Bill C-13 (Historical)

Fairness for Military Families (Employment Insurance) Act

An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act

This enactment amends the Employment Insurance Act to extend the benefit period and the period during which parental benefits may be paid for Canadian Forces members whose period of parental leave is deferred or who are directed to return to duty from parental leave.

Fairness for Military Families (Employment Insurance) Act

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to express my deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Petty Officer Second Class Craig Blake, who made the ultimate sacrifice on Monday while serving Canadians proudly in Afghanistan. I was deeply saddened to have learned of his loss. He was a dedicated father of two sons who was a native of Simcoe, Ontario, in my riding of Haldimand—Norfolk. Our whole community has been shaken by this loss.

Petty Officer Blake is a local hero and a brave Canadian. Let us never forget Petty Officer Blake and all of the other brave men and women who have died while protecting the freedoms of Canadians and of those around the world.

In memory of Petty Officer Blake, I am humbled and privileged to rise today to speak about one of our government's newest bills, Bill C-13, the fairness for military families bill. This bill proposes to improve access to employment insurance parental benefits for members of the Canadian Forces.

Canadian Forces members are in a unique situation. Every single day soldiers are putting their lives on the line for the rights and freedoms of Canadians and of people all around the globe. They have such conviction in what they are doing and they desire to serve their country so much that they do something that not many of us are prepared to do: They spend large amounts of time away from their families.

Frankly, I cannot imagine what it must feel like for our soldiers to be halfway around the world in life-threatening circumstances knowing that they will not get to kiss their spouse, that they will not get to hold their new baby, or they will not get to hug their mom for months, but that is what our soldiers are willing to give up in order to serve our country. There are no words to properly express our gratitude to the members of our armed forces.

It is not just the soldiers who make the sacrifices; their families do as well. They spend endless sleepless nights worrying about the safety of their loved ones and spend months without the help and support of their spouse, their parent or their child. We also owe these people thanks for all of their hard work and their sacrifice.

In Canada, unfortunately, we sometimes forget about how lucky we have things. Where else in the world can we stand on a street corner and see a mosque, a synagogue and a Christian church, and not have the fear to practise the religion of choice? We must never forget this freedom and we must never forget that it did not come without a price. It is as a result of the sacrifices that our brave soldiers have made that we are able to enjoy the freedoms that we have right here in Canada.

The work of our soldiers is obviously not limited to the protection of our Canadian freedoms. In the battlefields of Vimy Ridge to Normandy and now in Afghanistan, Canadian soldiers have been on the front lines fighting for what is right in the face of tyranny.

Most recently, through the courage of our soldiers in Afghanistan, young women can now attend school and there are now democratic elections. In fact, simple freedoms that we take for granted in Canada, such as listening to music or watching a film, are now for the first time in decades available in Afghanistan as a result of the work of our Canadian soldiers.

No government has shown such unwavering support of our Canadian troops as our Conservative government. We recognize the important contributions of our soldiers and we are committed to ensuring that our brave men and women have access to the programs and services that they need and deserve.

Just a few short months ago, the member for Nepean—Carleton approached me with an issue. He had met a soldier from his riding who was unable to access EI parental benefits and enjoy time with his new baby when he returned from his deployment in Afghanistan. That is because under the current Employment Insurance Act, eligible Canadians must access their maternity and parental benefits within 52 weeks of the birth or the adoption.

This means that Canadian Forces members, including reservists, who are ordered to return to duty while on parental leave, or whose parental leave is deferred as a result of an imperative military requirement, may not be able to use the weeks with their family to which they are entitled. I had the same reaction that my colleague did when I heard this news. It is not right and it must be fixed.

This has been a problem for several years now. Unfortunately, the previous Liberal government completely ignored the issue, but our Conservative government is taking action. Bill C-13 fixes this unjust problem. I want to thank the member for Nepean—Carleton for bringing this issue to my attention and for his hard work in making sure that it was resolved.

The fairness for military families bill extends the window to access parental benefits to a maximum of 104 weeks instead of the previous 52 if a Canadian Forces member's parental leave is deferred, or if the member is recalled to duty from leave in the first year that a child is born or adopted. Even though soldiers may miss their baby's first steps, they will not miss the baby's first words. Military families can have a bit more piece of mind knowing that being deployed to serve our country will no longer prevent soldiers from having the opportunity to bond with their new child when they return.

We all agree that maternity and parental employment insurance benefits are good for families. These benefits help parents bond with their new child. In 2007-08 alone, over 186,000 Canadians took advantage of these benefits. Clearly, this has helped many families. We hope that this change to the employment insurance system will give Canadian Forces members more opportunities to bond with their children.

This bill reflects our Conservative government's clear commitment to families and our unwavering support for our Canadian Forces. We believe that families are the foundation of this great country. We also believe that parents should have the option to raise their kids as they see fit. That is why we introduced important new measures, such as the universal child care benefit, which provides $100 a month for every child under the age of six, and we are putting more money in the pockets of parents to spend on what matters most to them: their families.

The government also believes that Canadians, including Canadian Forces members, should not be forced to choose between work and family responsibilities. That is why we recently made special employment insurance benefits, including parental benefits, available to 2.6 million self-employed workers on a voluntary basis for the first time in Canada's history.

This bill is another example of that commitment. We want to make sure that when Canadians decide to join the Canadian Forces, to put on a uniform and serve our country, they can still bond with their new children when they come back. This bill shows that we understand the sacrifices that soldiers and their families make. As it stands, the Employment Insurance Act does not account for situations specific to soldiers and their families. It is time for the Act to recognize the important contribution that Canadian Forces members make.

We also announced in budget 2010 that we were taking steps to make it easier to access EI sickness benefits for immediate families of military personnel who have unfortunately died as a result of a service related injury. This change would provide recognition of the impact on family members of losing a loved one in the service.

This is another way for the government to express its gratitude to Canadian Forces members for their sacrifices.

There are no words to express how grateful we are to our armed forces. Bills like this one will bring us a step closer to ensuring that our soldiers have access to the programs to which they are entitled, soldiers, like our late Petty Officer Blake. The least we can do in return is give them some time with their families.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development]

moved that Bill C-13, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to seek unanimous consent to split my time with the member for Souris—Moose Mountain.

Business of the House

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question from the hon. House leader of the official opposition as to the future business for the remainder of this week and up until Thursday of next week.

We will continue today with the debate at second reading of Bill C-10, Senate term limits. Following Bill C-10, I will call Bill C-12, democratic representation. I will continue with this lineup tomorrow.

Next week, we will call Bill C-4, Sébastien's law, Bill C-16, ending house arrest for property and other serious crimes by serious and violent offenders, and Bill C-13, fairness for military families. All of these bills are at second reading.

Tuesday, May 4, will be an allotted day. I am looking forward to the motion that my hon. colleague and his party will select for that opposition day. I note there are some nine allotted days in this parliamentary period, and obviously there are many important issues that the opposition has to choose from, including the east coast shellfish industry.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, as my hon. colleague has indicated, I know we have some visitors who we are looking forward to seeing in the chamber shortly, so I will keep this brief as well.

When we get to government orders, following the visit, I will call Bill C-4, Sébastien's law, which proposes to protect the public from violent young offenders. Following Bill C-4, we will call Bill C-13, fairness for military families.

We will continue with that business tomorrow.

Next week it would be my intention to begin second reading debate on Bill C-11, the balanced refugee reform act, Bill C-10, Senate term limits and Bill C-12, democratic representation.

Next Wednesday, April 28, shall be an allotted day.

As for the take note debate, that is under advisement.

Keeping Canadians Safe (International Transfer of Offenders) Act

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be here today and debating Bill C-5, to which the Bloc Québécois objects.

Before continuing, I would like to mention a practice to which this government increasingly resorts, even though it verges on the grotesque. The Conservatives have developed a habit of giving ridiculous names to bills instead of focusing on the legal nature of the bills. Our parliamentary tradition is to identify the real purpose of a bill, but the Conservatives are increasingly giving them subjective names in order to sway people's opinion.

People watching us on television can see what we are discussing today at the bottom of the screen. It is the Keeping Canadians Safe Act. The government is trying to imply that people who oppose Bill C-5 are also opposed to keeping Canadians safe. It is totally ridiculous.

There are more examples of this increasingly common practice in other items on today’s agenda, for instance Bill C-13, the Fairness for Military Families Act. I do not want to go into this bill right now but there is obviously already a very subjective twist in the title. We also have Bill C-4, Sébastien's Law. It is even more pathetic because they are trying to take advantage of our horror at the type of tragedy that befell young Sébastien, who was killed in battle. The title implies that anyone who honours Sébastien’s memory should support the bill and anyone who dares to oppose it is against honouring his memory. It is totally absurd.

We saw it as well in the budget. They talked about an act to stimulate economic activity in Canada, or some other aberration of the kind. Another Conservative bill was called the trafficking of minors act, even though the word trafficking did not appear anywhere in the bill. Honestly.

This practice must stop. I do not know whether the bill before us today will go to committee, or if the others will, but I hope the committees that study them will be more objective and will give them names that reflect the legal reality. Today, for example, we are discussing the International Transfer of Offenders Act. That is the real name of the act. People can agree or not agree, but that is what this bill is really about.

If this practice continues, things will get absolutely absurd. There will be a bill to make Canadians happy or put them in good shape and good health or some fine bill to make things better. This does not make sense and should stop. I find this practice, which comes to us from the United States, particularly detestable.

Members may well remember George W. Bush introducing the Patriot Act after the attacks of September 11. It was anti-terrorist legislation and the purpose was to imply to the senators and representatives voting on it that if they were opposed, they were not patriots.

This completely subverts the debate and, most of all, insults our intelligence. It implies that people are not smart enough to discuss the heart of the issue. They think they are going to simplify things by calling it the Keeping Canadians Safe Act and everybody will be in favour because it is about the safety of Canadians.

This is a dangerous gamble on the part of the Conservative government. I would rather appeal to the intelligence of people. I think we can discuss bills just fine without giving them grotesque names.

It starts as the Keeping Canadians Safe Act.

In future, if Parliament wanted to amend this legislation it would have to call it an act to keep Canadians even safer than the Keeping Canadians Safe Act currently does. You can see where this is going. It is utterly ridiculous.

I want to come back to Bill C-5, An Act to amend the International Transfer of Offenders Act. The issue before us is the following. Under the current International Transfer of Offenders Act, what factors does the minister have to consider in determining whether to transfer a Canadian sentenced abroad to Canada or to transfer an American sentenced in Canada to the United States? I am giving the United States as an example, but obviously this applies to all countries.

The current legislation has a certain number of factors that the minister must take into account. He must, for example, take into account the person's health. He must ask himself whether the foreign prison system satisfies recognized principles of basic justice and rights for all. Has this system violated the basic rights of an individual and does it represent a risk to the individual's health and safety? For instance, has the individual been handed over for torture?

This is already in the act, but the government wants to make a change. The act would say that the minister, instead of having to consider all these factors, could consider them, but is not required to. Just imagine. He can look into whether the person incarcerated abroad is being tortured. He might like to know that, but then again he might not. Are the basic rights of the person incarcerated abroad being violated? The Conservatives may or may not be interested. They want the minister to have more discretionary power.

The Bloc Québécois obviously has serious reservations about this. We are already aware of the government's contempt for the rule of law and its contempt for our basic principles of natural justice. Leaving aside the government currently in power, what about a future government? We have to stick to the rule of law in place.

I will digress for a moment. This debate might seem a bit technical for many people at home, but there is something even more fundamental, which is our sense of justice. Do we want to continue to defend the rule of law and the system of natural justice? It is not easy; it is an ongoing battle, and it is intellectually challenging, since it is not necessarily what comes naturally for people.

Do we want to go back in time, to systems that slowly but surely become more and more arbitrary, subjective and inconsistent? Today's legal systems are sometimes complex. The public often believes that the system is costly and complicated and does not always work well. But if we look at the evolution of humanity, we have made incredible progress compared to what was done during medieval times.

People may tell me that is quite a stretch, but I think it is important to keep that perspective. In medieval times, people were tortured and imprisoned for no reason. The king made the decisions, and it was summary justice. Later, people realized that this did not help control crime, that human beings were too intelligent for it, and that we should develop systems to ensure independent justice with effective results.

At the time when certain countries first banned torture, it was not even on humanitarian grounds. They believed that if someone was tortured in order to get them to admit something, that person would always end up saying what the torturer wanted to hear. That is clear. If we want to convict someone, we can torture them and they will incriminate themselves. Does that really serve justice? Of course not.

Our western societies and those elsewhere in the world have developed a rule of law based on numerous principles. I will not list them all, but I will talk about those that I believe to be important.

First, there is the presumption of innocence. According to this principle, we assume that a person is innocent. It is too easy to accuse someone without any proof, to tarnish his reputation and interfere with his rights. We believe a person to be innocent until proven guilty, which is not easy. It tends to go against human nature. When a reprehensible and sordid murder has been committed and the police arrest someone, we want that person to go to jail and suffer. We say that we can sense that he is guilty.

A system has been put in place to curb that tendency and consider a person to be innocent until proven guilty.

The Canadian system also provides for the possibility of rehabilitation, which is important, and even fundamental. If we did not believe that a person can be rehabilitated, why would we hand out sentences other than life in prison? If we believe that someone will be a criminal their entire life, why release them? Our laws allow for different prison terms because we believe that a person can be rehabilitated at some point. We try to gauge that.

We believe that everyone has the same rights. The Conservative government often attacks this principle with an extremely unhealthy populism by saying that the opposition members—the Bloc Québécois, the Liberals and the NDP—are defending criminals. We are not defending criminals but defending fundamental rights and the fact that everyone should have the same rights. If they are not the same for everyone, then they are no longer fundamental rights. Defending the fundamental rights of a murderer is never very popular. However, fundamental and universal rights apply to everyone, even murderers and people who commit the most horrific crimes.

Under the rule of law, everyone is entitled to a fair trial before an unbiased judge or jury, in which the various parties have an equal opportunity to prove the guilt or innocence of the individual in question. These principles seem rather basic, but the government is undermining them more and more by meddling with the rule of law.

We believe that the powers of the executive branch and the judiciary should be kept separate. It is not up to us as elected officials, and especially not to ministers who are biased and have their own convictions, to determine who should be convicted or acquitted based on the law. Parliamentarians pass laws, but it is the judges and the judicial system that, separately, must enforce legislation and determine who has obeyed and who has disobeyed. Lastly, there must be a mechanism to correct cases of wrongful conviction.

Bill C-5 has only a few clauses. It might seem insignificant, but it could attack the principles I just talked about and could represent a considerable step back.

I have three examples.

Let us consider the case of Maher Arar. Hon. members will recall that this Canadian was deported on the strength of false information obtained by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada's secret service. He was tortured abroad and finally returned home. A commission on the Arar affair completely exonerated Mr. Arar, proving that he had no connection with terrorism. The Canadian government did not apply the principle of the presumption of innocence in Mr. Arar's case. He did not get a fair trial. The separation of the judiciary and the executive was not maintained in his case. In fact, it was the executive that authorized his deportation, first to the United States and then to Syria. Today, the government is asking us to give it even more power. Is it so that the government can attack our system of natural justice even more?

Let us consider the case of Allen Smith, who was convicted of a series of murders in the United States. Admittedly, Mr. Smith is no choirboy, and defending him is not a very popular thing to do. But even without defending Allen Smith, we can defend people's basic rights. In Canada, we believe, or at least it is the position of this Parliament, that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment that goes against our belief in the right to life. If this is true in Canada, then it is also true in the United States. It would therefore be fair to ask the Americans to give this Canadian citizen the same treatment he would receive here, which would mean commuting his death sentence to life in prison. But the Conservative government could not care less about the principle of the rule of law, where everyone enjoys the same rights, or the principle of separation of the executive and the judiciary.

When questioned in the House of Commons, the government answered that, in its opinion, the crimes committed were very serious and that, therefore, it would not intervene. Since when is it up to the minister to assess the seriousness of the crime? That is something new in our system and it is deplorable. It is not up to the minister to make that assessment, but up to the courts, which must establish whether or not the person is guilty and decide on the seriousness of the crime and the appropriate punishment. Furthermore, it is the House that passes the laws to punish various crimes. It is not the minister who decides whether or not to apply them.

In the case of Omar Khadr, it is even worse. Without exception, all the principles I mentioned previously have been violated. Omar Khadr is a child soldier who was arrested seven years ago and is still imprisoned by the Americans. He has not yet been put on trial. He is accused of killing American soldiers and, despite a Supreme Court decision, the government refuses to ask for his return to Canada.

There is obviously no presumption of innocence in his case. Nor does he have equal rights. His cruel treatment, bordering on torture, has been contracted out to the United States. He has not had a fair trial after seven years of imprisonment. There is no separation between the executive and the judiciary. The government has told the House that, in its opinion, the crimes are serious and therefore it has decided not to intervene, as though it was up to the minister to decide. The possibility of judicial error was not examined in the least. The government absolutely does not want to hear about the possibility of rehabilitation if—I did say if—Omar Khadr is found guilty.

Since I mentioned the possibility of rehabilitation, I would like to close by saying that we have to keep in mind one thing about this bill: if this bill is passed, the number of Canadians serving sentences abroad will increase. These Canadians, once they have served their sentences, will return here and will not be ready to be reintegrated into society. In many cases, it would be better to return them to Canada and have them serve their sentences here so that they are in a better position to be rehabilitated and reintegrated into society.

Business of the House

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to reply to my hon. colleague, the House leader of the official opposition, as to the business of the House for the remainder of this week and into next week.

Today I hope to conclude the debate at second reading of Bill C-9, the jobs and economic growth act. The budget implementation act is a very important legislation. We have heard a lot of debate about it in the Chamber. I am very pleased that we are getting our message out about all the good things we are doing to help sustain jobs and create new jobs in our country.

The next bill I intend to call following Bill C-9 is Bill C-5, the international transfer of offenders act.

Next week we will continue with the business of this week with the addition of Bill C-4, Sébastien's law, and Bill C-13, fairness for military families act.

Tuesday, April 20, next week, shall be an allotted day.

As for the hon. opposition House leader's inquiry about specific pieces of legislation, all I would ask is that he be patient. We are bringing forward a lot of legislation. All of it is excellent legislation that I know he can hardly wait to support.

Fairness for Military Families (Employment Insurance) Act

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-13, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)