Canada Needs a Leadership Convention

Andrew Telegdi, M.P for Kitchener- Waterloo

The Liberal party’s renewal process is mandated under its constitution and through it the leader receives his legitimacy. The debate on confirming or replacing the Prime Minister is serious business and at the heart of our democratic process. The electorate chose the Liberal team to govern; this mandate was not conferred upon an individual. The Liberal party is bigger than any one of its members. The Prime Minister is the leader of the governing party. If that party chooses to select a new leader, that new leader becomes the Prime Minister.

The spin that it would be disloyal to vote against retaining Jean Chrétien is fallacious. I supported the Prime Minister in trying to remove John Turner as leader of the Liberal party in the duly constituted 1986 leadership review. Just as my action then did not make me a disloyal liberal, neither does my favouring a leadership convention now make me a disloyal Liberal.

The re-emergence of Warren Kinsella, who typifies the underbelly of political skulduggery as a Prime Minister’s spokesperson, is an indication that the Prime Minister effort to cling to power has taken the low road. Kinsella’s unscrupulous attacks on me and two other MPs in the June 12 and 13 editions of The Toronto Star indicate that we will be descending into the muck before the current review process is over.

Kinsella has tried to depict me as some kind of Nazi sympathizer who would want to keep war criminals in Canada. He is wrong. Given my background I, as much as anyone want all war criminals and those guilty of crimes against humanity brought to justice. His innuendo is based on my opposition to the current process for citizenship revocation, a process that confers second-class citizenship status on six million naturalized Canadians.

This process begins at the turn of the 20^th century, a dark period in Canadian immigration history. The unenlightened, racist measures passed by the governments of those times, such as the Chinese Head Tax, the internment of tens of thousands of Japanese, Ukrainian and other innocent Canadians during both world wars, the deportation of thousands of the unemployed during the Great Depression, the Asian Exclusion Act and a policy of "none is too many" for the Jews, reflected the values of an ethnocentric society. Immigrant soldiers who were wounded fighting for Canada in WW I were also deported if they needed relief or hospitalization. Canada has since then become a pluralistic, multicultural country and I say there is no place here for two classes of citizens.

Instead of a normal, independent judicial process, with appeal rights, the current process for citizenship revocation does not allow appeals. The final decision is made by a special committee of Cabinet, based on the mere "balance of probabilities" and may turn on a speculative issue such as whether a truthful answer was given to a question that may or may not have been asked. To tar someone with the brush of being a war criminal or human rights abuser without proof is an indecent thing to do.

The government introduced bills C-63 and C-16 to amend the current Citizenship Act. Had one of them passed into law it would have made the present revocation process even more draconian. Under C-63, children of people who were deported under the present process would face the same fate as their parents, even if they had arrived fifty years ago.

This sent shivers down my spine. I came to Canada in 1957 as a Hungarian refugee after spending months in a Jewish refugee camp in Austria with my Jewish stepfather, Roman Catholic mother and two siblings. Such an absurdly draconian law would have put my citizenship at risk. Having survived the Soviet Communist dictatorship with my parents who had also survived the Nazi regime, I found the prospect most disquieting.

When the Citizenship and Immigration Committee dealt with Bill C-63 and Bill C-16, every delegation addressing the issue at the hearings called for appeal rights. The proponents of appeal rights included such diverse groups as the B’nai Brith, the Canadian Islamic Congress, the Canadian Arab Federation, the National Association of Japanese Canadians, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

Report stage amendments to correct for the lack of appeal rights in C-16 were drafted by Ken Narvey, chief operating officer of the Coalition of Concerned Congregations on the Law Relating to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Including Those of the Holocaust, in consultation with David Mathas, senior Honourary Counsel of B’nai Brith. I supported these amendments because they provided for the fundamental justice guaranteed for all citizens under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, namely an appeal process in citizenship revocation cases, free of political interference. An independent judiciary is one of the pillars of our democracy.

I spoke against C-16 during the debate. When I realized that the government was not going to support the amendments at report stage, I resigned my position as Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Immigration and voted against the Bill. The Senate, to its eternal credit, held up the legislation and Bill C-16 "died on the order paper" when the election of 2000 was called.

Many thousands across the country, including legal and civil liberties organizations, virtually every ethnic community in Canada and grass root liberals, support the position I have taken on citizenship rights. A resolution to make citizenship revocation an independent judicial process, free of political interference was adopted by the Liberal Party of Canada (B.C.) 2001 Policy Convention. The same resolution topped the vote in the Southwest Region policy workshop of the Liberal Party of Canada (Ontario) Annual General Meeting on June 1, 2002.

These resolutions and a petition to change the current draconian law will go to the national Biennial Convention of the Liberal Party of Canada in February 2003. The overwhelming support for the resolutions shows that the leadership of the government is out of touch on this issue. Kinsella might take the time to understand this issue instead of practising the politics of personal destruction. The more that the Prime Minister of Canada is forced to rely on the likes of Kinsella, the more he underscores the need for renewal and a leadership convention.

The debate we have in the Liberal party is a difficult one as we are forced to choose between past accomplishments and looking toward the future. I, along with most members, like the Prime Minister and we have a personal relationship with him. However, I feel like many of my colleagues that looking to the future of Canada is a priority.

An open debate through a leadership convention is an important part of planning for the future. That is why the executive of the Kitchener-Waterloo Federal Liberal Association voted unanimously for a leadership convention. As Liberals, we must remember that at the end of the renewal process, we must come together under the leader we select. This would be a lot easier to accomplish if we took the high ground through this process.

Membership in the Liberal party is open to all Canadians who subscribe to its principles. Considering the present circumstances in the party, we desperately need to have an open dialogue among all party members over its future direction. No matter the outcome, at the end of the day the party will be stronger and the country will be a better place. I urge all Canadians to become engaged in this debate.