Roy Cullen

[Criminal Code, May 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know about the gems, but I want to thank my colleague from Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine and also congratulate her as our justice critic for working very hard on this file and for listening to people like me who are experiencing a lot of gun related crime in their ridings.

She makes a very good point. If we look at the incarceration rates in the United States, where incarceration is at a much higher level than it is in a country such as Canada, we would think that would have an impact on violent crimes, for example. Exactly the reverse is true. The United States has the highest incidence of violent and gun-related crimes and the highest levels of incarceration rates.

Someone might argue that of course if there is more crime there is going to be more incarceration, but some experts have actually done some analysis. They have concluded, by looking at the data and trying to pull out various variables that are controlled, that in fact crime rates alone do not account for incarceration rates in the United States.

In other words, there are more people in the United States and there is a higher crime rate in the United States, but these levels do not explain the incarceration rates. If we control for crime categories that are defined, the U.S. still locks up more people than any other nation per incidence, the exception being robbery in Russia, so we need to understand that putting people--

[Criminal Code, May 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, let me say for the member for Burlington that some people will do anything to get their in-laws to move from Etobicoke North to Burlington. I did not know members opposite were so desperate for votes over there, but perhaps they are.

I think mandatory minimums are appropriate in certain targeted areas. That is why I support our party's proposals to increase mandatory minimums in a measured way for gun related crimes.

I think my colleague from the Bloc put it very well. The problem is that we often read in the newspapers about the exceptional cases where a trial judge may have ruled in a certain way. I think it is useful to follow it on through to the appeals and not get flared up by information in the newspapers. It is all very emotional. When we know someone, a friend, a relative or someone in our constituency, who has been shot or who may have been killed, it is not very pleasant.

I believe in mandatory minimums in targeted areas. One of those targeted areas that I support is gun related crimes. That has been a problem in my riding.

[Criminal Code, May 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-10, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (minimum penalties for offences involving firearms) and to make a consequential amendment to another Act.

Regrettably, my riding of Etobicoke North has experienced much gun crime related to gangs and drugs. Certain pockets within Etobicoke North have had particularly bad experiences. We have been compared in Toronto to an area in Scarborough called Malvern as two of the highest gun crime centres in Canada. It is not a very proud statistic to claim.

Fortunately, in the last year or so the violent crime rate in my riding has diminished somewhat as a result of a number of factors. One factor was the very large swoop in Rexdale in May 2006 with 106 gang members being arrested and charged. They were generally involved in drugs and gangs. It was the anti-gang legislation that our government introduced many years ago that helped the police conduct that raid.

We have also seen a lot of changes in the way the police operate in the riding, more visible policing, and a lot of work has been done in the area of community building crime prevention programs. I will give a couple of examples. We have a program in my riding called breaking the cycle, which is funded by the human resources development department. It helps young people exit gangs and get back into normal family life, find jobs or go back to school. The program is working.

In Etobicoke North, we have taken advantage of much of the program funding that is available through the national crime prevention program, another federal program administered by Public Safety Canada.

Another program is Hoops Unlimited, a basketball program that provides young people with an alternative after school, instead of going to malls and getting involved with gangs and drugs.

The North Albion Collegiate Institute had a program where students were involved in a theatre production. We have had many such programs, which are all helping to keep young people engaged in a constructive way rather than a destructive way.

It was part of our government's response to gun crime in the last couple of years of its mandate that we saw it as needing a holistic response. We needed tougher sanctions, good gun controls and more community programming, and that was how our government approached it. In fact, it was our government that tabled tougher sanctions for gun crimes because the evidence was somewhat clear that while mandatory minimum sentences were not very effective, they could be effective in targeted ways for gun related crimes.

That is why our government proposed changes to the mandatory minimums for certain gun related crimes and why our party has tabled certain amendments to increase mandatory minimums for certain gun related crimes from one to two years and for other gun related crimes from four to five years, which are measured responses.

We need to understand that when young people go to jail, they are exposed to hardened criminals. They will get out at some point and we need to think about how we will rehabilitate them and turn them into productive members of society.

The evidence would suggest that in the U.S. many states are moving away from mandatory minimums for a wide variety of crimes because their jails are filling up but the crime rates are not diminishing and, in fact, they could be increasing.

We need a very holistic response. We can do better with our witness protection programs. While clearly right now there is an issue with the RCMP in one of the witness protection programs, the police in the city where I come from tell me that it is necessary to have the kinds of programs whereby people's identities are changed and they are sent off to live in another location.

However, we can bring witnesses forward in a much more constructive way through changes in the judicial process. That is why the Standing Committee Public Safety and National Security will be inviting various stakeholders, including the city of Toronto Police Service, to testify about what we need to do with our witness protection program.

In Etobicoke North and indeed across Canada, what the police are finding is that for violent gun crimes and drug related crimes people are not coming forward. That is hampering the investigations and the conviction of some of these criminals.

I believe also in the reverse onus provisions for bail. Too often we have people, not only young people but mostly young people, certainly in my area, who have been charged with gun crimes but are released on bail and reoffend. Therefore, our caucus is supporting measures that will bring in the reverse onus. In other words, a person who has been convicted would have to show a judge that he or she should be released on bail rather than the other way around. I think that is a good step.

In 2006 during the election campaign, the then prime minister, the member for LaSalle—Émard, came to my riding of Etobicoke North and announced the ban on handguns. It was criticized at the time, with people saying that it would not do anything. Of course on its own it would not have, but it was part of a whole set of solutions or prescriptions.

Certainly in my riding of Etobicoke North a ban on handguns went down very favourably. It did not go down so well in other parts of Canada, I would have to admit, but we need to have gun control measures. We need to have the kind of gun control and gun registry that is prevalent in Canada.

If we look south of the border, we can see that it is so easy to get a handgun, and we can see what happens as a result. Incidents of handgun crimes in the United States are in much higher numbers than they are in Canada. In fact, if we look at homicides generally, in the year 2000 there were 542 homicides resulting in a national rate of 1.8 homicides per 100,000 population in Canada, whereas in the United States the rate was three times higher at 5.5. We know that relates also to gun crimes. Guns per capita in Canada: .25. In the United States: .82 At rates per 100,000, firearms deaths in 1998 in Canada were at 4.3 and in the United States at 11.4.

We need good gun control. Certainly we know there is a black market in handguns, so that if someone is shot with a handgun in Etobicoke North, there is probably a 50% chance that the handgun came from the United States or a good chance that it was obtained on the black market. That does not mean we should not control handguns. That is a fallacious argument.

As for the licensing, I know the government is still committed to licensing and I say alleluia for that. However, we still need to control and register long guns because the reality is that long guns are responsible for as many gun related crimes as handguns.

We know, as I have said, that in the United States the mandatory minimums, the three strikes and they're out concept in California, is not proving to be effective. I will support measures that increase the sanctions against gun related crime in Canada and will have an impact in Canada. That is why I like our party's proposals. I will certainly be supporting them.

We know, as I said earlier, that to deal with this problem we have to deal with it in a very holistic way. I have argued, for example, that we should look at having an integrated border enforcement team in the city of Toronto.

Our government brought in integrated border enforcement teams, with I think 13 or 14 teams across Canada. They tend to be located in the major crossings like Detroit-Windsor and the Peace Bridge, but we do know that a lot of guns are coming into Toronto via these border locations. Integrated border enforcement allows law enforcement agencies to work together to solve and prevent these crimes.

Let us get tough on crime, but let us do it in a way that has results.

[Business of Supply, May 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am not on the aboriginal affairs committee but I have been told by my colleagues that they accept the proposal in principle but that there are still some important details to be worked out.

The parliamentary secretary says that the government was very quick to react. My recollection is that the election was some time in January 2006 and it was in May 2006 that the government finally came forward with the $2.2 billion agreement which our government had negotiated.

If I had seen at the time wholesale changes, then I would have been more convinced that the delay was necessary. Nonetheless, I think one of the tragedies is the fact that the new government did not fund the Kelowna accord. We hear that it takes more than money but it also takes money to deal with these problems.

[Business of Supply, May 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I work with the member opposite on the public safety committee and I know he is a man of good intentions and intelligence. I am quite sure that he would be fully briefed to the extent that one could on the residential schools file given his political adversary in Edmonton at the time but, nonetheless, I think he does make a point.

The motion does ask for the House to adopt the motion. I know we on this side will be supporting the motion but I am hopeful that the parties down the way will support it. I am confident they will but I am not sure what it would cost the current Prime Minister. As we have been told time and again, it is a new government. What would it cost to tell aboriginal Canadian people that it is not just a Liberal government that shares this apology, that it is the new government that also apologizes for this injustice?

I could be corrected on this but my understanding is that your party committed to that process so why can you not just live up to your commitments?

[Business of Supply, May 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate today on a motion proposed by my Liberal colleague from Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River. The motion reads:

That this House apologize to the survivors of Indian Residential Schools for the trauma they suffered as a result of policies intended to assimilate First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, causing the loss of aboriginal culture, heritage and language, while also leaving a sad legacy of emotional, physical and sexual abuse.

It is somewhat reassuring to hear that members opposite, and hopefully all members of this House, will support the resolution, but the question has arisen as to why the Prime Minister and his government will not apologize, as my friend from Brant mentioned, for this serious blight on the reputation that Canada has in the world for its stance on human rights.

In fact, we have observer status in the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, an assembly that focuses on human rights, democratic institutions and the rule of law. It is unfortunate, however, that when we have these debates from time to time, members from legislatures in Europe cite Canada's treatment of its aboriginal Canadians, and not in a very positive light, I must say.

It is timely and in fact it is never too late, but the Prime Minister and the minister should apologize to our aboriginal Canadian friends for this terrible injustice that was done.

Some months ago, I thought the government was not apologizing because it was waiting for the residential schools compensation agreement to be finalized and that there would be legal issues, et cetera, but even that was a stretch. However, it is now clear that the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement has been finalized.

I, along with the deputy prime minister in the last Parliament, were involved in the negotiations on the residential schools agreement. One of the issues at that time was the status of the class action suits and the ability of individual aboriginal people to follow up, if there were so-called extra serious cases of abuse, whether they be sexual or physical abuse, and pursue their claims in the normal course of events through the criminal court system.

However, my understanding is that the class action lawsuits and those other individual matters were part of the agreement. Therefore, I cannot, for the life of me, understand why the Prime Minister or the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs would not apologize to our aboriginal Canadian friends for this terrible thing that happened, which was a feeble, hopeless and obviously an unsuccessful attempt to assimilate aboriginal Canadians. It shows us what happens when people who are put in positions of trust, unfortunately, can abuse that trust. We have some horrific tales of physical abuse, sexual abuse and mental abuse in the sense of trying to deprive people of their culture, their heritage, their values and their pride.

I know that in negotiating the residential schools agreement, our government asked Mr. Iacobucci to work with the various stakeholder groups. I must say that he did a fine job because it was a very complicated file. There were a number of competing problems. For example, accountants were projecting the lower limits or the upside limits of what this compensation package would cost Canadians. Some of the upper limits were quite staggering in terms of their proportions. These were serious matters for a federal government to consider. There were also questions around how to value or put a price tag on physical or sexual abuse.

In the early days I know a grid was developed outlining certain categories of physical abuse and sexual abuse and wherever people fell on the grid they received a bigger compensation package.

As members can imagine, this was a horrific thing to try to actually implement. What was required was that unless aboriginal people who had been in a residential school could come forward and prove that they were at the school and renounced their claims, even in that process I should point out, they had to demonstrate what kind of treatment they endured. How embarrassing and humiliating to have to come before some official or panel and describe the physical or sexual abuse that they had to endure.

The government, in its wisdom at that time, decided to scrap this system and use a formula that was driven more by the number of years that people were in a residential school and that there was a prima facie statement that if they were in a residential school, they were probably subject to some kind of abuse and if the aboriginal Canadians could sign off on a package then they would be exempted from these testimonials of trying to demonstrate the kind of horrific treatment that they were subjected to.

Even that left itself open to some concerns. Some of the people who went to a residential school may not have been sexually or physically abused and did not feel that their culture or heritage was attacked or demeaned. In fact, we heard very few but we did hear the odd case where someone was prepared to say that. When a government is looking at protecting and preserving taxpayers' hard-earned dollars, that is an issue.

However, in the end everybody realized that this had to be brought to a conclusion. Many of the people who had been in residential schools were no longer with us. They had passed on. Some were around but they were getting older and if there was a compensation package, surely they should have the right to use that.

With those kinds of imperatives, I think everyone came to the table and Mr. Iacobucci did a fine job of negotiating a package that is estimated at some $2.2 billion, not a small number by any stretch of the imagination, but totally justified in my judgment and totally appropriate.

Part of that agreement, which our government announced under the leadership of then deputy prime minister, Anne McLellan, included a number of things: a national apology, a compensation process, a lump sum payment, a truth and reconciliation commission and funding for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.

Finally the present government implemented the residential schools agreement that the former government had negotiated. It took the Conservatives some time to do that but they finally came out and did it, but it was sadly lacking with the apology, either from the Prime Minister or the minister, and this is something that is still outstanding. It takes a big person to apologize and I have to assume that as the Prime Minister of our country he must be a big person in spirit and, hopefully, he will not be so meagre in his good spirits that he would not apologize to these people who have suffered under the residential schools system.

Hopefully we have learned from this and that we will never go back. I am very pleased that our government took the initiative to negotiate an agreement that finally was announced by the present government. However, what is missing and what I am hoping the Prime Minister does and what the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development does is apologize for this injustice that was done to our aboriginal Canadians.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, March 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to speak to the budget because I found it to be totally lacking in vision and direction. It has a number of little things here and there for various groups, but when we look at it substantively, we realize that it lacks direction and vision and leaves out large segments of our society.

One aspect I find particularly disturbing, although there were a couple I mentioned earlier in a question and comment period, is the fact that aboriginal people are left out in the cold again. After the Liberal government negotiated in Kelowna a very strategic accord which would help aboriginal people with housing, education and water and the Conservatives callously ignored that.

They also callously ignored the child care agreements that the Liberal government had meticulously negotiated with the provinces. They would have provided real child care spaces for people who needed them. The $200 a month allowance per child just does not do it. It does not create any child care spaces.

The other aspect I find very disturbing is this. If we are to compete in a global economy, an economy that includes emerging economies like India, China and Brazil, there is nothing in this budget to encourage that. In fact, we take steps backward.

When the Liberal government came into power, it had to deal with a $42 billion deficit that it inherited from the Conservatives. When we got it under control, within a very short time, the Liberals started to reinvest in R and D and put chairs in universities, which was very well received. We also established the Canada Foundation for Innovation, founded the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and provided overheads to the universities.

Guess what happened? Researchers came back to Canada because they were very pleased with the research environment here. What does that lead to? That leads to invention, innovation and entrepreneurship. That is what we need in the country if we are to create the value added jobs of the future.

What has the government done? It has taken a few steps back. Now we are hearing from researchers that they are going to leave Canada because the research environment is not very conducive to the kind of work they want to do. That is a tragedy after the Liberals built that platform. It could have been built on further. There is an amount in the budget for research, but with other steps the government has taken, it is really moving backward.

There were many other flaws in the budget. I watched the Minister of Finance stand in this place and present the budget. He made a statement along the lines that the problems and disputes with the provinces and territories were gone forever. Not knowing what steps would follow, anyone on this side of the House would have known that to make a statement like this was naive in the extreme. I think he was living in fantasy land. We learned very quickly afterward that many provinces in this country disputed the Minister of Finance's claim that disputes with the provinces and territories were over.

In fact, all colleagues from Atlantic Canada on this side of the House know from the detail in the budget that Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan and other provinces have been shafted. My western colleagues also know that full well. They had a good deal under the Liberal government and the Conservative government took it away and left those provinces swinging.

There are other aspects that I find terribly disturbing. The Government of Canada, under the Conservative government, tried to buy off the province of Quebec with increases in transfers. Another $700 million in equalization was handed to Quebec. The ink was barely dry on the cheque when the premier of Quebec said that he would cut taxes by an equivalent amount. I find that shocking.

I know that technically and legally the province can do what it wants with equalization. However, members of Parliament have heard the provinces and territories complain about the fact that they cannot properly fund health care, education and social programs and that they need more transfers from the federal government. We transferred an additional $41 billion in our last mandate in addition to other amounts we had increased.

The province of Quebec, complaining that it needed money for health care and education, got the additional equalization, and then wanted to cut taxes. It did not work. Even though I am sympathetic, and I know my colleagues on this side of the House and perhaps on the other side of the House are sympathetic as well to the federalist cause, we wanted to see the Liberal government trounce the separatists, which it did. However, I think it was a sad commentary and it showed really that Quebeckers could not be bought.

What it tells us is that in the next round of discussions with the provinces and territories, we will hear their bleats and their complains as very hollow when we know that one of the largest provinces in the country took the equalization and cut taxes.

It is also a sad commentary that the province of Quebec, one of the key provinces in terms of population and economic activity, is a have not province. Of the total equalization that is paid out by the federal government, some $12 billion, roughly $7 billion goes to the province of Quebec. I have argued in the House and other places that it is because of the policies of the separatists that Quebec is a have not province.

The other sad reality of the budget bill is that it tries to implement the provisions with respect to the income trusts. A promise was made by the then leader of the Conservative Party that he would not tax income trusts. Many people in my riding of Etobicoke North and other ridings across Canada, based on that assurance when the Conservatives came into power, put their money into income trusts. Guess what? The Conservative Party reneged on that.

Whether we agree that something had to be done with income trusts, and I for one think we had to make some adjustments, the adjustments could have been made in a much fairer way for those people who were already exposed and who ended up losing about $25 billion to $30 billion. The government has done nothing about that in this budget. Nor has it done so in the budget implementation act.

There are a couple of provisions in the budget that I support. One is the pension income splitting. It is helpful to seniors that they can split income. It in some sense partly addresses some concerns of the citizens in my riding, middle income seniors, who have saved all their lives, put money into pensions and they find that their old age security, notwithstanding their best plans, is taxed back in some cases. It starts to get taxed back at around $55,000. Therefore, pension income splitting does not address that fully, but it is a good initiative.

The other sad reality is the budget reflects some of the priorities of the government, one of them being the fact it will arm the guards at the border of Canada. We heard at the committee that it would cost about $1 billion over 10 years to arm the border guards. That does not include the reclassification of the border guards who will become public safety officers. The number I have is about $15,000 per year in added salary. The $1 billion are to train and equip them with guns.

The RCMP advised us that the deterrence effect would be minimal. In fairness to it, it said that no one knew for sure, but it felt the deterrence effect would be minimal.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, March 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore for his thoughtful comments on the budget. The member has a reputation for bringing members from all parties together to discuss a range of issues from time to time. It is a very good initiative to bring people from all parties in the House together so we can share our common concerns and interests.

I have a question for the member. We know that budgets respond to the priorities of the government. One of the things that saddened me was the fact that there were so many people excluded from this budget, such as our aboriginal Canadians when the Kelowna accord was not funded. These people are in desperate need of housing and education. They have simple needs, like clean water.

Also not funded were the child care agreements that the Liberal government had negotiated with something like eight provinces to establish child care spaces in those provinces. These are the people who need our help, the women who work outside the home, and men in some cases, and who need to look after their children. They need to find child care spaces.

I wonder if the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore would comment on that.

[Development Assistance Accountability Act, March 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to participate in this debate on a very important private member's bill, Bill C-293 sponsored by my colleague from Scarborough—Guildwood. I would like to congratulate him for an excellent piece of legislation which I certainly will be supporting. Any time we can bring more accountability and transparency to the Government of Canada, to the Parliament of Canada, that is a very good thing.

I would like to note that one of my constituents, Mr. Sharif Salla, wrote me a note and asked me to support this bill. It is not often that a constituent, at least in my experience, writes in to support a private member's bill, but I will be supporting it for that reason and for a host of other reasons.

The bill sets out what the government should be doing with respect to official development assistance, or overseas development assistance as some people would call it. It states:

Development assistance may be provided only if the competent minister is of the opinion that it (a) contributes to poverty reduction; (b) takes into account the perspectives of the poor; and (c) is consistent with Canada's international human rights obligations.

There is one piece missing. I have spoken to my colleague, but obviously the committee and the House at this point have not considered it a valid argument, but I think it still is. I would add a fourth criteria which would be that the recipient country practises good governance and is committed to the fight against corruption. I think it is a very important point.

The member for Nanaimo—Cowichan talked about the work that Malaspina College is doing with the country of Ghana. Ghana is a country that has committed to the fight against corruption. I had the great pleasure to meet President John Kufuor. Many of my constituents are from Ghana originally. He is an honest man, a good man. It is coming right from the top that Ghana is committed to fighting corruption.

We need to be mindful of that because Canadians and indeed people around the world are sick and tired of sending money to countries only to have the money ripped off by greedy leaders who stash away huge amounts in offshore banking centres or they launder the money domestically and buy votes. We cannot tolerate that any more, where 50¢ dollars that are going into countries for overseas development assistance just are not good enough. The bill goes a long way to bringing more accountability.

One of the criteria is that it contribute to poverty reduction. That is a very noble, very necessary criteria, but it is a vexing question. How can that be measured? The measurement process is very difficult, but it is still an objective that we need to keep in our sights and we need to keep working on.

A few years ago I had the great honour as a member of a subcommittee of the finance committee and the international affairs committee to meet in Washington, D.C. with Robert McNamara who had served as president of the World Bank and of course as secretary of defense in the U.S. government. In his role as president of the World Bank, we asked him how accountable could our Canadian dollars be going through these development organizations, the multilaterals, or even our bilateral assistance, how could we be assured that it was reducing poverty?

That gentleman who was president of the World Bank for seven or eight years said that was a very difficult and challenging question because there are so many other variables. If development assistance goes into a country the next year, there could be flooding, or there could be five years of drought, or there could be a conflict. How do we take out those variables and measure whether the development assistance that went to that country actually reduced poverty or did not? Notwithstanding that, it is an important criteria.

I am somewhat surprised that from time to time when we look at development assistance we do not spend enough attention looking at the question of corruption.

I recently read a book by Jeffrey Sachs who is a special adviser at the United Nations. He advises the UN on how to reach the millennium development goals, which are the goals to reduce poverty worldwide.

In his book, The End of Poverty which is some 300 pages, I looked up the word “corruption” in the index. Sadly, I could not find the word “corruption”. In fact, in his whole book when he talks about development assistance and fighting poverty, there is not one mention of the word “corruption”.

I have had the opportunity over the years to be very involved with the Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption. It has 700 members of Parliament worldwide and is represented in around 70 countries. It was actually my colleague across the floor from St. Albert who took the initiative to get this organization going. There is a lot of momentum. We are including more and more parliamentarians around the world, those parliamentarians who are committed to the fight against corruption and are committed to doing something about it.

I would like to put some context to corruption. I did some work, for example, to look at the correlation between poverty and corruption. There is a high level of correlation. It is in the 90% range.

The problem is we know there is a high correlation between poverty and corruption, but we do not really know which comes first, whether the poverty comes first and that drives the corruption, or whether the corruption comes first and that drives the poverty. There is actually no reasonable way to try to come to grips with that and try to deduce that, but we do know there is a high correlation.

I was attending some debates in Europe one time and members of Parliament in Europe were arguing that poverty drives corruption. I think that is true to some extent, particularly at the lower levels of what we call petty corruption, petty bribery, where people have to pay so many rand, rupees or shillings to get a permit to do this, that and the other thing. If the people who are working in those departments are not paid anything, they are expected to take bribes.

When leaders of countries, whether they are elected leaders or officials, are salting away millions and billions of dollars into Swiss bank accounts, I am sorry, this is not driven by poverty; this is driven by greed. I have a few examples of some of the people over the years. This is only a partial list of leaders of countries who have salted away billions of dollars. The amounts are not really in dispute. They are pretty well widely acknowledged.

For example, President Suharto of Indonesia salted away between $15 billion and $35 billion U.S. Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines salted away about $5 billion to $10 billion. Mobutu Sese Seko from Zaire, $5 billion. Sani Abacha from Nigeria, $5 billion. Slobodan Milosevic from Yugoslavia, $1 billion. Mr. Duvalier from Haiti, $300 million to $800 million. Alberto Fujimori, Peru, $600 million. Pavlo Lazarenko from Ukraine, $114 million to $200 million. Arnoldo Aleman from Nicaragua, $100 million. Mr. Estrada from the Philippines, $78 million to $80 million.

If we look at the range of those and total them up, we are looking at a figure of $32 billion to a high of $58 billion. These are just some of the leaders of these countries, impoverished countries I might add, and I will come back to that in a moment. The leaders of those impoverished countries have salted away millions. Interestingly, the list does not include President Daniel arap Moi in Kenya who salted away, it is pretty well acknowledged, $3 billion to $4 billion U.S. Imagine how many hospitals and schools that kind of money would buy in Kenya.

It is estimated that corruption can add 8% to the cost of doing business in a corrupt country. In a country such as the People's Republic of China, it is estimated that corruption accounts for about 15% of GDP.

This is an issue that we have to deal with. I was going to talk about the correlation between poverty and corruption more precisely, but I will not have time to do that.

I would like to think that perhaps my colleague from Scarborough—Guildwood would consider a friendly amendment, which would now have to be done in the other place I gather, that would add the good governance criteria to the three criteria that he has in the bill now which are excellent ones. I think we need not delude ourselves that if a country is corrupt and it has no commitment to good governance, we are sending tax dollars into an area where we are making the rich and the corrupt more rich and more corrupt, and we are not really lifting out of poverty the people that are in poverty, those very people that we are trying to reach.

[Business of Supply, March 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague from West Nova for his very articulate and impassioned debate and speech.

One of the things that I would like the member to expand on is the fact that the motion calls upon the government not to abandon the principles of equalization. One of those main principles, of course, is that provinces that have necessary resources are able to balance those resources with the provinces that do not have the necessary resources so that services and programs are roughly equivalent across this country.

If we look at Atlantic Canada, we can see that there are many challenges there. If we look at the province of Quebec, of course, it is a have not province now because of the policies of the separatists, but I am wondering about this. I know that technically the province of Quebec can take the $693 million that it got out of the increase in equalization and can do whatever it wants with that money. Does it not seem a bit strange, though, that Quebec would take that money to reduce taxes after the provinces have complained bitterly to the federal government that they need the resources to provide health care and education to their citizens?