House of Commons Hansard #48 of the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was senate.

Topics

Nunavik Inuit Land Claims Agreement ActRoutine Proceedings

3:05 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Nunavik Inuit Land Claims Agreement ActRoutine Proceedings

3:05 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken

(Motion agreed to)

Income TrustsPetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:05 p.m.

Liberal

Michael Savage Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present this income trust broken promise petition from a number of people in Ontario and Alberta, people who remember the Prime Minister boasting about his commitment to transparency and accountability when he said “The greatest fraud is a promise not kept”.

The petitioners remind the Prime Minister that he never indicated that he would tax income trusts. In fact, he said he would not. However, he recklessly broke that promise, imposing a 31.5% punitive tax, which wiped out $25 billion from hard-earned retirement savings, hurting particularly Canadian seniors.

They therefore call upon the government to admit that the decision to tax income trusts was based on flawed methodology and incorrect assumptions. They call for the Prime Minister and the government to apologize to those who were unfairly harmed and to repeal the punitive 31.5% tax on income trusts.

Canada Post Book RatePetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:10 p.m.

Conservative

Merv Tweed Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are certainly paying attention to one of the bills currently in the House, Bill C-458, An Act to amend the Canada Post Corporation Act (library materials), which would protect and support the library book rate and extend it to include audiovisual materials.

I am pleased to present a petition signed by many of the people of the constituency of Grande Prairie.

KenyaPetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:10 p.m.

NDP

Peggy Nash NDP Parkdale—High Park, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to stand in the House and submit a petition on behalf of a group of youths from Runnymede United Church in my riding. They have received hundreds of signatures in support of their petition. These youths have been to Kenya where they have done a great deal of work with the people there. They have seen the terrible violence that occurred following the elections in Kenya.

The petitioners are requesting that Canada send emergency aid relief to displaced refugees in Kenya and that the Canadian government join or lead an international effort to end the current political crisis and prevent corruption in future elections. The petitioners would like to think that their initiative in fact encouraged the government to take action in offering assistance to Kenya. The petitioners also request that the money be spent with NGOs such as UNICEF and the Red Cross, not the government; that the Minister of Foreign Affairs take active steps to find a peaceful resolution; and that Canada follow Britain's lead in not recognizing the Kibaki presidency.

Canadian Pacific RailwayPetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:10 p.m.

Conservative

Gary Goodyear Conservative Cambridge, ON

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour today to present a petition that is one of a number of petitions I have presented, possibly coming up to around 2,000 signatures now, in regard to the current plan by the Canadian Pacific Railway corporation to construct a rail yard in the village of Ayr, which is in my riding.

The petitioners are asking that it be made known to the government that the protection of underground gas and pipelines is insufficient; that the Canadian Pacific Railway is not taking seriously the environmental hazards to the pristine Nith River; that there are no appropriate sound barriers; that there is no promise that idling engines that pollute our air will be stopped; and there is no safe and secure plan for access of emergency vehicles. This goes on and on and is an absolutely terrible lack of corporate responsibility. The petitioners are also asking that the government consider reviewing the legislation concerning our national rail system so this cannot happen in other communities.

Income TrustsPetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:10 p.m.

Liberal

Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present this income trust broken promise petition on behalf of Mr. Jordan Foster from my riding of Mississauga South and a large number of people in the same community. The petitioners want to remind the Prime Minister about his accountability commitment, but also that he said the greatest fraud is “a promise not kept”. The petitioners want to remind the Prime Minister that he promised never to tax income trusts, but he broke that promise by imposing a 31.5% punitive tax, which wiped out $25 billion of the hard-earned savings of over two million Canadians, most of whom were seniors.

The petitioners therefore call upon the Conservative minority government to admit that the decision to tax income trusts was based on flawed methodology and incorrect assumptions, as verified by the finance committee; second, to apologize to those who were unfairly harmed by this broken promise; and finally, to repeal the punitive 31.5% tax on income trusts.

SudanPetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:10 p.m.

Liberal

Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT

Mr. Speaker, because today at five o'clock there is a Yukon reception at the press club to which we are inviting everyone, I would like to take this opportunity to present two petitions from many Yukoners.

The first petition calls on the government to provide more military and financial assistance to the joint UN-African mission in Sudan; to establish a UN presence in Chad; to increase diplomatic efforts with the rebel groups; to press leaders in the Sudanese government and Janjaweed to be tried before the International Court for crimes against humanity; to lobby nations to increase funding for UN refugee agencies and humanitarian organizations in Darfur; to demand from the government of Sudan full and safe access for all displaced persons, refugees and other needy people in the region; to lobby for the enforcement of UN resolutions that have already been passed, including enforcement of the no fly zone, the arms embargo, and the disarmament of the murderous Janjaweed militia; to encourage all nations to put diplomatic pressure on China, Sudan's largest trading partner; and to demand that support from international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund be conditional on the government ceasing its mass atrocities in Darfur.

Northern Residents Tax DeductionPetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Liberal

Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT

Mr. Speaker, I have a second petition to present today on behalf of Yukoners.

The petitioners would like the government to know that people in the north face the highest cost of living of all Canadians and that the northern residents tax deduction was instituted to help offset these high costs. The residence portion deduction has not been increased since its inception 20 years ago, while the cost of living for northern Canadians has continued to increase.

The petitioners would like the government to know that whereas the cost in lost tax revenue to the Government of Canada would be insignificant while the economic benefits to the north would be substantial, they would like the Minister of Finance to increase the residence portion of the northern residents tax deduction by 50% and also ask that this portion of the tax deduction be indexed to keep pace with inflation based upon the northern inflation measurement.

Questions on the Order PaperRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre Saskatchewan

Conservative

Tom Lukiwski ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

Questions on the Order PaperRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken

Is that agreed?

Questions on the Order PaperRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Government Business No. 4Points of OrderRoutine Proceedings

February 11th, 2008 / 3:15 p.m.

NDP

Libby Davies NDP Vancouver East, BC

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on a point of order because I want to bring to your attention what I believe are flaws in government Motion No. 4, which is on today's notice paper. While I would certainly submit that the subject of the motion is very important to this House, and indeed the country, I am making this point of order with the intention that the motion in terms of how it is written needs to be clarified, and for no other reason.

I would like to submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that the motion on notice is in fact not a motion at all, but really more like a speech disguised as a motion. You are aware that Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Form sixth edition, in citation 565, states:

A motion should be neither argumentative, nor in the style of a speech, nor contain unnecessary provisions or objectionable words. It is usually expressed in the affirmative, even when its purpose and effect are negative.

In addition, House of Commons Procedure and Practice by Marleau and Montpetit states on page 449:

Examples may be found of motions with preambles, but this is considered out of keeping with usual practice...A motion should not contain any objectionable or irregular wording. It should not be argumentative or written in the style of a speech.

I believe that government Motion No. 4 on today's notice paper fails to meet these standards. It has not been the practice of this House that a motion becomes a motion simply by taking a press release and putting the word “that” in front of it. The government motion on notice contains eight clauses that all start with a “whereas”, all of which would be totally appropriate for the debate on the motion but really amount to outlining the reasons to support the question. In other words, these clauses are an argument and therefore should not have any place in the wording of a motion on notice.

I would request that the government agree to withdraw this motion, reword it and replace it with an appropriate motion that constitutes neither a speech nor an argument. I would further submit that if the government fails to indicate that it will do this, then I would ask you to rule that this motion is not in order for debate and allow the government time to replace this flawed motion.

We know that the government is capable of putting a clear motion before the House on important matters. I would draw your attention to the one that we dealt with on Norad in May 2006, when the government motion basically said: “That this House support the government's ratification of the North American Aerospace Defense...agreement”.

We also dealt with a motion later on in May 2006, which also dealt with the extension of the mission in Afghanistan. That was Motion No. 7 in our first session. I am not going to read out that motion because it did have some whereases, but I would point out that in regard to the motion it was never put on notice and it in fact was adopted by unanimous consent as receivable. Therefore, the decision about the nature of the motion was really out of your hands, Mr. Speaker.

What I remember from that motion, Mr. Speaker, was that the government basically put a proposition to Parliament and said to take it or leave it. It was not on the notice paper so we actually had no opportunity to debate the motion in terms of whether it was in its proper form.

I would like to make two points about this motion. First, because the House agreed to waive the notice of this motion by unanimous consent, the House did not set a precedent about the admissibility of this kind of motion. I would remind you, Mr. Speaker, of what Marleau and Montpetit say on page 502: “Nothing done by unanimous consent constitutes a precedent”.

I would also further suggest that the motion of May 2006, the first motion on Afghanistan that we dealt with, was in fact a clearer proposition than the one that is now before us. The May 2006 motion contained less than 150 words and only one question that was put to the House on the extension of the mission.

The motion that is before us today, Motion No. 4, contains 560 words, including eight paragraphs of whereas clauses, which I submit are argumentative, and it contains two conditions that, as we see when we read them, are clearly outside of the control of the House and upon which support for the extension of the motion is predicated.

The previous question we had was fairly straightforward. The one before us today includes conditions and is certainly argumentative, and therefore, we believe, should not be seen as a proper motion before the House.

On matters as important as this, I believe the government has a responsibility to give the House a clear and straightforward question that can be debated and decided upon. Motion No. 4 has failed to do that. Therefore, we ask the government to voluntarily agree to rewrite it so that it does fit the usual standards and practice. Failing that, Mr. Speaker, you should rule on this question.

Government Business No. 4Points of OrderRoutine Proceedings

3:20 p.m.

Liberal

Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON

Mr. Speaker, I agree fully with the previous speaker. In the way that it is presented to the House, the motion effectively lays out the recommendations of the Manley panel. It is very clear that all of the preamble is in fact argument which would normally be made during debate.

The only thing I can add to the argument already provided by the hon. member who just spoke, Mr. Speaker, is that the Journals Branch has been very vigilant and very rigid on the question of whereases in terms of motions. I think you will see, Mr. Speaker, that of the hundreds of motions that have been placed by members in this place, I do not believe I even recall seeing any of them include a whereas. In fact, the Journals Branch is very judicious in eliminating them and asking the members to rewrite their motions so that they get to the objective, the result that is being sought by the motion being put.

Mr. Speaker, I raise this only from the standpoint that should you allow this motion to stand in the same fashion that it is written right now, it would then serve as a precedent for all hon. members to make the full argument with regard to any and all motions that they care to bring before this place, ultimately bringing the order of the debate and the clarity of motions into some measure of confusion.

I think the question raised by the hon. member should be looked at very carefully with regard to the precedent setting that it appears to be causing.

Government Business No. 4Points of OrderRoutine Proceedings

3:20 p.m.

Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre Saskatchewan

Conservative

Tom Lukiwski ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform

Not surprisingly, Mr. Speaker, I disagree with the views expressed by my hon. colleagues. In fact, my hon. colleague from Mississauga South has talked about precedents, and I believe if you examined precedents you would find that many motions have been extremely broad in scope, as is this one.

I think back perhaps to a motion discussing the distinct society, Mr. Speaker. I think you would find that it also was extremely broad in its scope. I would submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that this motion as presented in its present form is entirely appropriate. I would look for a favourable ruling in this regard.

Government Business No. 4Points of OrderRoutine Proceedings

3:25 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken

I thank the hon. members for Vancouver East and Mississauga South and the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader for their submissions on this point. I will examine the matter and return to the House in due course with a decision.

The House resumed consideration of the motion.

Tackling Violent Crime LegislationGovernment Orders

3:25 p.m.

NDP

Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON

Mr. Speaker, this motion by the government is unprecedented in the history of Canada. We can go back through almost 141 years of Confederation and we have never had a motion like this one in front of the House.

In substance, the motion says to the Senate, “We are telling you from the House of Commons if you do not pass Bill C-2 by the end of March 2008, we are going to bring down the government”. The Minister of Justice was on his feet in the House repeating in his speech this afternoon exactly the same threat.

I want to start with the height of hypocrisy that this motion represents on behalf of the government. Before I do that, I want to deal with the basic lack of logic of this motion.

What are we hearing? We heard from the Prime Minister in the fall when Bill C-2 was put before the House, and I will come back to some of the history leading up to Bill C-2, that he was going to bring the government down if this bill was not passed. It was passed in the House and now the government is doing the same thing in the Senate.

The logic escapes me because behind the threats, the bombast and the macho image the government is trying to portray on crime is a totally illogical position, which is that we need this legislation right now, that we needed it years ago. That is what we hear from the government. There is some validity to that in the case of a number of parts of Bill C-2, particularly those that the NDP supported as a political party and which the Liberal government in previous administrations would not pursue.

The Conservatives are saying, “We need it right now, we are way overdue on a number of these amendments and provisions, but we are going to go to an election”. They threatened it last fall and now they are threatening it again.

This resolution from the House has absolutely no impact on the Senate. We do not have the ability constitutionally to deal with this. It is totally illogical. If it comes to fruition, that is, if the government falls, or brings itself down is a better analysis of what is going on here, over this issue, Bill C-2 will die on the order paper. It will not get through the House of Commons or the Senate until the end of 2008.

Where is the logic behind this? Although it is a rhetorical question, the obvious answer is there is no logic. This is not about dealing reasonably, realistically and effectively with crime in this country. This is all about political posturing and nothing else on the part of the government.

Why are the Conservatives pushing it right now? The answer to that is very obvious. They lost the agenda on making crime the primary issue they want to run on in an election. The Conservatives think that is where they have their best chance of gaining support in the country. I think it is an analysis that is faulty, but that is where the Conservative Party and the Conservative government is coming from.

What has happened in the last several months is that the Conservatives' agenda around the crime issues has been completely pushed aside because we passed that bill before the House recessed at the end of last year. Any number of other issues that have been before the House and the country have taken prominence, issues that the government is very afraid of. Let me mention a few of them.

Obviously, at the top of the list right now would be the economic straits we are in, in particular in the manufacturing and forestry sectors, compelling the government, in spite of the blackmail it tried to pull on the House, to move $1 billion into those sectors and communities in order to deal with the dire economic crises that a number of those communities are facing. That pushed it off its agenda.

Obviously, the Afghanistan war, and in particular, the way Canada is handling detainees in Afghanistan, has pushed the Conservatives off their agenda in that regard. The firing of the head of the nuclear safety commission has pushed them off. Of course, there is always the Schreiber-Mulroney scandal. In the last couple of weeks, there has been the issue of the finance minister not following the rules of the Treasury Board with regard to letting contracts. There is the in and out scandal on the part of the Conservative government, the only party in the House that has been charged by Elections Canada with having in effect breached the election financing law.

There are all of those issues, none of which are favourable to the government. We are seeing, as a result of all of these issues, that the government is falling in the polls. The Conservatives believe that they can hijack the agenda in this country by trying to get back on to the crime agenda.

Let us look at what the Conservatives have done historically in the last 12 months or so. Last spring, just before we broke for the summer, three of the five bills that comprised Bill C-2 had passed this House and were in the Senate. I say without any hesitation that by the end of 2007, had the government not done what it proceeded to subsequently do, those bills would have passed the Senate. I say that on the basis of the way the Senate has handled other crime bills since the Conservative government has been in power. The bills would have passed. I assume, if the government were really serious about doing anything about crime, the bills would have received royal assent and they would have been law.

All three of the bills would have been law by January 1, 2008, if not earlier. Those three parts of Bill C-2, the mandatory minimums on serious violent gun crimes, the age of consent, and the impaired driving bill, all three of those have been through this House. Let me correct that. The impaired driving bill was the one that had not gotten through. It was at report stage. It would have had third reading. It would have passed the House in the third or fourth week of September, when we were supposed to come back. The third one was the bill on the reverse onus on bail hearings which was to keep people in custody if they were facing serious charges involving guns.

Those three bills, the age of consent, the mandatory minimums, the reverse onus, would have been law by now. I believe, quite frankly, the impaired driving bill would have been law by now, because it would have passed the Senate quite quickly in late September or early October, but for the action of the government.

I guess we all know that what the Conservatives did is they did not have enough to do, that is, they did not have their political agenda. They thought they would have fallen as a government, as they probably should have, before the fall of 2007, so they prorogued Parliament. All of the bills on the order paper died. We had to start all over again. All of these bills were off, including the ones in the Senate.

I want to be very clear on this. All of the opposition parties were prepared in the fall when we came back in October after a month's delay to reinstate all of those bills at the same stage they had been, that is, three in the Senate and one here for a quick passage because there was the consent of all of the parties.

Again, with just a little bit of luck, we would have had all of those bills through the Senate by the end of the year, that is, before the year-end break, and if not, we would have had them in the first few weeks of January or February of this year, all of them. Instead, we have had this lengthy delay caused by the Conservative government, not by the Senate.

As members well know, my party and I are not supporters of the Senate. Regularly and consistently since the existence of our political party back in the 1940s, we have been calling for the abolition of the Senate. I am not here to defend members of the other place. We saw last week the kind of delay on Bill C-13, the meddling they do all the time. It is an unelected, unrepresentative, and I think oftentimes an irresponsible body. I am not here to defend them, but by the same token, at this period of time the delay for this legislation lies squarely, entirely in the lap of the government.

If the government were really serious about fighting crime as opposed to, as Lawrence Martin said in the Globe and Mail this morning, using it for, to quote him, “cheap politics”, if the Conservatives were not doing it for that purpose, if they were really serious about the need to deal with serious violent crime in particular and some of these other issues around impaired driving and the age of consent, if they were not seeing it just as a methodology to try to get re-elected, we would have moved quite a bit further along. It is to their eternal shame that we are at the stage we are. Let us look at that stage.

It was interesting in the early and middle part of last week. The government, in the speeches its members were giving in the House, and in some of the addresses they were making to the media, began to sound almost desperate for an election. In that regard, if we have an election, we are going to be in the same situation. The bill is going to die, as all the others will that are on the order paper, and we will not see any of this legislation in place for the use of our police officers and judiciary across the country to apply and fight the various aspects of criminal activity that the bill would allow them to do.

The Conservatives are pushing that button, not because they are really serious about fighting crime. That is not their primary motivation. Their primary motivation is to use this as a political tool to try to save their seats, to try to get re-elected as a government. It is probably a faulty assumption on their part that it is going to work, but that is what their motivation is, not the best interests of the country and not the victims of crime. It is the Conservative political party that this is all about in trying to save their skins in the next election.

If we look at history, it is the height of hypocrisy for them to stand in the House and argue that they are tough on crime. It is simply not the reality when one looks at it.

The other point that I want to make is that if they were really serious about being effectively tough on crime, they would not have broken their promise with regard to the 2,500 police officers that they promised in the last election, and on which they have not delivered. In fact they misled Canadians in the last election. The Prime Minister, the Minister of Justice, the former minister of justice, all of them across the country were trumpeting the 2,500 additional police officers they would see put in place.

What has happened? Number one, they did not tell the Canadian people that they were expecting the provinces to pick up most of the tab for those 2,500 police officers, money which the provinces do not have. To some degree, at least a number of the provinces have already moved on with regard to promises they made in elections to increase the number of police officers. They have already put some money into it and now the federal government is coming to them, johnny-come-lately, and saying, “Oh, by the way, although we promised this in the last election and we didn't tell the Canadian people we were going to do this, we want you, the provinces, to pay a big chunk, in most cases at least 50%”. That is not within the financial capabilities of most of the provinces, nor should it be their responsibilities when the promise was made without that condition by the government.

It is a full two years after the election and this broken promise is still hanging over their heads. If the Conservatives were serious about it, they would not be bringing this kind of useless motion in front of the House. They would be moving a motion in the House to see to it that money was put in place, that a budgetary item was put in place. We should have seen this last fall, we should have seen it in the budget in February and we should have seen it in the budget in the previous February.

Today we hear that the next budget is coming. Let me assure the House that there will be nothing in the budget for those 2,500 police officers. The Conservatives are going to break that promise on an ongoing basis and they are not going to fulfill their commitment to the Canadian people.

With regard to that, whenever we look at dealing with crime effectively, we have to look at it from three perspectives.

First, we have legislation, as we see with Bill C-2, that deals with specific problems under our Criminal Code and other legislation. We are working on that against the delays caused by the government because it wants to keep it as a hot button item. It does not want the legislation passed because then it will be behind us. Therefore, we have done that to a great extent. There is still more that needs to be done.

The other two legs of that three-legged stool, if I can use that analogy, is prevention. The big item there is to move programs into our local communities, funded by the federal government. Again, the provinces do not have the taxing power or the revenue capability to fulfill all this. However, we literally have to move $100 million a year to the provinces and the municipal local levels of government, to provide programming that will keep young people, in particular, out of the youth gangs and generally fight the drug culture and keep them out of those parts of our communities that advocate the use of drugs. That money needs to be spent. There is absolutely nothing beyond a very inconsequential amount that the government has done in this regard. It is minuscule. In fact, most of the time the government does not know what to do with it.

I come back to those 2,500 police officers. We know that in those areas of our cities where we have seriously violent crimes, we need to put more police officers on the street. We simply cannot deal with that in any effective ways, even if it is in an interim measure, for the next number of years. We need more police officers on the streets fighting that kind of crime, street level crime, particularly in the youth gangs where so much of the gun crime resides at the present time. The government has done nothing on that and it has done a minuscule about on the prevention side.

Therefore, if the government were really serious, we would see that. We would not see the sham that this motion represents in the House at the present time. We would see concrete action. Most of this is looking at programming that would be successful. There are all kinds of examples of it in Canada and in other communities across the globe that we can look to and adopt, but we have to fund them. The government has been refusing to do that, just as it is refusing to fund those 2,500 police officers, as it promised in the last election.

Where are we at? On a silly waste of time today debating this motion. It is going to have absolutely no effect. The government, whether it is over this, or over the budget or over Afghanistan, is looking desperately to bring itself down, to force the opposition parties to bring it down.

However, in this case it is not even asking the opposition parties in effect. It is saying that we should pass the motion and then if the Senate does not move, it will go to the Governor General and say that it does not have the confidence of the House, even if the motion passes. That is the stupid part of the motion. Even if the House passes it, and it looks like perhaps the Liberals and the Bloc appear as if they will support it, the government would still come down at the end of March, if the Senate, the other house over which we have no control, decides will not pass Bill C-2 by March 31.

It is absolutely silly. It is the height of hypocrisy. It is really the height of demagoguery as well when we look at what has gone on in the House over the last few months around Bill C-2. It is a shame. The government members should really bow their heads and apologize to the Canadian people for it.

Tackling Violent Crime LegislationGovernment Orders

3:45 p.m.

Conservative

Myron Thompson Conservative Wild Rose, AB

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to ask a question of the gentleman who just spoke. I have served with him on the justice committee for a number of months and years. I am not too sure how long he has been there or when he came on the scene. I know I have been there about 15 years.

I do not have a crystal ball like the member has. He must have a crystal ball of some sort if he can say that if this would have happened, that would have happened, or that those bills would have become law if we had left them in the Senate and had not prorogued. His crystal ball is much brighter than mine.

I will stick to what I do know. Over the years many of being in this party, I, the member for Calgary-Northeast and Darrel Stinson, the member for Okanagan-Shuswap, visited with previous justice ministers, starting with Allan Rock. We went to Cowichan. We went to Anne MacLellan. We went to the previous Liberal minister, who is still in the House of Commons. They all said no to us when we requested, over and over again during that period of time, that they raise the age of consent. For the safety of our children, we said that we had to do this.

All those years, those ministers would not do it. Finally, one day the member from Lethbridge brought forward a private member's bill to raise the age of consent. Guess who voted against it? All the Liberals.

Therefore, would the member agree with me that the Liberal party never supported the bill in the very beginning? Now the Liberals realize the public really wants to see it, they are passing it to the Senate, saying not to pass the bill because they have not agree with it right from the word go? He must agree with me that this is indeed a fact. In the over 15 years I have been here, the Liberal Party never did anything about that bill because it did not want it to happen.

Tackling Violent Crime LegislationGovernment Orders

3:45 p.m.

NDP

Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON

Mr. Speaker, the member for Wild Rose is accurate to a degree.

I was at one of the Chinese New Year's dinners on the weekend at which I heard something about a partial omission of truth was like a full lie.

Not that I am accusing him of misleading the House, but historically, if we study what happened around the age of consent issue, repeated bills came from the Reform-Alliance and then the Conservatives to raise the age of consent. However, they never put in the near age defence, which allowed people in the same age group to engage in sexual contact without criminalizing that sexual contact.

I remember sitting on a panel with a Conservative member who had sponsored one of the private member's bills. I asked him if he understood that he was about to criminalize 100,000 youth who were 15 and 16 years of age by the bill he had introduced. That was always the problem with it.

I have to take some personal credit. I convinced the former justice minister, when he was in opposition, to support the NDP in saying that we needed to raise the age of consent, but that we needed to put in the near age defence. Then when the Conservatives formed the government, for the first time that showed up in legislation, and it was passed.

Tackling Violent Crime LegislationGovernment Orders

3:45 p.m.

Liberal

Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE

Mr. Speaker, I thought the member for Windsor-Tecumseh was very direct, as he always is. If there is anybody's counsel in the House I respect, it is his.

He said that the delay was really caused by the Conservative government itself, not by the Senate. I heard the remarks of the member for Wild Rose. Yes, there are differences of opinion in terms of the various bills, but the fact is several of these bills were to the Senate before. The debate was held in here and passed with the approval of the House of Commons.

There is no reason in the world why these bills had to be pulled back and then regurgitated into one single bill, named tackling violent crime, other than for political purposes. I think that is what the member was pointing out. Would the member agree with that comment?

Part of the motion today reads, “and that in the opinion of this House, the Senate majority is not providing appropriate priority to the passage of BillC-2”. Whether one agrees or disagrees that there be a Senate, that wording is an attack on reality. We were adjourned for most of the time, yet the government talks about the number of days since the House adjourned for the Christmas break. Could the member comment on that as well?

Tackling Violent Crime LegislationGovernment Orders

3:50 p.m.

NDP

Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the assertions the member for Malpeque made at the beginning of his question. In my address to the House, I said that the delay was on the part of the government. There was no reason at all for the Conservatives to back this up, prorogue and then not allow the bills to go back to the same stage, as the three opposition parties proposed.

Despite the fact that I do not have a crystal ball, I have done an analysis of how crime bills have gone through the House under the current government and under the previous Liberal administration. Three of the five in Bill C-2 would be through and I think the fourth one would be as well. Only the dangerous offender bill would probably still be before the Senate at this point in time. Since that bill went to the Senate, for most of the time the Senate has not sat and neither has the House.

I will make one final point with regard to the Senate and the government. If the government were really serious, it would not be this motion before the House. The government would have a motion something similar to, “we call on all the senators to resign and we call on the Conservative government to initiate a process of constitutional reform to abolish the Senate for the future”.

Tackling Violent Crime LegislationGovernment Orders

3:50 p.m.

NDP

Paul Dewar NDP Ottawa Centre, ON

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Windsor—Tecumseh for his precise analysis of this debate.

I would appreciate it if he would comment on where Bill C-16 fits into all this. Bill C-16 is about fixed election dates. I sat on the committee and the government said that it would never use it. At the committee, we tried to put in caveats around fixed election dates to ensure no government, this government or any other government, could use fixed election dates for its own benefit.

It seems to me the government is breaking that promise and using fixed election dates when it needs to. When the Conservatives do not like something, they will go outside and use the option of bringing down the House on their own.

I would appreciate hearing from my colleague on that.

Tackling Violent Crime LegislationGovernment Orders

3:50 p.m.

NDP

Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON

Mr. Speaker, my friend brings up a very good point. I can assure my colleague from Ottawa Centre that we are currently looking up all the promises the Prime Minister in particular made about Bill C-16, that he would not use the traditional methodology of bringing his government down at the whim of the government, but that he would abide by the spirit of Bill C-16 and fixed election dates. It is a concept that we have supported.

However, we are ready. If the Conservatives go ahead with this motion and the Senate does not meet their deadline by March 1, we will be ready to tell Canadians that the Prime Minister has misled them once again.

Tackling Violent Crime LegislationGovernment Orders

3:50 p.m.

Fort McMurray—Athabasca Alberta

Conservative

Brian Jean ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport

Mr. Speaker, I know the member from the NDP is clear on how his party would govern. It appears that 2,500 RCMP officers are supposed to appear suddenly with the wave of a magic wand. We know that is not reality. It takes time to train these officers, hire them and get them in the field. Indeed, the government is working on that.

My question for the member is in relation to the bill itself. Those members keep talking about politics. They have talked about Afghanistan and a lot of things today in relation to this bill. However, the bill is about politics at the local level.

What I have heard from my constituents in northern Alberta is that they want the bill to pass. These constituents want these bills to come into law because right now our streets are not safe from random gun crimes. Our children are being preyed upon by sexual predators. Repeat violent criminals are on our streets and continually let go in a rotating system.

When I was a lawyer in northern Alberta, I was ashamed sometimes to represent individuals who appeared eight or nine times before the court and who were let off with a 30 day or 90 day sentence for impaired driving. It was embarrassing.

Since some of these bills date back to May 4, 2006, and I think the last one is November 23, 2006, would the member agree that this is enough time to talk about these bills in this place and in the Senate? When can we get on to the business of answering what Canadians want, and that is being tough on criminals?