Russ Hiebert

[Citizenship and Immigration, June 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the ethics report on the former immigration minister contains new information that the Prime Minister's Office knew of the scandal immediately following the last election.

Why did the Prime Minister not act on it then? How can Parliament or the public have any confidence in the ethics code when the Prime Minister himself knew it had been violated but conspired to keep this scandal silent?

[An Act to authorize the Minister of Finance to make certain payments, June 16th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague knows that I am not a member of the finance committee, so he would also know that I was not at the discussions that occurred in that committee when the amendments were put forward.

I do want to draw to the attention of the member and the House that none other than the Canadian Chamber of Commerce suggested that this budget bill is a huge mistake for the country. This is a respected organization that has the admiration of economists and Canadians across the country. It is saying that this is a huge mistake. Nancy Hughes Anthony, president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said:

Without a fiscal update, we are flying blind when it comes to Canada's finances with only vague assurances from the government that it will be able to balance budgets in the future. Until Canadians are given all the facts and figures, we have every right to fear that we are flirting with future budget deficits given the government's excessive spending.

That is exactly what is happening here. It is excessive spending. If the Liberals thought this spending was necessary for the country, why did they not include it in the February budget? It is absolutely clear to all Canadians that the only reason we are even debating the bill today is that the Liberals, in a desperate attempt to stay in power, were propped up by the NDP. The NDP and the Liberals are in bed together, propping up their own, call it what we may, form of power. It is ironic that they look to the other side of the House every now and again and suggest that we are in collusion with some other party when that is clearly not the case.

The NDP-Liberal-Buzz Hargrove budget, however we want to describe it, is an atrocity for the country. I hope that the people listening at home will begin to understand as more and more Conservatives stand up and make that point clear.

The Conservatives are here to get things done. We are here to work hard for Canadians. Part of our job as the official opposition is to oppose things that we think are harmful for the country. The bill is a prime example of something that will cause damage to the country. This bill, which is a page and a half long, is making large promises, some $4.5 billion, with no real fiscal spending priorities or plans whatsoever. This is basically another slush fund. The Liberals, and the NDP who are cooperating in propping up the Liberals, get to pull out of the hat whatever they want, whenever they want.

That is not what Canadians sent us here to do. Canadians sent us here to be responsible. Families in my riding work hard. They budget. They count their pennies and spend money according to priorities and plans that they have put together. Those priorities could be violin lessons, buying hockey equipment or taking vacations. There is a host of priorities that Canadians have on which they spend their money. They work hard to raise that money and they take care in how they spend it.

Yet the Liberals and the NDP members think the money comes from nowhere. They always forget the fact that it is hardworking Canadians who gave them the money in the first place, and they spend it as if it was nothing. They spend like there was no tomorrow.

It is time for the NDP members and the Liberals to wake up to the fact that Canadians will not stand for this any longer. Canadians are sick and tired of people wasting their money, as we have seen in the sponsorship scandal. They do not have any confidence in the government any more. They have seen $300 million wasted on programs that went to prop up the Liberal government, money that the Liberals used to re-elect themselves. They have seen $1 billion wasted on the gun registry.

My colleague beside me is the expert on the gun registry. He could tell the House where that money could have gone had it not gone to that wasteful project called the gun registry. Think of all the policemen, the MRIs, the benefits to health care, the people in my riding who are looking for shorter wait lists for hip surgeries and that sort of thing. That money could have saved those people a few days or a few months of waiting to get the treatment they need.

Yet the NDP members and the Liberals think they know what is best for Canadians. They are telling Canadians what their priorities ought to be when that is not the case at all.

I stand and testify to the fact that if there is anything we can do to stop this budget bill from passing, we will do exactly that, because we know that Canadians do not want it to pass.

[An Act to authorize the Minister of Finance to make certain payments, June 16th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise at report stage to address Bill C-48, an act to authorize the Minister of Finance to make certain payments.

This bill is somewhat historic. This is the first federal-NDP budget in three decades. Of course our Conservative Party cannot support this NDP budget. Canadians did not vote for an NDP budget. They did not send the 289 MPs who are not NDP members of Parliament to Ottawa to vote for this. Even the Liberal MPs across the way who are now supporting this bill are not doing so for the right reasons.

If the kind of irresponsible and reckless spending contained in Bill C-48 were a good idea, then that spending would have been included in the budget original, but it is not.

Liberal MPs are now indistinguishable from their NDP coalition partners on matters of financial policy.

Let us all recognize Bill C-48 for what it is. It is a brazen and desperate attempt to hold onto power by a regime that has been exposed as corrupt, arrogant and untrustworthy. NDP MPs have paid a price to gain their budget. Because they have actively maintained this corrupt regime in power, they are now tarred with the same brush.

However, Bill C-48 is also something else. It represents higher taxes, a return to deficit spending and a deepening of the national debt that we had recently begun to get under some control. That kind of fiscal irresponsibility and recklessness has real consequences for working families and taxpayers across Canada. Ultimately, the ability of the government to spend money depends exclusively on taking money away from the average Canadian. For some folks, it means the loss of music lessons or sports camps for their kids. For others, they may have to cancel their vacation, the one that they were looking forward to all year long. Some Canadians are going to have to work that many more hours to pay this tax bill, but those hours are hours not spent with family and friends, enjoying life.

We have a very different vision of Canada. We believe in fair taxation, individual responsibility and limited government. We recognize that government is not always the best institution to address and solve every societal problem.

For example, in my riding of south Surrey--White Rock--Cloverdale, we have a private organization called the Peace Arch Community Services, or PACS. PACS helps thousands of people in my community every year, with everything from helping the unemployed find a job or helping the hungry with food to counselling for those addicted to drugs and alcohol.

PACS does receive grants from various levels of government to help provide some of these services, but it also raises a significant portion of its funding privately. Indeed, there is great support for PACS in my community, and that is amply demonstrated by the generosity of those who fund it.

Of course PACS is just one of many private organizations, from service clubs to faith-based organizations to community groups, that provide or fund services in the community to help the weak and the vulnerable in society.

My fear is that as the government ratchets up the spending and takes even more money from people's discretionary income, there will be less left in people's pockets to give to groups like PACS that is making a real difference in the lives of Canadians.

Our Conservative vision includes a significant tax reduction that would allow Canadians greater freedom to support such worthy causes. I have no doubt they will. I am excited about the possibilities for our great land if Canadians are given such freedoms.

We had some votes late Tuesday evening of this past week where a couple of facts became apparent.

The first is that our Conservative Party is keeping its commitment to work constructively within this minority Parliament. As an example, we supported Bill C-43 at report stage, despite our misgivings about several elements in the main budget. We want to make this Parliament work and our actions speak louder than mere words.

The second and unmistakable fact is the failure of the Liberals to pay anything more than lip service to making this Parliament work. We continue to see arrogance in action as the Liberals reject reasoned amendments put forward by my party to bring the budget and its spending in line with the commitments the government made in its throne speech.

I want to review some of those commitments. They were proposed by our party and endorsed by the Liberals in a vote in the House. We called upon the government to do the following: to ensure that the employment insurance fund would only be used for the benefit of workers instead of balancing the federal budget; to reduce taxes for low and modest income Canadians; to tell the truth in government budget forecasting; to make the electoral system more fair; and to give Parliament a real voice on key foreign and defence policy issues such as missile defence.

As we examine these points in order, we can see from this budget legislation that the Liberals have repeatedly broken their promises to Parliament and to Canadians.

EI premiums have not been lowered to the level where revenues are commensurate with expenditures. Instead, the government continues to run a huge EI surplus to help it balance the budget. This is doubly strange because in the years that the Prime Minister was finance minister, he explicitly stated that payroll taxes killed jobs. It is true that payroll taxes kill jobs and excessive Liberal payroll taxes under the Prime Minister have certainly killed tens of thousands of jobs. Promise made, promise broken.

The Liberals committed to reduce taxes for low and modest income Canadians. In fact the measly tax reduction offered by the Liberals works out to one cup of coffee a month or just $1.33 starting next year. That rises to $8 a month for an individual by the fourth year of the budget. How generous. By comparison, during the last election, the Conservative Party offered the average taxpayer savings of $1,000 annually by the fourth year.

The Liberals committed to reduce taxes, yet their pennies a day tax reduction is virtually meaningless for most working families struggling with rent or a mortgage or buying school supplies or clothes or food. One might also consider the fact that the government has done nothing to reduce the high cost of gasoline, a large component of which is federal taxes. Again, promise made, promise broken.

As for truth in budget forecasting, we have already seen backtracking on this commitment. We can easily add up the more than $26 billion in additional new spending commitments the government has made since introducing the budget in February. Nearly $5 billion of that total, contained in the legislation we are debating now, was to obtain the common support of the NDP. That works out to about $260 million per vote if we add it up and divide by the number of MPs in the NDP. Yet we have the spectacle of the government standing in the House day after day in question period denying that its spending spree is going to send us back into deficits and debt.

Business groups agree that the government has been less than forthcoming with the truth in budget forecasting. According to Nancy Hughes Anthony, President of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce:

Without a fiscal update, we are flying blind when it comes to Canada’s finances with only vague assurances from the government that it will be able to balance budgets in the future....Until Canadians are given all the facts and figures, we have every right to fear that we are flirting with future budget deficits given the government’s excessive spending.

Promise made, promise broken.

As for making the electoral system more fair, there are 57 different bills the government has introduced, including the bill we are debating today, yet not one of them addresses electoral reform. Promise made, promise broken.

The government promised to give Parliament a real voice on key foreign and defence policy issues such as missile defence. Yet earlier this year Parliament was totally excluded by the Prime Minister when he unilaterally decided to opt out of the U.S. missile defence system. Once again, promise made, promise broken.

In that same throne speech the government claimed “parents must have real choices” when it came to child care. Where is the choice? The fact is the government continues to discriminate against single income families in the tax code. It simply does not value the work of the parent who stays at home. If parents are to have real choices, it is critical to reduce taxes for all families with young children.

In our amendments to the other budget bill a couple of days ago, we gave the government the opportunity to meet its promise to give parents a greater choice in child care and it chose to vote against its own promise.

As we have seen with other Liberal promises, the throne speech amounted to all talk and no action. In this budget, once again it is promise made, promise broken. The Liberals have proven themselves untrustworthy promise breakers. Soon they will have to provide an accounting to the Canadian people for this.

In the meantime I will conclude my speech where I began, and that is to say that we cannot support this NDP budget implementation bill, Bill C-48.

[Petitions, June 16th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I stand on behalf of well over 1,000 constituents from my riding of South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale who are asking that I present this petition.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to recognize that marriage is the best foundation for families and the raising of children, and that the institution of marriage between a man and a woman is being challenged. The House passed a motion in June 1999 that called for marriage to continue to be recognized as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others and that marriage is the exclusive jurisdiction of Parliament.

Based on this information, they are asking that Parliament pass legislation to recognize the institution of marriage in federal law as being a lifelong union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. I would seek permission to read the roughly 1,300 names in sequential order.

[Committees of the House, June 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for drawing such a stark and obviously apparent example of another situation where the Liberals got caught red-handed and reacted in a like manner in the sense that they tried to limit the power of the Auditor General by cutting her budget to investigate the government's corruption. That is a great analogy.

We have the Information Commissioner and the Auditor General, both responsible for investigating government corruption, both getting information and catching the Liberals red-handed and then both being attacked by the very government that they are supposed to investigate for doing such a good job. How is that for a reward?

People do what they are supposed to do. They expose Liberal corruption. What do the Liberals do? They do not thank them. They do not give them a gold watch or a plaque. They cut their budget or they try to fire them. This is the level of contempt that the Liberal government has for people whose job it is to expose corruption.

[Committees of the House, June 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Nepean—Carleton talks about his experience at a committee. My experience at the access to information and privacy committee was very similar.

When the justice minister was making his proposals for amendments to the Access to Information Act, I took the time to review the document. It was a lengthy document, probably 30 or 40 pages. About halfway through the document, I noticed one sentence at the top of a particular page. If it had been adopted by the House, it would have done exactly what the hon. member said. It would have prevented the sponsorship scandal from ever being exposed.

The sentence basically stated that if consultants were hired by a minister of the Crown, that information would be excluded from access to information requests. Yet I draw to the attention of the House that it was that kind of information which tipped off the Auditor General several years ago. That is when she began her investigation on what has become known as the sponsorship scandal. If that little sentence had been adopted in law, as proposed by the Liberal Minister of Justice, those kinds of sponsorship scandals or other possible corruptions, which perhaps are going on as we speak, would never have come to public light. That is how the Liberals play the game.

[Committees of the House, June 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's service on the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics as the interim chair. He is doing an outstanding job.

I think the real reason behind why the Liberal government does not want to reappoint Mr. Reid is because he has done an outstanding job of exposing the waste and corruption that exists in this Liberal government. That point was made earlier today and I tried to make it in my speech.

As my colleague from Nepean—Carleton mentioned earlier, the Liberals do not trust this commissioner any longer to do their will or their bidding as a lapdog. They have lost their confidence in his ability to continue to toe the Liberal line that all is good and well in the access to information regime.

That is simply not the case. I draw attention to the comments that were made by the Liberal member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell in his speech earlier today on this motion. We heard his diatribe about how the opposition parties were not using their opposition days to their full effect.

That member does not appreciate or respect the right of Canadians to hold the government accountable through the office of the Information Commissioner. In fact, he suggested that it was wasting time to debate a motion that would call upon the government to reappoint an experienced information commissioner who had done a good job of exposing the Liberal government.

The member wonders why the opposition parties would consider it important to debate the appointment of someone he calls “an extremely competent person” or some who has “done an excellent job”. He is someone his government is refusing to reappoint because he has been too effective in exposing the government's waste and corruption.

The member blundered on ad nauseam about the fact that the Liberals had manipulated the process of his appointment. We have heard from another of his colleagues that now there has been a long extended process of hiring someone else.

I do not understand why the Liberal government would have gone to such efforts to replace somebody who has done such an excellent job, somebody it admits is doing an outstanding job. Is it because he was exposing the very things that they were trying to cover-up?

[Committees of the House, June 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today and address the concurrence motion brought forward by the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.

The motion states:

That the appointment of John Reid, the Information Commissioner of Canada, be extended by an additional term of one year, effective July 1, 2005. This recommendation would not preclude Parliament from further extending the appointment after the one year extension.

There are many reasons why this government should adhere to the directive expressed in this motion. The most important reason, which I believe we will see quite clearly when we vote on this motion later, is that it is the will of both a sizable majority in Parliament and at least three of the parties present.

In a minority Parliament this is no small matter because, as we have seen already, the Liberal government does not command the full confidence of this House and needs to learn to swallow its pride and work with the other parties in the best interests of the nation.

First, the nation's best interests include providing as much stability as we can at a time of instability in this Parliament. It is not the time to change horses if we can possibly avoid it. In this regard, I note that the House agreed recently, in a spirit of cooperation, to extend the term of office of the Governor General for a year.

Second, the government must accept that the appointment of the Information Commissioner is not like most of the other appointments the governor in council makes. The Information Commissioner is an officer of Parliament and such an appointment must be approved by Parliament. MPs and senators have a much greater direct interest in appointing someone in whom we can have full confidence as an officer of Parliament.

The third reason the government should support Mr. Reid continuing as he has with his job is his curriculum vitae. He is without question the best qualified individual to fill this important role. Who else can bring to the job seven years' experience as commissioner, along with his cabinet and government experience? As a general rule, it makes sense to hire the best qualified individual for the job.

A fourth and related point is that of Mr. Reid's many accomplishments in his first seven years in this office. His latest annual report recounts some of the battles he has fought against this government, battles he has won. As a lawyer, I am impressed by his dogged determination to resolve what are thorny legal questions regarding the proper administration of the act and the exercise of his proper powers under the act.

I ask members to listen to Mr. Reid's description of these battles from his report:

For virtually all but one of the past seven years, the government and former Prime Minister Chrétien engaged in numerous legal challenges to the jurisdiction and powers of the Information Commissioner.

According to the Information Commissioner, there has never been “an organization of government that has been so viciously attacked” as his office by this Liberal administration.

Another reason he should be retained is that Mr. Reid spurred on the creation in this Parliament of the new Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, of which I am privileged to be a founding member.

As well, he is responsible for reducing the backlog of requests and substantially lowering the waiting times that existed before he took office.

It is quite a record of accomplishment. I believe Mr. Reid has created the kind of legacy with his work that is likely to benefit all Canadians in the future. It is my hope that he will be given the opportunity to continue with his reforms.

However, if the government refuses to reappoint Mr. Reid, then we are left in a quandary. His term runs out on June 30. The act is clear about what happens if the office becomes vacant on July 1. Subsection 54(4) of the Access to Information Act states:

In the event of the absence or incapacity of the Information Commissioner, or if the office of Information Commissioner is vacant, the Governor in Council may appoint another qualified person to hold office instead of the Commissioner for a term not exceeding six months...

This means that the government may well be appointing a temporary commissioner to head the office at a time of turmoil and instability. Such a commissioner would lack the approval, and perhaps the support, of the Parliament he or she is supposed to work with. That may also mean lacking the moral authority to hold this government accountable for its continued attempts to veil the administration deeper in secrecy.

Of course, the apparent refusal of this government to reappoint Mr. Reid should highlight for everyone the culture of secrecy and distrust the Liberal government is mired in.

In his appearances before our committee and in question period, the justice minister has demonstrated time and again his disregard for the principles of access to information. If this Parliament were to follow the minister's misguided approach to revising the act, we would be preventing even more information from being made available to the public. In fact, as I have pointed out in the House already, if his proposals for reform were followed just a few years ago, the sponsorship scandal, the biggest government scandal in Canadian history, would never have been exposed.

Perhaps some Liberals on that side of the House would prefer that the sponsorship scandal were never exposed. Perhaps it is embarrassing and inconvenient for some members across the way, even though they were not personally involved with the malfeasance of fellow party members. Yet better that some members be embarrassed than other members be allowed to pillage the treasury with impunity.

I did not come in here today to criticize the weak and even dangerous proposals of the justice minister without offering a better solution.

The Liberal sponsorship scandal has done untold damage to the institution of Parliament, to the federal government and to all politicians. It has bred cynicism and distrust and has undermined the confidence that the general public has in their national leadership. We need to restore public trust and confidence and we can only do that over time by offering good government, government with integrity that is both accountable and transparent.

Our party has been hard at work examining ways to make our federal government more transparent by increasing the public's access to all sorts of government information. Transparency in government helps ensure that improper practices such as the money laundering of the sponsorship scandal are exposed. Even better, transparency in government discourages criminal or unethical activity from happening in the first place.

Here are five actions a Conservative government would take.

First, we would expand the Access to Information Act to cover all crown corporations, all officers of Parliament, all foundations and all organizations that spend taxpayer dollars or perform public functions.

Second, we would establish a cabinet confidence exclusion which would be subject to review by the Information Commissioner.

Third, we would establish a duty on public officials to create records necessary to document their actions and decisions, something that is lacking at present.

Fourth, we would provide a general public interest override for all exemptions in order that the public interest should come before the secrecy of government.

Finally, we would make all exemptions discretionary and subject to an injury test.

Of course we will make other changes to increase accountability in government as well, including increasing the powers of the Auditor General and the Ethics Commissioner, increasing protection for whistleblowers and cleaning up our campaign finance laws.

The Liberal track record on transparency and accountability is very poor at present. I would encourage the government to avoid making it worse by failing to maintain in office one of the few individuals this Parliament has confidence in, listen to the will of Parliament and reappoint John Reid as Information Commissioner.

[Canada Border Services Agency Act, June 13th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the issue of the intelligence bill that has been passed in congress which would require Americans to have passports to the United States is important . The impact of it is hard to fathom. With so many Canadians and Americans crossing the border on a daily basis, it is hard to imagine what impact the law of requiring a passport would have on cross-border tourism and trade.

I have no doubt that if both Americans and Canadians were required to have passports things would come to a standstill at the border with respect to tourism. We know that about 40% of Canadians and about one-quarter of Americans have a passport. For 60% of Canadians and 75% of Americans to get a passport in the next year and a half before the legislation comes into effect in January 2007 for air travel and January 1, 2008 for land travel, it would be an enormous burden on administration as far as the passport office is concerned.

The impacts are far greater. Many people cross the border on a whim, whether it is to get gas, buy milk, get their skates sharpened or who knows what, perhaps respond to an emergency. We have been friends and neighbours for more than a century and anything that would impede traffic across the border, such as this requirement, would have a huge consequence and impact on our cultures.

He wants to know what can be done. I think a lot can be done. First, more members of Parliament need to go to Washington and speak with members of congress, as he and the other members of the border caucus have done, to raise this issue with them. We need to heighten the level of alertness with respect to the impact of this legislation.

We also need to make formal submissions to the U.S. congress. Canadians will have about a 60 day window of opportunity to respond to the legislation and for us to give our feedback. I would encourage all members of Parliament in the House to take the opportunity to send a letter of comment on the impact.

The member's suggestion about requesting a report from Industry Canada is a good one. I think we need to have bright minds on this part of the border issue looking at the impacts and possible resolutions to the problem. The suggestions that I have outlined are a good first step. We do not want to get into a situation, especially in British Columbia where the Olympics will be held in just a few years, where Canadians and Americans are impeded from crossing the border simply because a passport is required.

The legislation makes it clear that other forms of documentation, perhaps a combination of documents, such as a driver's licence, a citizenship card or a birth certificate, might be sufficient. I am working with James Sensenbrenner and his office in Washington to hopefully find these kinds of solutions, but the time is now for us to act on these very important issues.

[Canada Border Services Agency Act, June 13th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to rise and address Bill C-26, an act to establish the Canada Border Services Agency, or CBSA. The House will be aware that our party is supporting this legislation.

However, I want to state that I am unimpressed with the government over the timing of the bill. The administration created the CBSA in December of 2003, more than a year and a half ago and, perhaps even more disturbing, during the last Parliament. Time and again we see the government creating new departments and agencies and spending money before Parliament has authorized those actions.

Liberals demonstrate no respect for this institution. This is nothing more than sheer arrogance on the part of the government. Nevertheless, the bill represents an important step forward in the effort to bring our antiquated system of national security into the 21st century.

Creating a single agency to provide border services and security at ports of entry is a logical and long overdue action. Of course, providing our border services officers with the resources, training and equipment they need to do this job is another matter entirely, and it has become quite clear to me that the government has failed to deliver on this critical aspect of the plan.

Yes, the government has made spending announcements and even provided for such spending in recent budgets, yet the reality is that those resources are not getting to the front lines.

The famous Peace Arch crossing is in my riding of South Surrey--White Rock--Cloverdale. As a border MP representing the riding with western Canada's busiest land crossings, I regularly receive reams of information about border ports that are understaffed, under-equipped and completely unprotected.

That leaves our unarmed border services officers vulnerable. Often, the closest armed police presence is many minutes or even hours away. That is unacceptable. I want to share a story as it has been relayed to me by people at the front lines:

Regarding the currency seizure of $292,125 USD in early April - there is no secure manner in which to count proceeds of crime. Pacific Highway Traffic office is made primarily out of windows. During that currency seizure, as with most, the money was counted in an unsecured room with windows on three sides, looking out into the lanes of traffic and the public areas. During the day the windows are somewhat opaque. At night the windows became completely transparent because the office lights are on. Pedestrians who were walking into Canada were able to observe the goings on of the Inspectors inside the office as well as the counting of almost three hundred thousand dollars, which took about 7 hours. The Mounties attended for about an hour, then left. Management views Proceeds of Crime seizures as commodity seizures plain and simple. They must not understand the “Crime” part of Proceeds of Crime and that we are dealing with a high risk seizure with many individuals having a vested interest in the smuggled cash.

The proof of what I hear is to be found in the constant reports of vehicles speeding through land crossings, with 1,600 last year alone. This is not just a matter of a union complaining for the sake of its workers, although they are certainly right to push for safer conditions. This is about national security. What were those vehicles carrying? Were they carrying narcotics, weapons, contraband cigarettes and liquor, or even fugitives from justice? Who knows?

The Deputy Prime Minister has boasted about the work of the integrated border enforcement teams. That is great, but it is only part of the solution. Those teams can crack down on smuggling at isolated spots on the border, but if we are allowing hundreds of vehicles to simply zip across the border on the highways, unchecked, then are we any further ahead? I think not.

It is now the policy of the CBSA to wave through suspects who are known to be armed and dangerous instead of confronting and arresting those who are a threat to Canada when we have the opportunity to do so. We simply wave them through and hope that the police will catch up to them later in our neighbourhoods. This Liberal policy is so confused that it would be laughable if it were not so dangerous.

The other comment I want to make about national security concerns the gaping hole the Liberals created when they disbanded the ports police in 1994. It is quite clear, from reading criminal intelligence service reports and other reports, that smuggling through Canada's ports is a major problem that remains largely unaddressed, despite a minor police and CBSA presence at many ports. Even if we were to tighten up on the cars and trucks that make land crossings, our national security appears to be something one could still drive a ship through.

In an internal RCMP intelligence assessment, Canadian ports have become a haven for organized crime. According to the report, customs and police feel threatened, while workers are coerced to do crimes. Organized criminal involvement in the smuggling of drugs, humans and counterfeit products at Canada's biggest marine ports is so pervasive that customs officers and police have been intimidated and even independent thieves will not dare to work alone.

The Liberal's newly appointed ambassador to the United States has affirmed what our border officers are saying. He made it clear last weekend that our borders were not adequately protected. Frank McKenna made it clear that we have a major problem with narcotics and weapons making it into Canada. Even senior Liberals are now admitting to the government's failure to address this issue adequately.

We can pass the bill, and we will, but let us be clear that this is not the solution to our national security problems at the border. It is only the beginning.

It is because we have such problems at our border that I have taken steps myself to address these questions. In December of last year, I was joined by border MPs from every party in the House and from every part of the country in founding the parliamentary border caucus.

Our co-chairs, the member for Sarnia—Lambton, the member for Windsor West, the member for Saint-Jean and myself have led this non-partisan caucus in addressing matters of national security and trade.

We spent time meeting with the employees and managers of the border services agency and their union leaders. We have travelled to see the problems that exist at our border crossings in different parts of the country firsthand. It is obvious to us that Bill C-26 is not the only action that needs to be taken.

For example, our caucus recently met in Windsor, Ontario, the site of the world's busiest border crossing, to discuss with representatives of the U.S. congressional border caucus, including their co-chairman representative, Bart Stupak, the importance of moving on a new crossing in that area.

Forty-four percent of Canada-U.S. trade crosses at Windsor. If there is a main artery in our economy, this is it and yet, after 12 years of Liberal government, there is no enabling statute to even facilitate the creation of a new crossing. Bill C-44, elements of which could be of some assistance in making a new Windsor crossing a reality, languishes at first reading, and the Liberal government has not even given it an hour of debate since introducing it this past March.

Also, waiting times at some border crossings, especially for commercial traffic, are unacceptable, and the cost to the Canadian economy, not to mention to truckers and their families, is millions of dollars in lost income. Some of this is a result of security measures put in place on the U.S. since 9/11, which Canadians have not fully adapted to yet, but some of it is a matter of inadequate facilities and infrastructure on our side.

The issue of a passport requirement for all travellers to the U.S. was raised recently in the media. While the U.S. legislation requiring secure ID does not specifically require passports, the possibility has raised concerns on both sides of the border.

I have personally travelled to Washington, D.C. on more than one occasion to meet with congressman James Sensenbrenner, the chairman of the U.S. judiciary committee, to work on an acceptable resolution. However I do not believe the hasty response of the Deputy Prime Minister, that Canada might require passports as well, has done anything to help the situation.

By all means, let us pass Bill C-26, but I would urge this government, at a bare minimum, to begin to provide proper protection, support, resources and equipment for our border services officers and provide the resources to apprehend suspects at the border.

Let us move on enabling legislation for creating new bridges and tunnels to the U.S. Let us work with our counterparts in the U.S., as the border caucus has already been doing, to reduce waiting times, protect trade and maintain our privileged access to the world's largest market.