Debates of Oct. 18th, 2007

Resumption of debate on Address in Reply

[An hon. member]

They should be ashamed.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one of my colleagues says that the official opposition should be ashamed, and those members should be. Nonetheless, we proceeded with the other half of the bill because we believed it was a step in the right direction.

Other bills did not make similar progress. Two were still before the House of Commons and five of them were before the Senate. All of those bills were tough on crime. They were tough on criminals and sought to hold them accountable for their criminal behaviour by making their punishment reflect the severity of the crime.

Those bills would have had meaningful changes. They would have better protected youth against adult sexual predators by raising the age of consent for sexual activity from 14 to 16 years of age. This is something that is long overdue in this country. That bill did not get passed before the end of the session. When I was asked about this in my hometown, I told my constituents the truth. Because that bill did not get through the Senate, Canadian children would not be as well protected as they should have been. They should have been better protected this summer by having that bill passed.

We also had legislation that would have imposed mandatory jail time on those convicted of committing serious crimes with a gun. This too received a rough ride from members of the official opposition. I see the hon. member for Yukon. When that bill finally passed the House of Commons after we, with some support from the New Democratic Party, reintroduced most of the measures back into it, he will remember that five members of his own party could not put up with what the Liberals did, which was to oppose that legislation. About five of them supported it. They said that whatever else the Liberal Party was trying to do on the legislation, they were going to vote with the government. I appreciate that. Since that will be part of the new tackling crime bill that we presented to Parliament this morning, I hope to have their support.

In addition, we had a bill that would put the onus on an accused charged with a number of serious offences involving firearms to demonstrate why he or she should be released before trial. This has received widespread support putting the onus on the individual to explain why he or she should be out on bail.

I have heard very good things from people across the country. I have had a number of police officers tell me that it would send out the right message.

The wrong message gets sent out when an individual finds he or she is the victim of someone in a gun crime and the person alleged to have perpetrated that crime is back out on the street within a day or so. It is a problem for the victim and for the witnesses. It sends out the exact wrong message to the neighbourhood in terms of people's ultimate protection.

Nonetheless, these bills were important and they are important to the government. They would have better protected our communities against dangerous and repeat violent offenders. They would have made a real difference and a difference which Canadians have welcomed and quite frankly deserve.

There is support across the country for what we are trying to do. For example, the 2007 national justice survey that my department just released revealed that public confidence in the Canadian justice system is relatively low, especially when compared to other public systems, such as the health or education systems.

I was pleased to see this quite frankly. The survey found that two-thirds of Canadians support our government's approach to improve the criminal justice system. They support increasing police presence. They support strengthening laws. They support trying to prevent youth involvement with drugs and gangs. They support tougher penalties for serious drug offenders. They are supportive of the government's efforts with respect to drug treatment and prevention programs. I was very pleased to see that. Quite frankly, in terms of my discussions with Canadians this past summer, it does not come as a surprise.

When it comes to sentencing laws, the central concerned expressed was that Canadians do not think the sentences imposed, either the type or duration of the sentences, are always appropriate. They identified that the three most important goals of sentencing should be to repair the harm caused by the crime, to hold the offender accountable, and to rehabilitate the offender to prevent him or her from reoffending. In other words, these findings confirm that this government and our criminal law reform agenda are on the right track.

Can the members of the official opposition say that about their efforts such as they are to fight crime? Are they on the right track? I do not think so. I am certainly confident that we are on that right track.

Let me move on to the next steps in our continuing commitment to tackle violent crime. This is what we will be doing in the coming months. With the Speech from the Throne we are reaffirming our unwavering commitment to safeguard Canadians. We will do this through yet another ambitious criminal justice agenda. We will resume where we left off with our criminal law reform packages. I made mention already of the bill that I tabled in Parliament this morning. That bill, the tackling violent crime act, brings together in one bill the five bills that were still before the House of Commons and the Senate at the time of prorogation.

These bills include many of the proposed reforms that were debated in the previous session and that were supported and passed in general by most of the members of the House. It also draws from the debate to more effectively and comprehensively address concerns expressed in the House and by my provincial and territorial colleagues about the adequacy of reforms to address dangerous and repeat violent offenders.

To sum up, on that particular bill, for four of the bills it is as they were amended and passed by the House of Commons. They are back in there. With respect to dangerous offenders, we added provisions that were requested by provincial attorneys general. Concerns had been raised about clarifying some of the procedures with respect to a dangerous offender who receives sentencing as a long term offender and then subsequently reoffends. It clarifies that. I think it is all a step in the right direction.

I am looking to the opposition members for their support. The Leader of the Opposition rediscovered the fighting crime agenda yesterday. I am pleased. It has taken a long time, and I certainly did not address it during the summer, but if it means he will support us, then better late than never.

When I was in Montreal a couple of weeks ago, I indicated that we will be bringing forward criminal law reforms to address identity theft. This is one of the fastest growing crimes in Canada. It is estimated by the Canadian Council of Better Business Bureaus that it costs Canadians and consumers approximately $2 billion a year. We know this will get worse unless we fill in the gaps that presently exist within the Criminal Code.

These new reforms will build on the existing fraud, personation and credit card offences and forgery and will target the preparatory work to these offences, including the obtaining, possessing and trafficking in identity information with intent, knowledge or recklessness that this information would be used to commit one or the other offences.

We have found with the existing legislation that usually, and many times organized crime is involved, the individual who is actually using the forged credit card or using information for an illegal purpose is caught at the end of the process, but the individuals who have been compiling that information from various sources and trafficking in it are not caught by the Criminal Code. We aim to change that.

We will also come forward with a comprehensive approach to address Canadians' concerns about youth crime in this country. As I went across the country this past summer, without exception, somebody or more than one person in the know raised with me the question of the Youth Criminal Justice Act. I told them very clearly that we intend to make improvements to the Youth Criminal Justice Act and we will act on some of the problems that have been brought to our attention.

One of them was in the Nunn commission report in Nova Scotia. That addressed, among other things, the question of pretrial detention. I indicated to the Attorney General of Nova Scotia and to my colleagues in the government caucus who are concerned about that issue as well as other issues, that we will be bringing forward clarification on that and we will be proceeding to Parliament. We will expand the basis and the criteria upon which a judge can sentence a young offender. We will come forward with all of those reforms and again, I think they will receive widespread support.

Those reforms will come forward, but we will not end our efforts there. A comprehensive review of the Youth Criminal Justice Act is in order. It has been five years since that piece of legislation passed. Incidentally, this is the 100th anniversary of a separate youth criminal justice system in Canada. Some members may not know that this is the 100th anniversary of that. I cannot think of a more appropriate time to launch a comprehensive review of that system.

With respect to some of the provisions in the Youth Criminal Justice Act that deal with presumptive adult sentences, we were in the Supreme Court of Canada last week defending those existing provisions. I am certainly looking forward to the outcome of that.

Again, I want to emphasize that this government believes in preventing youth crime in the first place. Not only does prevention promote community safety and reduce the number of victims, it may help a troubled youth on his or her way.

Teachers, police, service providers, parents and neighbours across this country go to great lengths to help youth. Their efforts are commendable. Some communities, such as aboriginal communities or gang plagued neighbourhoods, face particular challenges. This government will not back away from those challenges. We will continue to invest in efforts to prevent youth gun, gang and drug crimes, including through the youth gang prevention fund at the National Crime Prevention Centre, and the youth justice fund at the Department of Justice. We will mobilize community support, determine effective approaches and share that information with other communities with similar problems.

Drug use and drug crime are complex safety and public health issues with local, national and international dimensions. They affect all Canadians in many ways and on a daily basis, including: when they read and hear about grow operations and crystal meth amphetamine labs being discovered on their street or in their neighbourhood; as parents who worry about drugs in their children's schools; and as victims of property crime committed by drug users to feed their habits.

Tackling complex crimes like drug crime and drug use requires a targeted response that sets clear priorities and objectives, and this is exactly what the government has delivered.

On October 4, the Prime Minister of Canada announced the national anti-drug strategy. It covers a number of things. One of them is to prevent drug use, to treat drug dependency and to tackle drug production and distribution. The strategy will be implemented in the coming months and provides for an additional $63.8 million over the next two years to prevent illegal drug use by young people, treat people with drug addictions and fight illegal drug crime.

The prevention action plan will focus on equipping youth, as well as parents, educators, law enforcement and communities with information and tools to help them make informed choices, identify emerging problems and to intervene to prevent illicit drug use before it happens. A major component of this action plan will be the launch of a marketing and mass media campaign to discourage young people from using drugs.

The treatment action plan supports innovative and effective approaches to treating and rehabilitating individuals who pose a risk to themselves and to the community. The action plan focuses on first nations and Inuit people as well as at risk populations such as youth. It will promote collaboration with the provinces and territories to support drug treatment services for youth where critical gaps exist, provide treatment programs for youth offenders with drug problems and enable the RCMP to develop new tools for referring youth at risk to treatment programs.

To compliment the drug prevention and treatment efforts, the enforcement action plan bolsters law enforcement efforts and the capacity to effectively battle things like marijuana grow ops, synthetic drug production and distribution operations. In addition to enhancing enforcement capabilities, this action plan will impose new criminal sanctions.

When this was first announced, I was asked if I was expecting any opposition to it. I said that there was some opposition. The people in the grow op business and in the production of these drugs will not to like it. They will have a very clear message.

This is just part of what we are trying to do. Yesterday in question period my colleagues asked me when we would come forward with these things. As I always tell them, we are just getting started.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for a very clear outline of his plans.

First, about half a year ago the minister was researching a local issue for me related to names of chief justices in the territories. Is there any progress on that?

My second question relates to law reform, court challenges and legal aid. The minister talked for 20 minutes about his interest in improving the legal justice system. As a lawyer, I am sure he knows some of the very good work done by the Law Reform Commission of Canada in improvements to the justice system. Two of our first nations were working on excellent projects with the commission at the time funding was stopped.

Also, as a lawyer, I am sure the minister believes in rights and the court challenges program, which was established to help people who otherwise could not afford the huge expenses of fighting for their constitutionally protected rights. It also has some very great success stories of which he would be aware.

Legal aid is an excellent initiative, but there are a number of types of cases and people who do not have access to it yet.

Does the minister support bringing back these initiatives? I know he has supported legal aid in the past. Is he trying, for next year and the year after, to get increases for that valuable service?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the hon. member's initial question about the renaming or re-designating of justices within the territories, I am still reviewing that matter.

When the hon. member began his question he talked about legal aid and then came back to it. Certainly I support the legal aid process. The legal aid process in Ontario is administered by the province of Ontario and for the most part is funded at the provincial level. However, that does not mean there is not a role for the federal government.

I was quite pleased that in the last budget there was stable based funding for legal aid, money that could counted on for an extended period of time. It is good because it fulfills a role. Many people otherwise would not get legal representation, but for legal aid.

As part of my practice, I did a number of legal aid cases in the early eighties. We were not paid enough for it, but nonetheless at that time lawyers did it almost as a pro bono exercise to ensure individuals received the legal representation they needed.

There have been improvements to the legal aid system since those days in the earlier 1980s and I continue to support them. As I say, when the budget was presented by my colleague, the Minister of Finance, earlier this year in the House, I was pleased about the part with respect to stable funding for legal aid.

With respect to any future allocations for it, that would be part of the budgetary process to be taken into consideration by the Minister of Finance and it would not exactly be in my bailiwick.

I understand and appreciate the comments and the suggestions of the hon. member.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, one aspect of the bills that I fully supported was the age of consent from 14 to 16. That bill was sitting in the Senate. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that bill will now be in the new bill that has been presented. I wonder if the minister threw the baby out with the bathwater. If that aspect of the bill is left alone and remains in the Senate, there is a high probability that we could get that passed extremely quickly, for which many of my constituents have asked.

Another question I have for the minister is this. There seems to be a major reluctance from the previous government and the current government to deal with the issue of Internet pornography. I have had a bill in the House for almost 10 years. The premise to the bill is to hold those who have those service sites partially responsible for monitoring their sites to ensure that whoever accesses the sites are doing it accordingly.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a reluctance, and I do not know whether it is in government or in the bureaucracy, to seriously deal with what I consider one of the most major, vile crimes on this planet, Internet pornography and the luring of unsuspecting children into the evils of pedophilia, et cetera. Would the minister comment on that?

My final comment is this. We had a recent showing of the Calgary police force in Halifax trying to recruit Atlantic Canadians. The problem is that the RCMP and civic police forces across the country are having a major problem with recruitment. If we are going to, which we appreciate, be toughening up crimes and lengthening sentences, that means the provinces are going to have to outlay a tremendous amount of additional cash not just for extra correctional officers but for longer business days as well. That requires a tremendous investment.

Will the appropriate funding to the provinces be in accordance with the new tougher measures the minister is proposing? Will he address the issue of Internet pornography? Why would he have included the age of consent bill in the omnibus bill?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have included the age of consent provisions in this bill because I want to get them passed. I guess that is the whole point of what is going on here. It is easy enough to say that it probably would have been passed at some point in the process. The fact is it was not passed. As I said to my colleagues, Canadian youth were not as well protected this summer as they should have been by the passage of that.

In his comments with respect to provincial enforcement and police officers, the hon. member said that they all appreciated toughening up the laws, and that is good. I want their support on that. This is exactly what we are trying to do across a whole host of provisions in the bill. If the New Democratic Party supports us on this, I welcome that.

I was very fair about this when I talked about Bill C-10, which is the bill that would give mandatory prison terms for people who committed serious firearms offences. I said that the NDP cooperated with us to getting most of them into the bill. That was in stark contrast to the Bloc and to the Liberals.

This is the day to day nuts and bolts of getting these things through. Forget the comments that members might have heard from the Liberals in the last election. As we saw, the Liberals did not support that legislation. However, to their credit, I think five or six members of the Liberal Party, who could not stomach the position that their party was taking in opposing mandatory prison terms for people who committed serious firearms offences, supported the government, and we could check the record on that. I appreciate his suggestion that they will help on this measure.

I am sure he has read the Speech from the Throne provisions with respect to extra policing, which is the responsibility of my colleague, the Minister of Public Safety.

I look for the support of all members to get this legislation through. All Canadians want it. All Canadians deserve that kind of protection.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the minister for taking a big step toward going back to a balance between criminals and victims. No Canadian would argue that we have gone way over the balance when a person in my riding gets hacked to death on the street and the killer gets 90 days house arrest, which is ridiculous, or when a woman is violently offended and the offender is allowed to move into an apartment just up the street to continue to mentally offend her again.

A number of these bills have been watered—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Cambridge has run out the clock. However, I will allow the minister a few seconds to respond.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first, I have to compliment the member for Cambridge. He has been very consistent all the way through in supporting our tough on crime agenda. He talked about balancing, and he has it right. However, I think his constituents should know that he has been consistent and has been forceful on that. It has been a big help to me and to my parliamentary secretary in getting our—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Don Valley West.

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Lac-Saint-Louis.

When Canadians are asked about the greatest threat facing Canada today, they list one concern above all others: the climate change crisis. Climate change is seen by Canadians as a far greater threat to their future well-being than problems with the health care system, terrorism, crime or the war in Afghanistan.

With climate change, we face an unprecedented planetary crisis. Last week, the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 was awarded to Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The world has understood the gravity of this crisis. Does the government?

As a historian, I can only find one parallel in our history where human activity has threatened the very future existence of the earth itself and that is all-out nuclear war. However, the difference between nuclear war and the climate change crisis is also great; in one case nuclear war and the actions of a few states and a few world leaders that would produce an instant irreversible catastrophe.

The climate change crisis, however, has been building over decades of industrial activity in the developed countries like Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. All of us in the developed world are implicated as consumers, as users of energy and as people whose advanced living standards have depended on burning the fossil fuel which produces the CO₂ which contributes to climate change.

As politicians with limited time horizons facing, in our case, the possibility of elections at any time, it is hard to imagine a crisis which demands a global solution, a global effort requiring constant, dedicated work over decades and generations, country by country, industry by industry, citizen by citizen, and yet that is our challenge. History will judge our generation of politicians severely if, knowing what we know today about the causes and effects of climate change, we fail to act decisively in our time in the face of this great threat to the planet's very survival.

How does the Speech from the Throne respond to this mighty challenge? Given the minimal references to climate change in the first Speech from the Throne, there has been something of a deathbed conversion in the latest effort. There is a grudging recognition of the reality of climate change but no sense of urgency, indeed, no real conviction.

Who, after all, wrote the words in the Speech from the Throne? A Prime Minister who called the United Nations action on climate change a “socialist money sucking scheme”? A Prime Minister who only last December referred to “so-called greenhouse gases” as if calling the science itself into question? A Prime Minister who said that ordinary Canadians from coast to coast will not put up with what Kyoto will do to their economy and lifestyle when the benefits are negligible? We are talking about the survival of the planet and the benefits are negligible?

What have the Conservatives done as a government? Next to nothing. In fact, worse than nothing. We are now travelling in reverse. The Conservative government is trying to use its own failure to meet Kyoto targets as a political wedge. Canada will likely not meet its Kyoto target because the Prime Minister scrapped all climate change programs upon coming into office and then implemented weak substitutes that ignore our obligations.

The Conservatives have admitted that their so-called plan will result in absolutely no reductions in Canada's total greenhouse gas pollution during the first phase of Kyoto and will not even be in place before 2010.

According to the C.D. Howe Institute, the Deutsche Bank, the Pembina Institute and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, the Conservatives will not meet their own far too modest targets and will allow this country's carbon emissions to increase until 2050 and beyond.

Last month, even the government's own advisory board, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, expressed serious doubts as to the likelihood of any of the government's own targets being met.

Under two consecutive Conservative environment ministers, there has been no attempt to move forward seriously, not even an honest and full effort to curb greenhouse gas pollution. In fact, one of the Prime Minister's first acts in office was to scrap the previous government's plan, spend a year doing nothing and then arbitrarily reintroduce pieces of it to feign their commitment but with far less funding, less vigour, no coherence and altogether incompetent implementation. Consider the cockamamie auto rebate scheme that has infuriated manufacturers, auto workers and consumers who have yet to receive a penny.

The government's plan has no hope of meeting its own overly modest targets. It is nothing more than a wolf in sheep's clothing and, if we are to believe Tom Flanagan, so is the Prime Minister.

The government fails to understand that we need to do everything we can to reduce greenhouse gases while strengthening our economy. Instead of action and leadership, we have inaction and denial.

In many ways, Canada does serve as a guide to other nations, much like the North Star invoked in yesterday's throne speech, but the Prime Minister needs to open his eyes the next time he visits our far north and understand the scope of devastation from climate change facing entire communities and an entire way of life. The Prime Minister cannot choose to defend our northern sovereignty without also fighting climate change in a way that protects the very people who live there.

The Speech from the Throne made a curious claim about Canada's role on the international stage: “Canada is back”. When it comes to Canada's leadership role in the world on climate change, we are back all right, way back, back of the pack, back out the door, down the street, out of town and hiding in the bush.

What Canada needs to do is treat the climate change crisis as seriously as we did the threat of Fascism in the 1930s. Our leader has been described as obsessed and single-minded on the subject of climate change. That is right. Winston Churchill was described as obsessed and single-minded in his day. That is the leadership we need.

As in 1939, we need a total mobilization of our society and economy with the single purpose of winning the war against climate change. This means putting a price on carbon emissions. This means examining every aspect of our economy and society, from large, heavy industry to fossil-fueled electrical generation, to upstream oil and gas, to all aspects of transportation, to all our buildings, from housing to commercial, to all the energy-consuming appliances and heating and cooling machinery inside our buildings, to agriculture, forestry and the management of urban waste.

We need a tremendous national effort to reorient our economy and society to the 21st century, so we get energy, the environment and the economy, the three Es, pulling in the right direction.

As with World War II, Canada faces a crisis and an opportunity. Let us ignore the naysayers, the minimalists and those who have passed from denial to despair without an intervening period of hope. Let us mobilize ourselves and dedicate ourselves as Canadians in responding to the greatest challenge of our generation, the climate change crisis.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the hon. member's speech and, quite honestly, I am somewhat dismayed by the hypocrisy that continues to flow from the Liberal benches when we talk about the environment and when we talk about the damaging effects of climate change.

This government has signaled quite clearly that it is moving to clean up Canada's act, to get the job done and to reverse the trend that occurred while that member was a member of the previous government and, in fact, a cabinet minister in the previous government. If he was so passionate about this issue, I would hesitate to guess that this country would be a long way ahead of where it is right now.

This government has stated clearly that it will clean up Canada's environmental act. We are moving forward with very aggressive targets, targets that have been saluted by the G-8, by APEC, the United Nations and others, to name a few.

We are moving in a positive direction. What I would like to know is when the Liberal Party will stop playing games on the environment and work with this government to get results.

We have been saying for a long time that we cannot deal with the environment in isolation. I am encouraged by one thing, which is that he actually spoke about the three Es because the Liberal Party has certainly not been speaking to that. Certainly Bill C-288 indicated that the Liberal Party has no concern whatsoever for either energy or the economy when it talks about the environment.

I am encouraged by that but I encourage the member to stop his partisan rhetoric and start working with this government to get real results on the environment, something his government never did.

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in response to that intervention, I think the facts speak for themselves. We had Project Green in place, a project that had a large number of elements that were moving us toward a regulatory regime. This project was not totally dissimilar from the weak version that was subsequently proposed by the government. Had that been put forward, those regulations would be in place now.

If we did nothing, why is that the government then cancelled a bunch of programs that were great in value and then reintroduced them but in such a feeble form and losing a year of time to bring back things and relabel what we had already put forward?

It is a kind of tribute to our action that we saw this cancellation and then revival of programs. The Conservatives just failed to recognize what they were doing.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my very learned colleague for his comments. I agree with everything he had to say about the environment.

I would like to ask him a question about something else that I know he has some interest in, which is post-secondary education. He is a former president of King's College, one of our most august liberal arts colleges in Canada.

The Speech from the Throne, which talks allegedly about productivity, mentions education once when it says on page 10, “families worry about the rising costs of higher education”. I hope it did not take a lot of researchers in the Prime Minister's Office to figure that out. We know that. The question is: What is the government doing about it? What is the government doing to improve access for low income Canadians, persons with disabilities and aboriginal Canadians who cannot get post-secondary education?

We cannot tax cut our way to an education. We must invest in education. The Millennium Scholarship Foundation is one way. I will ask the member specifically whether he would support the reinvestment in the Millennium Scholarship Foundation and whether he has any faith that the government will do anything to improve access to post-secondary education.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Don Valley West will want to know that he has 40 seconds to respond.

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, unlike most academics, I will need to talk much faster then.

I certainly agree with the thrust of the remarks by the member from Dartmouth. If we are to have this economy of the 21st century, it is crucial that people are equipped to deal with it. If we are to have innovation, we need to do it with the help of the labs, the work and the research that takes place in Canada's universities.

I certainly think that if we are to have a fair and just society that we need to make post-secondary education more accessible to people, which is the whole idea behind the Millennium Scholarship Foundation. I would very much support a reinvestment in that foundation.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to participate in this debate. This is the third time that I have participated in a debate in reply to the Speech from the Throne. I would like to sincerely thank the voters in my riding for providing me with this opportunity.

While listening to the throne speech, and when I read it more carefully later, a question crossed my mind. Why do we need another throne speech? Why did we need to prorogue Parliament, to delay its resumption, to suspend our work as legislators for a Throne speech that is so lacking in substance?

As I was saying, when I first read the speech, the first question that came to my mind was why. Why did we need a throne speech? Why did we prorogue Parliament? Why did we need a throne speech that offers so little other than reiterating unfulfilled promises made by the government in the last election campaign?

We have been talking about an Arctic port for quite a while. It is old news. Why are we putting old news in the throne speech? Why, if crime is so important, did we wait until the second throne speech to mention the still unfulfilled promise of adding 2,500 police officers? One would think it would be one of the first things the government would have done, to hear it speak the way it does about crime and the coming Armageddon.

Why did we prorogue? I think I have the answer and I think Canadians have the answer. Let us face it. The government was feeling the heat in the last session of Parliament. It felt it had to cut loose and take the focus off its weakness.

Let us look at all the broken promises. Let us look at all the mismanagement and incompetence of the last session.

[An hon. member]

We don't have time.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

My colleague says that we do not have time and I think he is right. We will have to extend the session if we want to get to that.

Let us look at the last budget, the largest spending budget in the history of Canada from a “conservative” government. Is that not something? That budget was from a Conservative government that raised taxes. Now there is a thought. It was from a Conservative government that, despite all the talk in the last election campaign, still has not solved the capital gains tax reform issue. Today the Minister of Finance said in the business pages in the Globe and Mail that he will get to it eventually. I think it is still alive as a promise but I do not really have much faith.

It is a government that could not get a climate change bill passed, after it promised over and over that it was going to get it done. How come it did not get done? It is the government's responsibility to get legislation through Parliament even if it is a minority government. It is its responsibility to work with the opposition to get things done. Why not?

Income trusts is a good example. What a flash reversal on a major campaign promise. The Prime Minister looked Canadians in the eye on television and said, “I will not tax income trusts”. He put it in the platform. A few short months later there was a flash reversal--

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Let's talk about the RCMP investigation.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Which turned up nothing.

Let us talk about estimating budget surpluses. “Oh, yes, we can do a better job”, the Prime Minister said, “We will estimate them properly”. It turns out he was wrong. When he was questioned on that, what was his response? “Trust us, we tried harder”. Did he try as hard as he did on climate change? I think so.

Child care is another good one. The government said, “We will cancel deals with the provinces” -- that is cooperative federalism -- “We will cancel deals with the provinces and create through the private sector 125,000 private child care spaces”. The Minister of Human Resources and Social Development a couple of weeks ago said, “Excuse me. I don't think it will be possible. I apologize. We tried really hard but it is not going to be possible”. That is another unfulfilled promise.

Let us look at the court challenges program. Here is a government that really cares about minority linguistic rights in this country. A program that helps francophone minorities outside of Quebec to fight for their charter rights, a program that helps the anglophone minority in Quebec, a great portion of which I represent, fight for their rights is gone. Why? Because the court challenges program was used to defeat a court case that the Prime Minister was involved in when he was head of the National Citizens Coalition. We know the Prime Minister likes personal vendettas and this is another example of a personal vendetta.

On Afghanistan, the Prime Minister himself admitted that he rushed the last vote. The Prime Minister is doing a lot of mea culpas. He rushed the last vote and got what he wanted, which was an extension until 2009, but whoops, I think it will be 2011. Members may recall the Liberal defence critic telling the government that it did not really mean 2009, that it meant 2011. The defense minister at the time said that the government meant 2009. Who is correct now?

I hope Tom Flanagan is not the person advising the PM on these issues. If he is, I suggest that the Prime Minister ask for his money back.

The throne speech is nicely packaged. The cover features a boy waving a flag and looking out to sea. There is no doubt it is in Newfoundland, which means he will probably be voting Liberal in the next election if he can vote. The sea stretches to the horizon and beyond. There is water everywhere. The photo is perhaps a bit misleading because it suggests that Canada is in possession of an over-abundance of water, which is not the case. We only have 7% of the world's renewable freshwater to go with the 7% of the land mass that we occupy.

The photo is misleading in another way. It suggests that the government cares about water. Members may recall that I tabled a motion about a year ago calling on the government to produce a national water strategy. No doubt the government and its researchers and policy advisers read the order paper six months later and said that the motion was a good idea so it should be put in the budget. There was passing reference in the budget to creating a national water strategy.

I expected great things in this throne speech. There is very little mention of water in this speech. As a matter of fact, the Kingston Whig-Standard yesterday had a headline reading, “Conservative water strategy still murky following speech”. All we heard about water in this throne speech is a repetition of a couple of promises in the budget speech to do a bit more for the Great Lakes, but still not as much as what we had in our election platform.

The throne speech is a very thin document. It will require some work. We will see if the government can do better when it has to table the details of this speech. Essentially, we have served notice on the government that it gets a passing grade on this, but barely. It has to do better on the mid-term.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague across the way for giving the throne speech a passing grade. Coming from the opposition, that is probably the closest we could get to a ringing endorsement.

A couple of things really bother me. I do not know why my colleague criticized the fact that we are spending money on some great programs that Canadians are looking for. It is almost laughable because that comes from a member who was part of the government of former prime minister Paul Martin, who--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member is sufficiently experienced to know that he should not identify other members by their name but by the names of their riding.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

My apologies, Mr. Speaker.

When the former prime minister knew there was no chance in heaven of ever coming back to this House as the prime minister of Canada, he started giving out more than $1 billion a day for weeks on end.

The bottom line is that members of the party opposite will say anything when their backs are against the wall, and this brings me to my question. For years those members have been saying that they want to cut taxes. They had 13 years to do that, but they did not do it. They said that they wanted to get strong on the environment. The present Leader of the Opposition, when he was the environment minister said that he was going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 6%. Not only did the Liberals not do that, but emissions increased by 30% to 35%. Again they did not do what they said they were going to do. Those members are all talk and no action.

The Liberals stood up during the last election and said that they were going to fight crime, something which the Conservative Party ran on. In the last year and a half they have fought it. Why should Canadians believe that the Liberals are serious about this now? If they are serious about this, then they will support our crime bills. They will support the initiatives that are here. They said they will at one point. I want to know, will they actually do it when their backs are up against the wall?

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I note that the hon. member has been here all morning listening to the debate. I commend him for that.

I would like to correct a couple of misstatements. The previous government did cut taxes. It cut $100 billion worth of taxes. I think it was in the 2000 budget, I cannot recall exactly--I was elected in 2004--but I believe it was in the 2000 budget.

I will not indulge in the same kind of rhetoric as the government and I will not claim that the members opposite, even though we are of different parties and we see things differently, are in favour of crime. We are told every day from the members opposite that Liberal members are in favour of crime which is absolutely absurd. It is consistent with the kind of hyperbole we hear from the other side. However, until government members are ready to stand up for the gun registry, they have no business saying that they are tough on crime.