Bill C-10 (Historical)

Safe Streets and Communities Act

An Act to enact the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act and to amend the State Immunity Act, the Criminal Code, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other Acts

Part 1 of this enactment creates, in order to deter terrorism, a cause of action that allows victims of terrorism to sue perpetrators of terrorism and their supporters. It also amends the State Immunity Act to prevent a listed foreign state from claiming immunity from the jurisdiction of Canadian courts in respect of actions that relate to its support of terrorism.
Part 2 amends the Criminal Code to
(a) increase or impose mandatory minimum penalties, and increase maximum penalties, for certain sexual offences with respect to children;
(b) create offences of making sexually explicit material available to a child and of agreeing or arranging to commit a sexual offence against a child;
(c) expand the list of specified conditions that may be added to prohibition and recognizance orders to include prohibitions concerning contact with a person under the age of 16 and use of the Internet or any other digital network;
(d) expand the list of enumerated offences that may give rise to such orders and prohibitions; and
(e) eliminate the reference, in section 742.1, to serious personal injury offences and to restrict the availability of conditional sentences for all offences for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 14 years or life and for specified offences, prosecuted by way of indictment, for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 10 years.
It also amends the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to provide for minimum penalties for serious drug offences, to increase the maximum penalty for cannabis (marijuana) production and to reschedule certain substances from Schedule III to that Act to Schedule I.
Part 3 amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to
(a) clarify that the protection of society is the paramount consideration for the Correctional Service of Canada in the corrections process and for the National Parole Board and the provincial parole boards in the determination of all cases;
(b) establish the right of a victim to make a statement at parole hearings and permit the disclosure to a victim of certain information about the offender;
(c) provide for the automatic suspension of the parole or statutory release of offenders who receive a new custodial sentence and require the National Parole Board to review their case within a prescribed period; and
(d) rename the National Parole Board as the Parole Board of Canada.
It also amends the Criminal Records Act to substitute the term “record suspension” for the term “pardon”. It extends the ineligibility periods for applications for a record suspension and makes certain offences ineligible for a record suspension. It also requires the National Parole Board to submit an annual report that includes the number of applications for record suspensions and the number of record suspensions ordered.
Lastly, it amends the International Transfer of Offenders Act to provide that one of the purposes of that Act is to enhance public safety and to modify the list of factors that the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness may consider in deciding whether to consent to the transfer of a Canadian offender.
Part 4 amends the sentencing and general principles of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, as well as its provisions relating to judicial interim release, adult and youth sentences, publication bans, and placement in youth custody facilities. It defines the terms “violent offence” and “serious offence”, amends the definition “serious violent offence” and repeals the definition “presumptive offence”. It also requires police forces to keep records of extrajudicial measures used to deal with young persons.
Part 5 amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to allow officers to refuse to authorize foreign nationals to work in Canada in cases where to give authorization would be contrary to public policy considerations that are specified in instructions given by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.
The enactment also makes related and consequential amendments to other Acts.

Justice

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, the government's prisons agenda in Bill C-10 is being rammed through despite overwhelming opposition from all sides. Police chiefs say it is unbalanced. The Canadian Bar Association and crown prosecutors say it will overload our justice system. The provinces are unable to pick up the tab. Even the government itself recognized flaws and proposed amendments here today, which were ruled out of order.

Why is the government's approach to go it alone? Why do the Conservatives refuse to work with others on crime prevention and insist on rushing through this flawed bill?

Telephone Calls to Mount Royal Constituents

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will respond to the two interventions from the other side.

Some references were made to ten percenters. Mr. Speaker, your predecessor ruled that there was a prima facie breach of my privileges because of false and misleading ten percenters that were targeting households in my riding, at that time targeting only the Jewish households in my riding.

It is part of a pattern. I know the Conservatives covet the riding. I know they would like to win the riding of Mount Royal, but they have to do so on their merits, not by false, misleading, and prejudicial information as took place in the ten percenters, which your predecessor ruled was a prima facie breach of privilege, and with a repetition now with these false and misleading phone calls.

This is not a question of rumours of a byelection. We are all subjected to that kind of thing. People in my riding or in any riding might be asking their member, “I heard you might be resigning” or “I heard you might be going elsewhere”, or whatever. That is part of constituents sometimes asking a legitimate question to their member of Parliament. This is not what is being asked here.

These are constituents who have been told, in false and misleading phone calls, by an agency supported by the Conservative Party that there is an imminent byelection and that the member has resigned or is about to resign. It is not people coming up to me and saying they heard rumours as is part of the normal give and take. However, I should not have to be back in my riding this weekend and have people coming up and saying they were called and told that I had resigned or that they were called and told that there is an imminent byelection going on.

Under the principles of breaches of privilege, that is what is called “sowing confusion in the minds of the electorate”. That is what is called “impeding the member of Parliament in the performance of his duties”.

I can speak with my constituents in regard to rumour, but not when they are telling me that they are getting calls making statements of fact, when these are not statements of fact but false and misleading misrepresentations of fact. That is the fundamental difference. This is not a matter of chilling speech. The opposite member elevated this to absolute freedom of speech.

If we look at our whole constitutional law in this country, there is no such thing as absolute freedom of speech. We have laws with respect to limitations on speech with regard to perjury, so people can have a right to a fair trial. We have limitations on false and misleading advertising, directly on point, so the consumer can be protected against false and misleading advertising. We have laws against obscenity, so people can be protected with respect to their human dignity. I can go through the whole law of free speech. I happen to have a certain degree of expertise, having written on it and pleaded it before the Supreme Court.

This has nothing to do with free speech. This has everything to do with false, misleading, and prejudicial information held out in a representation to constituents and held out as if it were a statement of fact, clearly causing prejudice and clearly undermining the role of the member.

If the members opposite say that they are happy to see that I am very active and involved, yes I am active and involved. That is our responsibility as members, to be active and involved.

However, when constituents believe not only that we are not active and involved but that we are not even a member anymore, that we have stepped down or are about to step down, this transforms the entire relationship between the member and his or her constituents.

Equally, when I was asked this past weekend, after my constituents had heard that I had stepped down, I began to tell them about some of the things I was doing with respect to Bill C-10 in this House, which is somewhat ironic that we are speaking on this today or maybe not so ironic that we are supposed to enter into a discussion on Bill C-10. It is a nice diversionary approach on the government's part. However, let us leave that aside.

The point is that the members of my riding were not aware of the work that I have been doing and that was precisely what I said in my point of privilege. It is not only false and misleading but it overtakes and overshadows, and effectively obscures, if not excises, the work that I am doing and the opportunity to engage in what the government has called political dialogue. I would love to be in political dialogue. I do not mind criticism. I do not mind voters coming up and saying, “Your position on Bill C-10, we totally disagree with it”.

That is fine. That is fair comment. That is fundamentally different from a voter coming up to me and saying, “How come you are not even involved on Bill C-10? You are not even there”. That is where the prejudice is: the reduction of the member of Parliament as if he is no longer a functioning member of Parliament.

There is no knowledge of all the work that I have been doing in the last two weeks, whether it was standing in the House to speak to Bill C-304, a private member's bill on the issue of freedom of speech and hate speech, where I thought the intervention was important, or that I have undertaken the representation of an Egyptian blogger, a leader in the Tahrir revolution, now being played out in Egypt, to have been imprisoned for allegedly insulting the Egyptian military, a rather dramatically important case. My constituents had no knowledge of that. When I held a press conference in that case, the questions that I was asked by journalists were, “Are you resigning? Have you resigned? Is there a byelection?”

Therefore, it did interfere with my work. It interfered in my exchanges with the media. It interfered with my exchanges with my constituents. It interfered with the public perception of the work in which I was engaged.

I want to conclude by saying that there is no suggestion here that any speech be chilled or suppressed. What is suggested here is that I practised a misconduct that misrepresents matters that relate directly to the performance of members in their duties as members of Parliament.

To say that it does not address what is being done in this House, it addresses the capacity of members, not only me, to perform their duties in the House and as members of Parliament when outside the House with their constituents, among the public, the media and the like.

It has a pervasive and persistent prejudicial fallout impeding, if not prejudicing, the members in the performance of their duties. It comes directly within all the principles and precedents that I cited in my two statements respecting the request for a prima facie finding of a breach of privilege.

Safe Streets and Communities Act

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition today from Canadians, primarily from the Montreal and Ottawa areas, also concerned with Bill C-10, making the same point, that we have nine separate bills put together into this omnibus crime bill, the so-called safe streets and communities act, that many petitioners believe will not deliver safe streets in communities.

The petitioners ask that this House consider separating Bill C-10 into its component parts so that each part can be dealt with separately.

I present this petition in hopes that this House will still come to its senses and not pass the omnibus crime bill as drafted.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition on Bill C-10 that has been signed by Canadians across the country.

Bill C-10 is the omnibus crime bill. The petitioners say that it crudely bundles together too many pieces of unrelated legislation, some of which makes sense and some of which does not. There is also a big problem with its implementation because Ontario and Quebec may refuse to pay for the costs of some of the measures in this bill that would be downloaded to them.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to separate Bill C-10 into its pieces and allow members to vote on each part separately.

Protection of Children

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West—Glanbrook, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring to the attention of the House a petition I received that calls upon Parliament to enact stronger legislation to deal with child sexual abuse. Statistics show that 39% of those who possess child sexual abuse materials have images of children between the ages of 3 and 5 and 83% have images of children between 6 and 16 being sexually assaulted.

Section 163 of the Criminal Code currently allows sentences as little 90 days for making criminal child sexual material and only 14 days for the possession of criminal child sexual materials.

Well over 5,000 signatories of this petition are requesting stronger mandatory minimum sentences that would protect children, provide justice and deter pedophilia.

I should add in closing that the Canada Family Action, which is sponsoring the petition, applauds our government for addressing the issue in a meaningful way with our crime legislation, Bill C-10, which is currently before the House.

Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will share my time with the member for Churchill.

Canadian democracy is falling apart. We need only look at the protests happening across Canada and Quebec to see that this is the case. Bill C-10 is another example. Instead of dialogue, the Conservatives issued a gag order to force the passage of a very controversial bill on safe streets and communities. They are doing the same thing with Bill C-18. I will briefly go over what this bill proposes.

It proposes that we dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board; put an end to the single-desk marketing of wheat and barley; replace the board with an interim structure with voluntary membership; and privatize it or dissolve it completely if, in the coming years, it is not profitable for any private firms. Bill C-18 is a reflection of the neo-liberalism that underlies this government's economic policy.

Representatives of prairie farmers and other independent experts have raised concerns about the repercussions that dismantling the Canadian Wheat Board would have on farming families and on the economy, not only in the Prairies, but also in Canada as a whole, during this period of economic uncertainty. But the Conservative government is obsessed with its own ideology and it refuses to listen and take these concerns into consideration.

The Canadian Wheat Board is an economic structure that has proven its effectiveness and its impact on the prairie economy. Since it sells Canadian farmers' grain products in about 70 countries around the world, there is no doubt that the Canadian Wheat Board contributes to our country's international presence and helps improve the living conditions of the farmers for whom it brings in some $4 billion to $7 billion a year. In other words, it pumps billions of dollars into our economy.

The numbers prove that the Canadian Wheat Board is economically viable. There is absolutely no doubt, and the Conservatives' arguments in favour of dismantling it were ripped apart by speakers before me. The Conservatives are using the failure in Ontario, which withdrew from the single-desk system, to justify dismantling the Canadian Wheat Board. That argument is indefensible. It does not apply to the reality facing farmers in western Canada. To compare the two is specious and even irresponsible.

It is not possible to compare apples to oranges on the grounds that apples and oranges are both fruit. In fact, it was through a democratic process—led by farmers themselves—that Ontario farmers decided to abolish their single desk. Prairie farmers, in contrast, voted to keep the Canadian Wheat Board. Furthermore, the wheat grown by Ontario farmers is used only in pastry, cookies and cakes for local consumption. The wheat grown by prairie farmers is used for bread and pasta for which there is no significant local market.

While Ontario's farmers rely more on grain companies to handle their crops, prairie farmers, on the other hand, count on the board for fair market access for everyone, including those who ship in producer cars.

The Conservatives claim that Bill C-18 will improve farmers' ability to market their wheat and barley by giving them a choice of who to sell their grain to and how to do so. But the reality is quite different: this bill is not compatible with their desires. It removes some freedom of choice from the farmers. At present, the board is controlled, managed and financed by farmers, for farmers.

With Bill C-18, the government will begin to intrude rashly into the board's management, which is the responsibility of the farmers. They do not need the government's help.

We have to wonder whether the Conservatives' desire to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board is not driven by major grain companies, especially American ones, which are rubbing their hands together at the thought of having free access to Canadian grain.

The Canadian Wheat Board owes its impact to a certain number of parameters that we must remember in order to make an informed decision. Before coming back to the repercussions that dismantling the Canadian Wheat Board will likely have, I should mention that the Canadian Wheat Board manages a supply chain from the farm to the table. The international reputation it enjoys, because of the quality of its constant supply and the quality of the services it provides, is envied by other countries.

It has a flexible and democratic organizational structure. Since it is not a grain corporation, the Canadian Wheat Board, which the government is seeking to dismantle today with Bill C-18, does not have any grain handling infrastructure—such as grain elevators or port terminals—to receive the grain production from the farmers and to load it onto ships. It is not overly staffed either. What is more, it does not run on a very big budget. Its only major asset is, and remains, its mandate, defined by a law authorizing it to sell western Canadian wheat, durum and barley through a single desk.

In light of these many advantages, we are appealing to this government to maintain the Canadian Wheat Board, because abolishing it would be disastrous, not only for the prairie economy, but also for the lives of prairie families, for whom farming is their bread and butter.

In closing, I would like to point out a few of the repercussions I alluded to. First of all, abolishing the Canadian Wheat Board will reduce profits for large-scale farmers. Indeed, since it is the sole seller of western Canadian wheat and barley, the board generates significant premiums for prairie farmers. With a single-desk model, not having competition among suppliers means that prices are not driven down for the same grain buyer.

Second, abolishing the Canadian Wheat Board will jeopardize the funding of activities for any future entity. Indeed, under the Canadian Wheat Board Act, the board cannot keep any profits or own any real assets. As a result, it has no financial base. It will have to acquire a significant financial base in order to prosper in a free market.

Third, abolishing the board will require whoever liquidates it to pay all the costs associated with the liquidation, so that a new entity cannot be forced to take them on. Given that the government—and not farmers—wants to liquidate it, farmers should not have to assume the cost of this government's ill-advised decision.

Fourth, abolishing the board will have negative repercussions on producer car shippers and on short line railways.

This bill is dangerous. It will be disastrous for prairie farmers in these difficult economic times. We believe that any decision on the future of the board should be made by farmers for farmers.

These are some of the reasons why we oppose abolishing the Canadian Wheat Board.

Opposition Motion—Closure and Time Allocation

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, let us just make sure we get one thing straight here.

While the NDP members are complaining that they are not given enough time to debate a piece of legislation, they are not really interested in debate. Their motive and their rationale is to try to defeat government legislation. That is it.

They do not want to debate; they just want to kill the bills. They have tried to kill so many bills, Quentin Tarantino would be impressed. That is what NDP members are attempting to do here.

I would simply ask the member, does he not think that over 100 speeches and over 50 hours of debate on bills like Bill C-10 is adequate?

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to speak to the NDP motion. And quite sincerely, I am especially pleased to speak since it directly concerns your role, Mr. Speaker, which you fulfill so well out of respect for your title in the House. I am a new member. I have the advantage of a fresh outlook, and I can say that I truly appreciate the work you do.

I have a quote here from May 2, 2011: “We must be the government of all Canadians, including those who did not vote for us [I would like to repeat that last part: “including those who did not vote for us”], and that includes the great Quebec nation.”

That is an excerpt from the first speech the Right Hon. Prime Minister, our current Prime Minister, made as the leader of a parliamentary majority.

That was how he felt on May 2, after years in opposition and years of leading a minority government. And now here we are, just a few months later, having to defend the idea of the opposition's right to speak in the House.

I would also like to quote an excerpt from an excellent column that was published in Quebec in La Presse on November 23, 2011. It does a wonderful job of expressing the opinion of a very large majority of Quebeckers and likely Canadians as well:

...sometimes, when a leader reaches his goal [in this case, a majority in Parliament for the current Prime Minister's party], blind partisanship gives way to some magnanimity [lending a compassionate ear, let us say], a word that apparently is not in the vocabulary of...[I will not quote directly, since we cannot use the current Right Hon. Prime Minister's name in the House] and his key ministers.

Do not forget that this government enjoys a majority in the House, but it was elected by only 39.6% of Canadians (16.5% in Quebec, a province particularly badly crushed by the bulldozer).

When, on the night of his victory, [our hon. Prime Minister] declared that his would be a government of all Canadians, it was apparently just empty words devoid of any real intention....

The column used the Prime Minister's last name followed by the words “the bulldozer”.

That is what the columnists who are by far the most popular among Quebeckers are saying in black and white, without mincing words. The same thing is happening in English Canada. We should be worried that things have gotten to this point and that something like this is happening in a democracy as old as ours.

It is all caused by a problem involving overuse of what is called the “gag order”. Before digging more deeply into the problem, I would first like to correct a statement by the government, which is inaccurate to say the least, in response to our motion today. It relates to Bill C-13.

I would simply like to point out that the bill is to implement certain provisions of the budget. We are not postponing passage of a budget, this is about implementing it. Bill C-13 was introduced on October 4, 2011. Contrary to what some of my colleagues opposite have said, we have not been delaying passage of a budget since the throne speech in June. That is simply not the case. We were questioning an extremely important document. One of my colleagues has said it was as thick as a phone book. It was only introduced on October 4. The budget is 644 pages long. There have been only seven days of debate in the House and there was time allocation at each stage. There was time allocation at second reading, at report stage and at third reading.

It is completely incorrect to use this example when we look at what has in fact happened and the very proper behaviour of the opposition, which was simply asking for more time to discuss the 640 or so pages of the budget.

Let us come back to the main problem. The government has the unilateral power to invoke rule 78 concerning time allocation. This is where we have a problem. Canadians already have a democratic deficit.

With our first past the post electoral system, we can end up with a House like this one, where 60 % of Canadians find themselves represented by a minority of members in the House. So we have a serious democratic deficit that has been corrected in a number of modern democracies. I could talk for 25 minutes on this subject alone, so I will not dwell too long on it.

This means we are stuck with this flawed poor first past the post system which distorts the results. What is left for the Canadians who make up that 60 % and more? There is only one thing left for them: the right for their representatives, who have been relegated to a minority, to speak, to introduce numerous suggestions by motion and to be heard. If we take away the very essence of the very little bit of what is left of democratic rights in the present system, we have to wonder what will remain of democracy in Canada. It is as serious as that.

Gagging the opposition seven times in a short time span means gagging six Canadians out of ten, seven times in a few months. If we still think that the government is a responsible government, that the House is a House of representatives, gagging this side of the House seven times means gagging six Canadians out of ten, seven times in a few months. I would like to hear it, if a single one of my colleagues opposite disagrees with this perception or this view of democracy. Can they rise in the House and say that if the opposition is gagged seven times, that is not the equivalent, in the present situation in the House, of gagging six Canadians out of ten, seven times in a few months?

The gag was applied in the case of Bill C-18 on wheat management, a foundation of the economy, a foundation of Canadians’ food supply, which is a somewhat important question. The gag was applied twice. The gag was applied in the case of Bill C-10. It was even done in committee, even in that separate kind of place where we are supposed to be able to hear experts and speak with them. Even there, the gag was applied. And we still have to point out over and over again in the House that Bill C-10 is opposed by the Canadian Bar Association, by the lawyers’ organizations in all provinces and by a majority of the provincial governments. And the gag was applied.

I want to come back to the speech by the Right Hon. Prime Minister about governing for all Canadians. He had a perfect opportunity to prove that between his words and his actions, there might one day be some consistency. We moved a very simple motion more than six times to introduce a Bill C-10A on everything to do with sexual assault against minors. The House would have stood up the next day and adopted the motion. Those six motions were never once considered by the current government, led by a prime minister who began, on the first evening of his first-ever win as a majority government, by saying he would govern for all Canadians.

The first definition that appears after a simple little search on the Speaker's site is as follows:

To ensure the orderly flow of business, the House of Commons observes parliamentary rules and traditions, both written and unwritten. It is the Speaker's duty to interpret these rules impartially, to maintain order, and to defend the rights and privileges of Members, including [the first right mentioned in black and white] the right to freedom of speech.

What the motion is calling for is quite simple, Mr. Speaker. It is to give you this responsibility, which is part of your role, and to give you more powers. We are not playing with something here that does not exist in other countries or inventing a very complex democratic mechanism. We are simply saying that the role of Speaker is indeed to be impartial—a role that the current Speaker is fulfilling very well in the House—and that we are all giving him the role to address this antidemocratic abuse of Standing Order 78 to gag debate to no end, and to ask why there needs to be a gag order.

We have to ask if there are excellent reasons to gag debate and why the government should quickly silence the official opposition, which, in our system, represents the majority of Canadians.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the House for allowing me to speak to this motion. I also thank my colleague for Windsor—Tecumseh for bringing this motion forward at this point. I want to look at the motion in detail because it is not just a simple statement that this is a bad sort of thing and that the government should not use time allocation as much as it does. The member provides some detail in the motion that I would like to talk about.

For instance, the motion states:

...a study and make recommendations to amend the Standing Orders with respect to closure and time allocation, such that: (i) a Minister would be required to provide justification for the request for such a curtailment of debate;

That is certainly something we ought to talk about simply because when time allocation is brought into this House we hear little justification for doing so. We are given short explanations that are basically passed over. The reason for that, on many occasions, is that there is no justification and no requirement to justify it. I agree with the member in many respects on that. I think that justification should be brought to the House and presented to all of us. A big reason for doing that is that some of the fundamental questions as to why time allocations are brought sometimes go unanswered, such as, if bills have passed over a certain period time such that members of Parliament could consult their constituents. A lot of the time, items are promised during campaigns, which is what the Conservatives go on about, and on which hey are now delivering.

In 2008, there was a basic promise in dealing with Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia regarding the Atlantic Accord and some of the money that would be withheld within the province because of oil revenues. The promise was that the equalization formula would be made such that non-renewable resources would not play a factor in tabulating each provinces' ability to raise money.

However, when the budget implementation bill came out, much later than the broad principles, it was realized that the devil certainly did lay within the details of what was happening in the budget implementation. It ended up that the promise, by which 100% of non-renewables was to come out of the formula, was not in the budget implementation. Essentially, they had put an agreement that was outside of normal equalization and brought it back in. Former member, Bill Casey, was one of the members who left the party as a result of this. He voted against the budget for that and sat on the opposition side shortly thereafter.

I only put that into context because there is a certain amount of time from when the broad principles of the budget are announced by the finance minister to the time of budget implementation. Once we look at the legislation and a lot of the details that are involved, sometimes these broad principles get watered down or are not what they had appeared to be. Therefore, I think time allocation works against this principle.

The government will remark that the Liberals did this back when they were in power, but a lot of times, such as the Species At Risk Act, time allocation was brought in at third reading. At that point there had been a substantial opportunity to discuss and debate.

Canadians can review the cut and thrust of debate, enough to see what the principles are about, how the legislation is laid out and then, coming back from committee, how the proposed legislation was fine-tuned or not.

I commend my hon. colleague for bringing this motion. I think he brings up some decent questions as to how we can deal with time allocation, filibustering and the limitation of debate within the House.

We also now use the terminology “constituency weeks”. For instance, when the House is shut down for a week, people say that members have a week off. However, no, they are in their constituencies dealing with constituents and they can find out at that point how their constituents feel about certain pieces of legislation. Time allocation works against that, in my opinion.

One of the comments that was made earlier was that we have had so much time to deal with this, that the budget implementation bill has been in the House for quite some time and that we have dealt with it thoroughly, therefore, no bills, as was stated, have received royal assent. However, that is not true. At the end of June, we had Bill C-2, Bill C-4 and three other bills that received royal assent at that time. Those measures went through.

When the Conservatives say that the budget implementation bill needs to be passed in 2011 because it is budget 2011, that may be a valid point but, if it is valid, why are we spending all these hours talking about copyright legislation, the long gun registry and other measures, such as Bill C-10?

What the Conservatives could do is put that on the agenda each and every time. Every member in the House, at that point, could certainly speak their piece on how they feel about the budget implementation bill or the budget bill for this coming year, 2012.

I do want to point out that in this motion the other thing that it goes on about is that:

(ii) the Speaker would be required to refuse such a request in the interest of protecting the duty of Members to examine legislation thoroughly, unless the government's justification sufficiently outweighs the said duty....

There is a great deal of responsibility in what the Speaker must bring to this legislature, beyond the obvious, which is the running of the House. The Speaker also the responsibility of judging whether the normal legislative process is adhered to. We saw examples of that when our former speaker was here. He made big rulings, certainly rulings that made history, and will always be looked upon as a key moment in the speaker's career, because of the judgments that he brought.

Mr. Speaker, if we look at the way you do your job, one of the key responsibilities is to look at legislation that has been accepted in principle and scope in second reading, then you must decide if, within the committee, its work went beyond the scope and principle of the bill. You have the authority to overturn those amendments, even if everybody in this House, as I have said time and time again, says that they agree with the amendments that were made, you, Mr. Speaker, have the authority to turn them down despite that.

It has been done before. It happened in a private member's bill some time ago on back-to-work legislation, or what people call “anti-scab” legislation. There was an amendment to exclude essential services and there seemed to be a lot of agreement with that, certainly the majority of members agreed with that, but the speaker turned down that particular amendment because it went beyond the scope and principle of the bill.

Therefore, this brings up a good point, which is that this motion would say that you, Mr. Speaker, should have that responsibility to turn this time allocation down, if it is not justified, certainly in dealing with the history, the principles and the spirit of how this House of Commons operates. I think that is a good thing. Why can the Speaker not be involved in this and say that he or she finds that it is not a very justifiable answer as to why we have to slap time allocation on this when we are dealing with something as large and complex as the budget?

Another valid point, I believe, is the fact that following the election there seems to be a lot of new members in the House. I only say “seems to be” because I think all the new members in this House of Commons are doing a fine job. I think they are holding the bar up there when it comes to representation of their constituency.

Time allocation runs in the face of that because a lot of these new members have not had their say. It is their first time in the House and I think compassion should be given, if not by the government then certainly by the Speaker to say, “Well, just a moment”. This legislation in regard to budget 2011 needs to be done soon, therefore, new members in the House should have a chance and the opportunity to speak to that.

I think that, in and of itself, is a good reason why we should have a filter upon which time allocation is used in this House. It has been used throughout history. I cannot justify a lot of the time allocations that have been used because, in many cases, it was wrong. Does the minister not agree? Whether it was red, blue, orange or any other colour, it was wrong in many cases. Depending on the issue, depending on the people involved and depending on the fact that some people have not had their say about this legislation, and that there has not been as much consultation, time allocation is used in a very crass way.

If we look at the situation in front of us now, there are several pieces of legislation deemed important, but some more so than others. Therefore, I would humbly suggest to the House that we should support this simply because it brings a new element into the House where no one party has the authority—

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will share my time with the hon. member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor.

I find it a little sad that, with this government, we always start with the end instead of the beginning. Regardless of what we may think, this government does what it wants and cares little about parliamentary procedures and tradition.

Since the last election, we are seeing too much abuse. This government is abusing its majority, thinking that with the support of 39% of Canadians it can do anything. And this is an inflated number because it does not include the 40% of Canadians who did not vote. So, it is not even 30% of Canadians who supported the government. Therefore, it should at least respect the opinion of all Canadians. It is not the first time that we raise this issue.

Today, we are talking about the government cutting debate short after introducing a bill, and not even after several hours of debate. This government has shown repeatedly its contempt for our institutions. In the case of Senate appointments, it has also shown that it does not respect its own promises. Indeed, the government had committed to appointing only elected senators. However, two weeks after the election, the Prime Minister not only appointed to the Senate individuals who had lost their election, but he did so without consulting the provinces, as he had promised to do.

Recently, we saw that this government had even set criteria to appoint an officer of Parliament. I am not going to get into details, but there were two basic and very simple criteria to select the Auditor General. First, the individual had to be an accountant and, second, he or she had to be bilingual. This government ignored the fact that the appointee had to be bilingual and it hired an accountant who had some experience in a small province. We can already see the abuse of power.

As we have seen so far, there is always a double standard with this government. We believe the government is abusing its power by constantly resorting to closure to avoid debate. That is the only motive we can find today. It has already done it close to ten times over a period of a few weeks, when none of the bills involved were urgent.

We have seen time allocation invoked on six out of 10 bills. That does not mean time allocation has been invoked 6 times. It means time allocation has been invoked on 6 bills at different stages. Just so that listeners are aware of how many stages a bill would go through, normally a bill would go through second reading, report stage and third reading. If we multiply six bills times three, that would be 18 times that the government could potentially invoke time allocation. To date, we have a calculation of about 10, so we can look forward to seeing more of these bills undergoing time allocation for the next few steps.

The government House leader has stated that the issues on the government's legislative agenda so far this session have been discussed in detail since the government took office. I do not understand it.

The point is that during the elections the Conservative government made promises. However, if we look at the makeup of the House, at least 40% of the members are new parliamentarians, so this debate never took place. Also, what was said during the election campaign was not necessarily in a legislative format. Our job as parliamentarians is to debate these pieces of legislation.

That brings me to another subject, one that is not necessarily tied into the debate today. I am a member of the scrutiny of regulations committee, and we see that if legislation is not properly worded, then a lot of this legislation and, in turn, a lot of its regulations get bogged down. We then have things that are not necessarily clear, Canadians are not happy with how the legislation is worded, and the courts have to get involved. It is all just a churning of bureaucracy and a waste of money.

The claim that the government has already consulted Canadians is far from what the government has actually done. It has not consulted Canadians.

It is saying that three or four hours of debate it is sufficient for a bill. However, let us look at some of the bills that have been tabled. As an exaple, the budget is made up of 600 pages of legislation. It is a government omnibus bill. As a lawyer, I sat in on some of the committee hearings and I can tell members that it was not the easiest thing to follow. I just cannot imagine how a couple of hours of debate would suffice for a proposed bill that is going to affect all Canadians, not just the criminals. It will affect all Canadians, because one day they will have to deal with these issues, and if they do not have to go before a court of law, they will have to at least pay taxes to pay for all the costs that are going to be incurred in trying to monitor these pieces of legislation and put them into force.

We are trying to avoid just passing these pieces of legislation blindly. We are trying to ensure proper vigilance before these pieces of legislation are passed; however, that does not seem to be a valid argument for the government.

We in the Liberal Party are trying to do our job, but the government is making allegations that we are obstructing and we are using unreasonable amendments. I can understand the government's point of view, because sometimes the NDP acts irrationally and tries to filibuster and makes ridiculous amendments. However, I think the Liberal Party has made pretty reasonable amendments up to now. We have been first up to bat on making amendments on proposed bills. I think that we have done our job, but the government refuses to allow us to continue to do our jobs. We want the public, whether it be experts or third parties who are affected by these bills, to come forward to testify and make suggestions so that we can actually make these bills work properly.

Let us look at some of the bills for which time allocation has been introduced. The budget implementation bill was introduced and read for the first time on June 14; there was time allocation at all stages, and it was voted on June 15.

This is nothing new. Budget implementation bills are introduced twice every year, plus the budget. The budget implementation bill is not a partisan issue. It is normally the bill that introduces the legislation to put the budget into application.

Usually it is technical. It requires people affected by the budget to provide us with their input and tell us what changes they would like to see; if there are no changes, they at least come forward to give us their interpretation of that particular bill.

In the past, whether it was a majority government or a minority government, we have always been able to get consensus on how many hours of debate we needed in the House and in committee. However, the government seems to be using its majority at will and is just punching the legislation through. It has done that for the two budget bills, Bill C-9 and Bill C-13.

On Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill, the Conservatives invoked time allocation not only in the House but in committee as well. I was there. They suddenly said that they did not want to hear what we had to say. They had made up their minds. It was impossible that they would need opinions from experts. They did not even have to hear from the bar association. They did not even have to hear from the provinces.

Even though members from the province of Quebec had numerous valid amendments to introduce into the bill, the government had already decided it was not going to listen to anyone. I understand that the NDP had numerous amendments that were not relevant to the case and had to be rejected, but my colleague, the member for Mount Royal, introduced some pretty important amendments that were backed up by Minister Fournier from the Quebec government. We are going to have report stage next week, and I am hoping that the government can change its mind and adopt some of the amendments.

With regard to the Canadian Wheat Board, it was not a matter of procedure. Again, that was just rammed through. These farmers are working, and they do not have the time to come here and be notified because everything has to be rammed through.

I see my time is up. I am hoping that I will have some good questions and that I can continue.

Opposition Motion--Closure and Time Allocation

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is easy to manipulate those numbers. Certainly 50% of a small number looks like a huge number. We came back in September to get some things done. Our colleagues know that we have to get Bill C-13 into law. We are so close to the end of 2011, and we have not even passed the 2011 budget yet.

We have had many opportunities. On Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act, we have had four days of debate in the House, 11 committee hearings, 37 hours, and 53 speeches in the House in over 16 hours. That has been on Bill C-10 alone. On Bill C-13, we had seven total days of debate in the House. There were more days of debate at second reading than the average budget bill over the last two decades and more than any Liberal majority bill during that time. There have been more days of debate on Bill C-13--

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am splitting my time with the hon. member for Macleod.

I am pleased to rise today to speak to today's motion from the member for Windsor—Tecumseh. I also want to acknowledge the two previous speakers for their good work in the House and the privilege of working with them on the procedure and House affairs committee.

On May 2, Canadians gave the Conservatives a strong, stable national majority government. Canadians expect us to fulfill our commitments to them and that is exactly what we are doing. We are moving forward on our election commitments to implement the next phase of Canada's economic action plan.

There are EI measures within this bill that encourage job creation. There is the accelerated capital cost allowance for small businesses to invest in efficient equipment. There are measures to protect law-abiding Canadians. These important measures for the safety of our communities and for the safety of our children and of our grandchildren have been stalled by the opposition. The Conservatives would also provide marketing freedom for western Canadian grain farmers, something Ontario farmers have had for decades but the same privilege has not been granted to our western colleagues. There are measures to eliminate once and for all the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry. There are measures to provide fair representation to all provinces in the House of Commons and move every single province closer to representation by population. As my colleagues across the way will know, we have MPs serving fewer than 40,000 constituents while others are serving four times that many. This imbalance needs to be addressed.

We have introduced legislation in this House on all of these important measures. However, despite the talking points being used across the aisle, not one of these measures is law yet. We have seen delay tactic after delay tactic. Each of these bills has been extensively debated in the House of Commons and at committee hearings.

As an example, let us look at Bill C-13, the keeping Canada's economy and jobs growing act. This bill would implement the 2011 budget. We on this side of the House think that the 2011 budget should be passed into law in 2011. Looking at the calendar, there is not a lot of time left before we get to the new year. The new year, 2012, is only weeks away and we still have not implemented budget 2011 because of opposition delay tactics.

This bill includes important measures from this year's budget, including a job-creation tax for small business. All of us in this House agree that small business is the economic engine of Canada. There is the family caregiver tax credit. My colleague knows first-hand how important it is to make it easier for families to care for gravely ill relatives. There is the children's arts tax credit and the volunteer firefighters tax credit. In rural and remote parts of Canada, it is important that we have recruitment and retention tools for our volunteer firefighters. There is tax relief for the manufacturing sector, as I mentioned, the accelerated capital cost allowance. The bill includes making the gas tax refund permanent. Municipalities are constantly asking for predictable funding for their infrastructure needs.

All of these measures would promote job creation and economic growth. They would help add to the nearly 600,000 jobs already created in Canada since the global economic recession. These measures were supported by Canadians from sea to sea. They were exactly what Canadians voted for when they re-elected the Conservative government on May 2, with a majority mandate. However, we know the opposition has voted against these job-creating measures. For some reason, it opposes these positive and important job-creating initiatives.

I know today's motion is about debate in this place so allow me to outline just how much debate has already been given to the next phase of Canada's economic action plan. The budget was introduced on March 22 by the Minister of Finance. Debate on the budget started before the opposition forced an unnecessary election. Following the 37-day election campaign, which was focused on the Canadian economy, we moved quickly to reintroduce the budget on June 6. That was followed by four days of debate on the budget in June before we rose for the usual summer break in our constituencies.

When we came back in the autumn, we introduced the keeping Canada's economy and jobs growing act to implement the budget. That bill was debated for four days at second reading before being referred to the Standing Committee on Finance. That committee found time amid its 2012 pre-budget consultations to study the bill. After it was reported back to the House, it was debated for three further days at third reading and report stage. All told, the job-creating measures of the next phase of Canada's economic action plan as set out in Bill C-13 have been deliberated in this House for 12 days. That does not include the two afternoons used for the spring's two budget speeches. Just to repeat, we have had 12 days of debate on these important and urgent economic measures in this House. It is time for action.

I want to turn briefly to a second major bill in this fall sitting, Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act.

During this spring's election, our Conservative government promised Canadians that we would pass comprehensive law and order legislation within the first 100 sitting days after the election. Looking at today's order paper, I see that today is the 54th sitting day. Just yesterday, the bill was reported from the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. The bill includes important measures, including proposals which would crack down on pedophiles who prey on children, and violent gangs that sell drugs to our children. These are all very important items that need to become law.

Despite some 27 hours or so of committee proceedings dedicated to clause-by-clause study and related business, we already have some 34 amendments to the bill tabled for report stage, which we will have to debate and vote on. I have no doubt whatsoever that we will see that number grow before the bill comes forward for debate on Tuesday morning.

After report stage and third reading, the bill will then go to the other place where the entire legislative process will be repeated.

It is fair to say that we are just about one-third of the way through the passing of Bill C-10 into law. One-third might sound like a breeze to some, but passing the nine predecessor bills to Bill C-10 has been anything but a breeze over the last several years and, in some cases, over three Parliaments. There have already been 95 hours of debate in this chamber alone on these proposals. In both houses there have been 261 speeches. That sounds to me to be pretty thorough debate already.

If I had a lot more time, I would go on about some of the other key priority bills of the government, such as Bill C-20, the fair representation act, and Bill C-18, the marketing freedom for grain farmers act, just to name two. Each has its own important and urgent requirements to become law this fall in order to meet timing demands driven by facts of life outside the House of Commons. Farmers need certainty before they plant their spring crops. Boundary commissions need to know what numbers they are working with, and they need to know that by February.

I cannot help but comment on the proposals set out in the motion put forward today by the member for Windsor—Tecumseh. I have to be honest; I am quite confused by the mixed messages it sends.

The NDP House leader has put forward a motion that would give the Speaker only 19 sitting days to study his proposals. The debate he contemplates following the Speaker's report would appear to last but one single solitary day. If we look at the wording of his motion, the member is basically putting closure on his own motion.

On top of that, it is totally and completely ironic that the Speaker is required by the Standing Orders to put the NDP's motion to a vote after only two hours of debate in this House. This has to be the shortest debate on any item in the House since we came back in September.

In closing, Conservative members will be voting against the motion which tries to sidestep the fact that the opposition parties are trying to stop good things for Canadians, things which Canadians voted for just six months ago. The NDP wants to stop that great progress, to stop these things from becoming law, despite thorough and extensive debate and study.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

moved:

That, in the opinion of the House, the thorough examination and debate of proposed legislation on behalf of Canadians is an essential duty of Members of Parliament, and that the curtailment of such debate limits the ability of Members to carry out this duty and constitutes an affront to Canadian democracy; and, therefore,

that the Speaker undertake a study and make recommendations to amend the Standing Orders with respect to closure and time allocation, such that: (i) a Minister would be required to provide justification for the request for such a curtailment of debate; (ii) the Speaker would be required to refuse such a request in the interest of protecting the duty of Members to examine legislation thoroughly, unless the government’s justification sufficiently outweighs the said duty; (iii) criteria would be set out for assessing the government’s justification, which would provide the Speaker with the basis for a decision to allow for the curtailment of debate;

that the Speaker report to the House no later than February 6, 2012;

that a motion to concur in the said report may be moved during Routine Proceedings, and that only when no Member rises to debate the motion, the Speaker shall interrupt any proceedings then before the House and put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment, every question necessary to dispose of the motion; and

if no motion to concur in the report has been previously moved and disposed of on the 20th sitting day following the presentation of the report, Standing Orders 57 and 78 shall be deemed to have been deleted.

Mr. Speaker, this motion has been brought before the House at this time because of the government's gross overuse of shutting down debate in the House, whether it is by a formal closure motion, which shuts down debate immediately, or by time allocation motions, which provide extremely limited time for debate on crucial issues facing both the House and the country more generally.

It is important that we recognize the effect of the motion. It is not that you, Mr. Speaker, need a greater workload, but that is the thrust of the motion. The motion would remove a government's unilateral ability to shut down debate in the House and would allow the Speaker, as an independent officer of Parliament, to make the decision as to when it is appropriate to curtail debate and when it is an abuse of the process. Therefore, a request for curtailment of debate could in fact be rejected by the Speaker of the day.

I have done some analysis of other jurisdictions that have similar parliaments to ours, such as the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia. Going back some 20 or 30 years, all of them moved to provide greater authority to the speaker to regulate when debate should be curtailed, limited or ended. In each of those parliaments, it is quite clear that it is the speaker who ultimately makes the decision in that regard.

The authority is different in each of those legislatures, but the general wording and conduct of the speaker has always been: Is the request for curtailment or ending debate an abuse? Oftentimes the term “of a minority segment of that parliament” is used. It may be a large official opposition or it may be a small third, fourth or fifth party, but the speaker has the authority in each one of those parliaments to make the determination as to whether the request by the government to end or limit debate is an abuse of the rights of the members of Parliament.

I will move on to the context in which this motion is being put forward.

In less than two months of sitting days, we have had time allocation applied to Bill C-13, the budget bill, which was 640 pages long. We were given extremely limited time to debate it. It is the only time, that we have been able to determine, in the history of this country that such a limited amount of time has been given to a budget bill. I know the government House leader said that we had some debate on this in the previous Parliament. However, we have 100 new members of Parliament who were not here and had no opportunity to debate this in the last Parliament.

It is fundamental to our process that a budget bill be given a full extensive debate. We can go back to any number of the authorities where that is repeated over and over again, and not just in this legislature, but in every legislature that works off the Westminster model.

We then had Bill C-18 dealing with the Canadian Wheat Board. This is an institution that is well over 70 years of age. It is iconic in this country. However, on two occasions, at second reading and report stage, we were again slapped with time allocation.

The Wheat Board and the farmers in western Canada were entitled to that debate. The opposition should have been given time in both the House and in committee to deal with that issue. We were given extremely limited time given the significance of what was going to happen if the bill passed, especially when the majority of farmers in western Canada, who use the Wheat Board to sell their wheat, oppose the bill. However, again we were slapped with time allocation on two occasions.

Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill, is made up of nine former bills brought together. Again the House leader said that we had time to debate this legislation. More than 100 new members did not have time to debate this extremely complex bill because they were not here in the last Parliament.

The Conservatives have accused the opposition of delaying this legislation. On more than one occasion, the NDP has offered to take the part of the bill that deals with crimes against children, sexual predator type crimes, and run it through at all stages. It already passed through the House once before, so we were quite comfortable in having that done. On the more than one occasion that we offered that to the government, it refused and then slapped time allocation on the balance of the bill.

It was the same thing with Bill C-19, the gun control bill. We were given extremely limited time to debate an issue that is topical and very controversial. As the debate has gone on, more and more evidence has come out around reasons to not do away with the long gun registry. There was no opportunity to debate that legislation in the House to any significant degree.

Finally, Bill C-20, the seats bill. The bill proposes to make significant changes to the composition of this Parliament and again we are being limited to a significant degree in our ability to deal with it. I sit on the committee that is looking at the bill and the same thing is happening there. Extreme limitations are being placed at committee with regard to the number of witnesses we are allowed to call.

It just boggles my mind when I try to understand what is going on, and I think I am reasonably intelligent in terms of understanding it. It is a complex process that is being engendered now and it is new. It is not what was here in the last Parliament at all. The bill is a new incarnation of the process. It would make a very significant change, and we are being given nowhere near the amount of time that we will need.

If we continue with the practice as it is right now, Bill C-20 will be out of committee and back before the House either by the end of next week or early the week following, when we have limited time to debate it here in the House and limited time in committee. The same can be said about the other four bills that I just mentioned. They all have had limited time in committee.

That is the context that we have. We have a precedent, if we want to put it that way, in other legislatures.

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

As I said earlier, we have this other precedent. If the bill passes, it will mean more work for the Speaker of this Parliament and subsequent Speakers. However, we need to find a much more proper balance in terms of our ability as opposition members to do our job. Our responsibility here is to determine whether legislation coming from the government is appropriate, but we are not able to do that in the amount of time that we are being given at this point. We need to take the government's ability to limit time and place it in the hands of an independent member and, in this case, that would be the Speaker and his successors.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, this is delivering results on jobs week.

I will begin by noting that the highlight of the week was the passage of the budget implementation act, Bill C-13, keeping Canada's economy and jobs growing act. That legislation has now moved on to the other place where we look forward to its passage.

We have also advanced Bill C-18, the marketing freedom for grain farmers act, past report stage. This bill would give marketing choice to western grain farmers, so it is a priority for us to have market certainty and have it passed by next year. For that reason, it is our intention to complete third reading of the bill on Monday.

Of course, Tuesday afternoon and again this morning, the House has continued debate on the opposition amendment to decline second reading of Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Copyright Act. We will continue that debate this afternoon. If the opposition finishes their effort to block this bill—after 16 hours of speeches—we will proceed to Bill C-14, Improving Trade Within Canada Act.

Tomorrow will be the sixth allotted day.

On Monday, we will start here for law-abiding Canadians week.

On Tuesday, we will start the post-committee stages of Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act. This will continue on Wednesday. I note that it was reported back from the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights this morning. I do want to thank the members of the committee on their 27 hours of meetings in just the past couple of weeks. All told, including the nine predecessor bills within this legislation, we have seen 95 hours of House debate, 261 speeches in both chambers of Parliament, not to mention 70 meetings in committee rooms of this place.

On Thursday, we will continue here for law-abiding Canadians week with the start of debate on second reading of Bill C-26, the citizen's arrest and self-defence act, which the Attorney General introduced recently. Should time permit after that debate next week, we will return to debate the opposition's motion to block Bill C-4, the human smuggling bill, from going to committee. We hope we will be able to complete the debate on the opposition's motion to prevent that bill from going to committee soon so that we may actually have it go to committee.

Finally, as part of this week’s delivering results on jobs week, on behalf of my honourable friend, the Minister of Finance, I am pleased to table a ways and means motion in support of the establishment of a financial literacy leader for Canada. As honourable members would know, November is Financial Literacy Month; an issue championed by the hon. member for Edmonton—Leduc, the chair of the finance committee.

Pursuant to Standing Order 83(2), I ask that an order of the day be designated for the consideration of this motion. For the benefit of the House, I plan to call this motion immediately after question period on Tuesday of next week.

Justice

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice, as all ministers of justice, has a duty to ensure that all government legislation comports with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, yet Bill C-10 raises serious constitutional concerns, including the risk of cruel and unusual punishment due to prison overcrowding, gross and disproportionate sentences, overly broad and vague offences, and disproportionate effects on already vulnerable people, such as aboriginals.

Will the Minister of Justice commit to tabling before the House a review of the constitutionality of Bill C-10 respecting these concerns and ensure that none of--