question Period comes along we can question the Government and show our anger, dismay and all the rest of it. But that is not real power.

The back-benchers on the Government side have no real power either. Some of them are fairly decent people. I often say that I know many Liberals, and some of them are very good friends of mine, but would you have one married to your sister? No, not if you could avoid it. Nevertheless, there are some very good people in the Government backbenches who should be utilized.

Mr. Bloomfield:

What about your brother?

Mr. Crosbie:

I know I will always be looked after by the Government opposite. They put me brother in charge of Fisheries Products International Limited. I know if he needs an executive assistant, they will fire me in there too. I hope I never have to do that, however.

The point I am trying to make is a serious one. There are many good Members on the Government side and on this side who would be more than happy and delighted to serve on committees such as this, and who have the talent and the ability. They would make the time to do it. Those are the people who should be doing it, the people who represent the public. The public knows, for example, that the Hon. Member for Edmonton West (Mr. Lambert), if they approach him on a security intelligence problem or something like that, will be interested. He has been in public life for many years and is identifiable as a public figure. He is still active. If there was some irregularity, he would be bound to see that it was followed up. If he was a member of this review committee, he would get to the bottom of it. If he could not get satisfaction behind the scenes, he would get it publicly by simply asking

questions in the House, or wherever it might be. That is the kind of person we need on the review committee.

I am not quite sure how many members it is supposed to have. But supposing there are five, then of course three should be from the Qpposition and two from the Government. There should always be a majority from the Opposition who are not going to be embarrassed if the Government has to be embarrassed to rectify some injustice which has occurred.

That is one of the reasons I am very happy to support the position of our Party with respect to this Bill. There is a major defect in the review of these operations alone. We all know we have to have a security service, but why does the Government not know that in addition to a security service we need to be in a position to defend ourselves effectively? It makes one a bit sick to see the pressure put on to put this Bill through the House when we know the Government does not care about the defence effectiveness of Canada whatsoever. It has ignored our NATO obligations and responsibilities for donkey's years, for 16 years at least, since the present Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), who told me today that he is going, took office. That is the first time I really believed he was going. I asked him this afternoon and he said that yes, he was going to resign. He confirmed it. I do not think that he would disappoint me by saying one thing in the House and doing something different. For the first time, Mr. Speaker, I really got the impression that the Prime Minister is going to go. More is the pity that he did not wait till we had defeated him before he went. Nevertheless, we wish him well in his retirement. He would be a dandy to have on this committee, by the way.

You were taking too long. He could not wait any more. He gave up on you guys.

Mr. Crosbie:

He gave up on us having the chance to defeat him. We wish him well anyway. Pass that on to him, please; you never know when you might need his goodwill. He might not mean what he said today.

The Member for Regina East (Mr. de Jong) mentioned a more attentive media. One thing we cannot count on is for the media to be the protector of the civil liberties and rights of the Canadian citizen in this day and age. The media are the froth and the foam on the river of life. That is all they are. They are only skin deep. They are only on the surface. The media no longer dig deeply into anything. They are just prepared to get their bons mots or their 30-second quote. Then they run off to the newsroom and get it on the air and go and have a beer at the press club. If we are going to depend on the media to defend us against the transgressions of the security service, God help us! We will be in pretty slack shape. They are just a liver spot on the escutcheon of mankind. We cannot depend on the media to defend us.

The kind of people we could depend on are cantankerous Members of this House, Members who are crusty, independent, saucy, impatient, fed up, nasty and obnoxious. You would

June 21, 1984

not want to bump into them in the dark. That is the type of person that we need.

Mr. Lumley:

That sounds like the Tory caucus!

Mr. Crosbie:

Have I described anybody over there?

Mr. Lumley:

You have been in the Tory caucus too long, John.

Mr. Crosbie:

These are the kinds of persons we want on an effective committee to protect us.

How many more points have I, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Blaikie:

You have not made any so far.

Mr. Crosbie:

Winnipeg-Birds Nest pipes up. Is there a birdbrain to match that bird's nest I wonder?

In my final couple of minutes I will say that the Government has not made any pretence of making a real effort even to put Canada in a position where we can defend our own shores or control our own coastal waters. That is one of the things that really offends me. I am from an island, Mr. Speaker, the island of Newfoundland. If we need to be defended we need a navy and an air force. As I have said here before, the people in Newfoundland cannot sleep at night because they do not know the day or the moment that St. Pierre et Miquelon is going to invade. Who can prevent St. Pierre et Miquelon from invading Newfoundland? We may wake up one day French. In a way that would solve my problem, Mr. Speaker. I would be a French citizen. Nobody could say that I was not. I might even learn the language more rapidly than I am now.

Nevertheless, Mr. Speaker, it well behooves a government that is not prepared to devote sufficient resources to provide adequate defence forces to control and patrol our own territory to ask us to pass a Bill with the imperfections of this one and to rush it through in the last moments of this Parliament.

The NDP Member for Regina East suggested that an election be held. There are many reasons for having an election today, Mr. Speaker. This is a Government that has not governed this country-and I am going to be generous about it-certainly since January.

I have to wind up my remarks. I am delighted, Mr. Speaker, that I had a chance to give you some of my views on security and intelligence. I vote against this Bill confident in the fact that I am right in doing so for some of the reasons that I have outlined tonight.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Herbert):

There follows a 10-minute period for questions and comments. The Hon. Member for Burnaby (Mr. Robinson).