Debates of Feb. 19th, 1999

Citizenship Of Canada Act

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

No, not to you. The member for Wild Rose.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

The hon. member for Okanagan—Shuswap.

[Darrel Stinson, Reform, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have just heard from an member from the other side. This is typical of what goes on and that is fine. They do not like it when we raise the idea of patronage appointments.

[An hon. member]

What are you talking about?

[Darrel Stinson, Reform, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

That is what we are on now and why patronage appointments exist. They are a gift to those who support the government. That is all they are and nothing more.

Let us look at the hypocrisy of the government and what is going on. It was not that long ago the Canadians census came out. Many people in my constituency, first and second generation Canadians, filled in a little section by putting in the word Canadian.

What happened when they did that? The government threatened to sue and imprison some of these people because they had the gall to write in that they were Canadians. They came to my office and said “Mr. Stinson, I came here to become a Canadian. I want to take on the nationality of a Canadian. My children are Canadian and we look upon ourselves as Canadians”. Yet the government has threatened them for saying they are Canadian. Even as a seventh generation Canadian I was not allowed to put Canadian on that census. What exactly is going on here? It goes beyond being a joke.

Let us look at some of the powers in clause 43. Under this clause Bill C-63 grants the minister far-reaching powers, unbelievable powers. The minister has the right to specify who may make an application under this act on behalf of a minor, fix fees and define who is a spouse for the purpose of the act. I only have to see that part to start wondering what is going on. The minister may define what constitutes a relationship of parent and child for the purposes of determining the entitlement to citizenship under any provision of the act.

As a Canadian citizen I demand a voice in this regard. I demand the people of Canada also have a voice in this regard and not just the minister. This is arrogance of the highest form.

If the minister really wishes to improve the Citizenship Act, she should be willing to bring some of these questions into the open, have a debate and hear from the Canadian people, not make these decisions behind closed doors where she is not accountable to anyone.

[Eleni Bakopanos, Liberal, Ahuntsic, QC]

A committee is doing consultation.

[Darrel Stinson, Reform, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

She is not accountable to anyone. She has the right to override anything. There are dictatorships that wish they had this kind of power. Canadians have sat back far too long and just gradually and grudgingly accepted this. It is time for the public to start voicing concerns about what is going on in the country.

The member for Wild Rose was dead on when he said what was happening. I thank the member for Wild Rose for bringing that matter to the attention of Canadians. I hope everybody realizes exactly what they are buying into when acts like this one are put into place.

I would like to end on that note. I see members on the government side are happy that I will be closing off the debate. To tell the truth, I wish I did not have to stand here today to talk to the bill at all. I know hon. members opposite do too, because they do not like people out there to hear what is really going on. That is fine. I understand that.

My ultimate wish is that this legislation goes on to the garbage pile where it belongs.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

The question is on the second reading stage of Bill C-63.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

All those opposed to will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

Pursuant to Standing Order 45 the recorded division stands deferred until Monday, March 1, 1999, at the ordinary hour of daily adjournment.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. If you would seek it, you might find that the House is disposed to calling it 1.30 p.m. and moving to private members' hour.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

The government House leader has suggested that we see the clock as 1.30 p.m., the time provided for private members' hour. Is there unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

The House will now proceed to Private Members' Business as listed on today's order paper.

Young Offenders Act

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

moved:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should increase the federal share of financial support for the provisions of the Young Offenders Act, with the eventual goal of dividing the costs on a 50:50 basis between the Government of Canada and the provincial and territorial governments.

Mr. Speaker, I am certainly very pleased to speak in the House today to Motion No. 508. In fact there is nowhere I would rather be aside from my province of Nova Scotia. I am anxious to get there and not to be at the only alternative conference that is happening this weekend.

The motion put forward states that the government should increase the federal share of financial support for the provisions of the Young Offenders Act with the eventual goal of achieving funding on a 50:50 basis between the Government of Canada and the provincial and territorial governments. This was the original intent of the legislation that goes back over 10 years.

When I refer to 50% throughout my remarks I am not referring to the ill conceived 50% release plan which is being surreptitiously hoisted on an unsuspecting public through the solicitor general's department. What I am referring to is the fact that the federal government has backed away from the commitment made in the original legislation to fund the administrative costs of the Young Offenders Act.

Everyone in the House is aware that the laws are only as effective as their ability to be enforced. The RCMP's ongoing financial problems testify to this challenge, be it in the overall budget or in the efforts of the force to try to combat organized crime.

The Liberal Firearms Act is another example of waste before the Canadian public. The spiralling costs and administrative problems are yet other examples that the Liberal government will put this type of legislation for political gain ahead of the actual costs of the law enforcement community.

The costs of the implementation of the Firearms Act could reach as high as an estimated cost of $350 million. These estimates could be even higher. This comes from the government's own officials.

Recently I met with representatives of the National Firearms Association who are travelling throughout the country promoting a more practical and simpler approach to firearms legislation and certainly putting greater emphasis on actual safety and actual use of government funds.

While the Liberal government advocates hundreds of millions of dollars for gun registry, the Canadian police information system that will house the data from this piece of legislation, the important tool police officers use for information purposes, is coming apart at the seams and is in need of a drastic influx of federal money, $200 million by some conservative estimates, to make it operational.

The Young Offenders Act throughout the country is perceived as not working for the average Canadian. It has been said aloud by the government and by the minister in particular on numerous occasions that we can expect changes or a revamped version of the Young Offenders Act in the near future or, to use the minister's often quoted phrase, in a timely fashion.

Eighteen months have passed since these pronouncements were first made and this legislative initiative is still forthcoming.

The Young Offenders Act is in itself an important tool for law enforcement in the community but there are financial limitations facing our justice system.

Regardless of how the federal government proceeds with the new youth crime legislation, if it does not assume a fair share of the cost, it cannot realistically hope that the existing or any new legislation will meet the intended ends.

The Minister of Justice admitted in October that substantial extra funding is needed to successfully reinforce Canada's youth justice system. And as the minister made that promise in January to introduce new young offenders legislation, as she had on previous occasions, once again one is left to wonder when it will be coming and why in the budget this very week we do not see an indication of a government commitment to this new proposed piece of legislation.

The minister's promises in the past have proven suspect on this particular issue, so Motion No. 508 in its simplest terms is an important opportunity for this House to express its collective favour in terms of putting fair funding and fair dollars on the table when addressing the issue of youth crime.

While proposed legislative solutions vary among parties and members of this House, I hope there can be some non-partisan approach taken to this issue. The government itself has a responsibility to assume its fair share of the programs and the services that are being currently administered by the provinces to assist in the execution of federal youth crime legislation.

As most members will recall, the Young Offenders Act is relatively young legislation, having come into effect in 1984, and while the statute falls under federal jurisdiction most of the consequent services and programs for young offenders are provided by provincial and territorial governments.

The original commitment of the federal government was to share the risk of implementation of the Young Offenders Act. This included the financial risk. The federal government therefore undertook to contribute an amount approximately 50% of provincial spending on young offenders programs and services.

It should be noted that a disparity among the provinces was created by these cost sharing agreements. Prior to the Young Offenders Act the cost sharing agreement fell under the Canada assistance plan and was based on child welfare related objectives and essentially restricted to custody costs, the previous legislation being the juvenile delinquents act.

Under the original Young Offenders Act cost sharing agreements, custody costs continued to be included and the list of programs covered by the 50:50 agreement expanded to include post adjudication, detention, alternative measures, which is a more recent initiative, and bail supervision programs.

Other items such as probation and predisposition reports have been added similarly to the list of cost shareable programs and the services that were intended under this agreement.

It was the nature of that agreement whereby the federal government's contribution was determined by how much the provinces and territories would spend on federal youth offender services.

This caused a disparity which I referred to. Nearly 75% of the federal dollars in the mid to late 1980s was directed to custody and custodial programming. This resulted in less federal support for provinces with lower custody rates.

Because different provinces and territories obviously have different priorities, the federal government should not financially punish those jurisdictions for focusing on non-custodial programs which is what I see as implicit in the budget.

I must stress, however, that in negotiating a new funding arrangement the federal government should likewise not punish provinces that favour custody in their approach to enforcement of the Young Offenders Act or the equivalent youth crime legislation whenever that may come.

Equity and a level standard approach is what is desirable in the final analysis. I should note that I specifically left out any reference to funding formula mechanisms, the reason being that I do not want this debate to become bogged down in custodial arrangements versus alternative measures. That debate would be for another time.

This motion deals with global funding which, regardless of the funding formula, heavily penalizes the provinces and territories. When the original cost sharing agreement expired in 1989 the federal government of the day, facing serious fiscal problems, froze its future share of the cost sharing program at the funding level.

That, I will admit, was a Progressive Conservative government but the funding was frozen at the levels which existed at that time and the amount that was set aside at that time was $156 million.

Although admittedly a Conservative government along with the actual funding cuts in subsequent years, and I refer specifically to 1996-97 when 3.9% of that original cost sharing was cut and 3.5% in 1998-99, the overall federal share of eligible provincial costs on young offenders programs fell an average of approximately 30%. In actual dollars that translated into a little less than $145 million.

Although the federal government froze and then cut its financial contributions, the nature of the funding formula remained intact, resulting in a persisting disparity between the provinces.

Regardless of the disparity the fact remains that all provincial and territorial jurisdictions have suffered at the hands of the federal government's decision. This is another example of federal downloading that needs to be corrected before any realistic overhaul of the Young Offenders Act can happen. The provinces and territories are rightfully upset by the abandonment of the federal government. They are funding the majority of the costs and on a national overall average they are funding 70% of the young offenders programs which are constitutionally a federal responsibility.

It is no wonder that a level of animosity then emerges from these provincial-federal talks, in particular in the area of justice.

Meanwhile the federal government only covers 16% of the cost of provincially mandated programs such as health care, post-secondary education and social assistance. Is it any wonder that provinces are now clamouring that the share of the young offenders programs, which they assert is a federal responsibility, be allocated on a similar scale?

Simply put, the provinces are encouraging the federal government to revert to at least a 50:50 basis with future federal funding arrangements reflecting a reverse share of the federal-provincial funding for health care and social programs instead of a 30% share which they are currently carrying.

What this would demand is dollars. By my calculations the federal government is covering 30% of the costs which are set at approximately $144 million this fiscal year, and an 84% share would come to around $400 million annually. But we know, as a result of the budget, that this will not happen.

An honourable and reasonable compromise to this would be for the federal government to commit to returning to the 50% share that it once assumed. We are not suggesting that this would happen overnight. In actual spending this would amount to roughly $240 million. The wording of Motion No. 508 is such that it would allow the federal government to phase in its increase in spending. The details and timeframe would be negotiated through a new cost sharing arrangement between the federal, provincial and territorial governments.

Sadly, if one believes recent articles in the Post , the minister has ruled out any return to the level of funding that was provided in the past.

I am left to believe that the federal government will not resume a 50% share of the federal Young Offenders Act or whatever form it takes any time soon. Hopefully the Liberal member designated to speak, the parliamentary secretary, will clarify this assertion by the minister that there is no intention on the part of this government to return to its rightful share. There appears to be no logical reason why the federal government would not assume its fair portion. After all, the federal government's credibility, and especially that of the minister, appears to be extremely suspect by the majority of Canadians and by the majority of provincial and territorial governments on this issue.

Beyond the youth crime issue itself there is a litany of other issues where the federal Liberal government has disappointed its provincial and territorial counterparts.

Four provinces and two territories representing almost 55% of Canada's population have filed an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada on the Liberal government's Firearms Act. This does not bode well for the confidence that these provinces hold in their federal counterpart.

I am sure the province of Nova Scotia will be adding its name to that list of those challenging the act when it elects a Conservative government. It is a very questionable set of priorities when it comes down to an issue as fundamental as the Young Offenders Act and the federal government's abdication of its responsibility.

Another example of this abdication comes from the call of at least four provinces for the establishment of a national sex offender registry. Once more we have seen the federal government being very slow to act let alone react to calls for such a registry. It is something I have followed closely. Colleagues on this side of the House have tried to get the attention of the federal government on a number of justice issues only to be rebuffed with the response that the government has its own agenda which it is committed to following.

It is therefore equally important in timing when one looks at the crisis facing our current law enforcement community, in particular the RCMP, with respect to the funding costs it has undergone since the Liberals were elected in 1994. RCMP Commissioner Phil Murray has admitted the force cannot continue to function with its current funding and that an underfunding of the RCMP affects provincial and municipal governments. This again represents a form of downloading. The CPIC system has been described as rusting out. This is the CPIC system which would now also carry the additional burden of gun registry and DNA databank legislation. It is like putting more and more weight on a tired old mule, and that is going to collapse. When the RCMP problems were particularly acute in British Columbia, that province's attorney general mused about the establishment of a new provincial police force in British Columbia.

Then there is the issue of replacement legislation for the Young Offenders Act. I have spoken to the delay and to the continual promise that this is coming. These promises and the broken promises are not new to this government. Many of the recommendations put forward by the opposition in committee were not adopted by the current government.

In December 1997 the federal Minister of Justice met with her provincial and territorial counterparts at the annual meeting. She promised at that time there would be new young offender legislation coming at their next meeting. That meeting has come and gone. She showed up with empty hands. The legislation was not there and it is still not before the Canadian people. When the federal Minister of Justice met with her counterparts at the end of October 1998 she showed up with empty hands.

I urge all members to join with me in supporting this motion, in bringing it forward for debate and in placing a high priority on the federal government's assuming its official responsibility with respect to the funding of the legislation that is forthcoming for the current Young Offenders Act in its present form.

First Nations Land Management Act

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, an agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Orders 78(1) or 78(2) with respect to the report stage and third reading stage of Bill C-49, an act providing for the ratification and the bringing into effect of the Framework Agreement on First Nation Land Management.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3) I give notice that a minister of the crown will propose at the next sitting a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at said stages.

The House resumed consideration of the motion.