Tuesday, April 24, 2001

CANADA 1st SESSION · 37th PARLIAMENT · VOLUME 139 · NUMBER 27 OFFICIAL REPORT (HANSARD) Tuesday, April 24, 2001 THE HONOURABLE DAN HAYS SPEAKER CONTENTS (Daily index of proceedings appears at back of this issue.) Debates and Publications: Chambers Building, Room 943, Tel. 996-0193 Published by the Senate Available from Canada Communication Group — Publishing, Public Works and Government Services Canada, Ottawa K1A 0S9, Also available on the Internet: http://www.parl.gc.ca 609 THE SENATE Tuesday, April 24, 2001 The Senate met at 2 p.m., the Speaker in the Chair. ORGAN AND TISSUE DONATION AWARENESS WEEK Prayers. Hon. Mabel M. DeWare: Honourable senators, I rise today to commemorate Canada’s National Organ and Tissue Donation VISITORS IN THE GALLERY Awareness Week, which runs from April 23 to 29 this year. The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, I draw to your Organ and tissue donation is a very important issue, one that attention visitors in our gallery. His Excellency Jozef Migas, can be a matter of life and death for many Canadians. It is President of the National Council of the Slovak Republic, becoming more important every day. Canada’s population is not accompanied by a delegation of parliamentarians, is present. only getting bigger; it is getting older, so the need for organ and Please welcome our guests. tissue donations is growing. Unfortunately, the number of donors has not been keeping pace. There are still many more people who need organ and tissue donations than there are donors. People are You are most welcome here in the Senate of Canada. waiting for donors to help them enhance the quality of their lives, to lengthen their lives and to save their lives. Those people could be family members, friends or even ourselves. Many die each year because of a shortage of donors. SENATORS’ STATEMENTS Canadians are starting to realize that their help is needed to meet the need for more organ and tissue donations. For that, we can thank events such as the National Organ and Tissue Donation WORLD WOMEN’S CURLING CHAMPIONSHIP Awareness Week, the efforts of many organizations and individuals, and the media coverage given to certain cases NOVA SCOTIA—CONGRATULATIONS TO WINNING RINK involving organ and tissue donations. Hon. Wilfred P. Moore: Honourable senators, last month, I Honourable senators, governments in Canada are starting to spoke in recognition of the Canadian Women’s Curling listen. I was pleased by the federal government’s announcement Championship victory of Colleen Jones and her rink from the earlier this month that it is contributing to a plan to help increase Mayflower Curling Club in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I am delighted and coordinate safe organ and tissue donation in Canada. That is to report that these Canadian champions also won the World certainly a step in the right direction, but governments cannot do Women’s Curling Championship in a 5-2 victory over Sweden at it alone. It is important for individual Canadians and their Lausanne, Switzerland, on April 7, 2001. families to talk about organ and tissue donation, to consider becoming donors. National Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Week gives us a good opportunity to do that. Once In speaking to this superb effort, I find it noteworthy that The one decides to become a donor, one must be sure to register this Globe and Mail, which proclaims itself to be Canada’s national decision according to the procedure established in each province newspaper, gave markedly more coverage to the losing men’s or territory. rink than it did to our victorious women’s rink. Such unbalanced reporting, regardless of the medium, does a disservice to our female athletes. Only with equal coverage can we recognize with Honourable senators, I am proud to be wearing a green ribbon honour the efforts of our female champions. Only with equal pin in support of National Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness coverage can we encourage our young female athletes to work to Week. The colour green symbolizes life for many people in attain championship levels of performance. A female Canadian Canada who need organ and tissue donations or who will need champion is a Canadian champion. A female world champion them in the future. from Canada is a world champion. • (1410) I am sure that all honourable senators join me in congratulating Skip Colleen Jones and her teammates: lead It represents a chance for them to be healthy again and to once Nancy Delahunt, second Mary-Anne Waye, third Kim Kelly, more enjoy the simple pleasures in life that many of us take for alternate Laine Peters and coach Ken Bagnell. We extend to them granted. I urge colleagues in this chamber and all Canadians to our thanks for the honour they brought to Canada. do what they can to help give them a second chance. 610 SENATE DEBATES April 24, 2001 GENOCIDE OF ARMENIAN PEOPLE two months, MADD Canada has been calling on the Prime Minister and the Justice Minister to speak out on the severity of this particular incident and the crime of impaired driving. Hon. Shirley Maheu: In 1957, one of our great ministers of foreign affairs was awarded the Nobel Peace Price. I refer to the Right Honourable Lester B. Pearson. Honourable senators, this is not an issue of diplomacy. How the government deals with this issue goes to the very heart of this government’s commitment to fight impaired driving. It is not just Today our peacekeeping forces are coming home traumatized. a Foreign Affairs matter. The Prime Minister and the Justice They have seen ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, Minister should be speaking out forcefully on the need to take a human tragedy and, yes, genocide, in East Timor, Rwanda, tough stand on this crime. Croatia and Kosovo. I call on the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice to How can we accept these situations that our citizen soldiers are demonstrate the government’s seriousness by publicly calling for facing and have faced and deny the first genocide of the 20th Russia to lay charges and have Andrei Knyazev brought to century, when 1.5 million Armenian lives were taken? justice. I should like to read into the record, in honour of the Armenian Honourable senators, recent statements by the Minister of Canadians on the Hill today, a poem written by Allan Whitehorn. Foreign Affairs regarding diplomatic immunity are but a first small step to dealing with potential future cases. The sad fact is How Do We Remember the Dead? that this crime should have been dealt with in Canada. What is required is direct and swift action, as was the case in Washington when then President Bill Clinton acted immediately and How do we remember the so many dead? intervened to assure a Georgian diplomat face American justice How do we cope, if at all, with the awful dread? for impaired driving causing the death of young teenage girl. Do we deny the existence of past genocidal deeds? Because of the President’s personal intervention, the man is now For to do so, a growing ignorance feeds. serving seven to 21 years in an American prison. Surely it is not Tragically, for many of my kin, there is no marked grave. too much to ask that our Prime Minister and this government The surviving few endured so much and were ever so brave. take similar measures to protect innocent Canadians from The only memorial marker is our collective memory. criminal acts at the hands of drunk drivers, whether they be Why this important fact do some not seem to see? diplomats or residents of Canada. To refuse to say the “genocide” word denies some form of closure. A moral lapse for trade and commerce sadly comes to exposure. PAGES EXCHANGE PROGRAM WITH I do not appreciate a bureaucratic memo or decree. HOUSE OF COMMONS Why this important existential fact can’t they see? I reflect on the painful memory of my family and kin, and wonder why some cannot acknowledge this dreadful The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, I should like to sin. draw your attention to the fact that we have three pages visiting us from the House of Commons. FOREIGN AFFAIRS [Translation] RUSSIA—INVESTIGATION INTO AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENT First, allow me to introduce Christiane Hacault of Ile des INVOLVING DIPLOMAT Chênes, Manitoba. She is studying journalism in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ottawa. Hon. Marjory LeBreton: Honourable senators, it has been three months since Catherine MacLean was killed and Catherine Pierre-Alexandre Davignon is studying in the Faculty of Doré was seriously injured at the hands of Russian diplomat Administration at the University of Ottawa and comes from Andrei Knyazev. Mrs. Doré was in hospital until just last week. Gatineau, Quebec. The alleged impaired diplomat’s escape from Canadian justice under the veil of diplomatic immunity has been well covered in the media. [English] The time is now for the federal government to make a clear Jonathan Kuzub, of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, is enrolled in statement on the serious nature of the crime of impaired driving the Faculty of Social Science at the University of Ottawa. His and how this particular incident is, like all other impaired driving major is political science. fatalities and injuries across the country, intolerable. For over April 24, 2001 SENATE DEBATES 611 ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS That when the Senate adjourns today, it do stand adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, April 25, 2001, at 1:30 p.m. STATE OF HEALTH CARE SYSTEM Motion agreed to. BUDGET AND REQUEST FOR AUTHORITY TO ENGAGE [English] SERVICES—REPORT OF SOCIAL AFFAIRS, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE PRESENTED JUDGES ACT Hon.

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