Debates of Oct. 18th, 2007

Resumption of debate on Address in Reply

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

I think the hon. member for Halifax West would want to be careful. I notice the questioner was careful to avoid the suggesting that any member misled the House. We know that does not happen. The public might be misled, but that is another issue.

The hon. member for Winnipeg North on a brief question.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is curious listening to the comments of the member for Halifax West. He said that the government could not have it both ways. It strikes me that this is rather like the pot calling the kettle black. How can the member account for his own party's position of criticizing the government on many issues and expressing opposition to the Speech from the Throne, yet clearly indicating that he and other colleagues are prepared to support the government?

When will the member and others in the Liberal Party make up their minds and decide on which side of the fence they are? Will they stand up and be counted or are will they continue to support the government of the day?

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad my hon. colleague asked this question because it raises the same question about the NDP. How can the NDP members have it both ways? How is it that they could, for example, abstain from the vote on softwood lumber in order to avoid an election? Was that not an important issue for Canada in their point of view? Perhaps they did not think it was a particularly important concern in spite of the fact that it concerned and affected so many communities across the country.

I know lumber mills and employees in my province and many across the country have been affected by that, but they ignore it.

Let us face it, I think Canadians have sent us here to do a job, to make Parliament work for as long as it can, to do our best and to be as reasonable as we can to try to work together.

I think it is true that the government is trying to act as if it has a majority. It has to start recognizing that it has to consult with other parties. It has to cooperate and try to develop a consensus and bring forward bills that can reflect and achieve consensus in the House.

Should we throw all that away? The member wants to have an election and that is very nice, but it strikes me that I do not know why she wants that when I saw in the latest polls that her party is actually down. Of course we have the fact that her party announced its decision before it even read the Speech from the Throne, so guess it is no surprise.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to address the Speech from the Throne. I will try to start out on a positive note and end on a positive note.

Let me start by congratulating my colleague from Yukon for his hard work on bringing some light to human rights abuses in Burma. I congratulate all members of the House for making Aung San Suu Kyi the third honorary Canadian citizen. That is something of which we can all be proud.

The second honorary Canadian citizenship was accorded to Nelson Mandela, who did so much to fight against apartheid. He dedicated his life to that fight. After a lengthy period of imprisonment, he started the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and made sure that South Africa could maintain civil society. I congratulate him on that.

The first person to be an honorary citizen was Raoul Wallenberg. He was a Swedish diplomat in Budapest in 1944. His role in fighting to save Jews in the Holocaust from the Nazis and the Arrow Cross is something that is to be admired by everyone. For the people of Canada to make him the first honorary Canadian citizen speaks well for our country. Unfortunately, Mr. Wallenberg died in a Soviet gulag.

I mentioned Budapest. That is the city of my birth. I was born in 1946 and my family came to this country 50 years ago. My father, who was a Jew, lived through the Holocaust. He lived through the brutal dictatorship of Joseph Stalin as well.

Along the way my family gained a very deep appreciation for human rights and civil liberties. One of the things for which I have a deep appreciation and have fought for in my parliamentary career and when our party was in government is human rights. The one document I take my guidance from is our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I have been here 50 years, 25 years without the charter and 25 years with the charter. I am deeply disappointed that the throne speech and the actions of the government have not made any mention of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is supposed to unite all of us under the law. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is about that. It is very disappointing that there is no mention of it in the speech.

We are talking about citizenship. I hold in my hand a document, which is the report of the United Nations on the stateless. I am very disappointed to see Canada featured in this report because we have citizenship laws in our country that make people stateless.

The Speech from the Throne talks about honorary citizenship. It seems to me that when we have a Canadian veteran who fought for our country in the second world war, the birthright of his child should be recognized. That is not the case.

We have a Canadian veteran's son who is taking this case to the courts, Mr. Joe Taylor. His father fought for the liberty of our country and the government is taking him to court. It said it would take him all the way to the Supreme Court because he won a decision ordering the government to restore his citizenship.

An article was written in the international magazine, The Economist, which says “Lost in Kafkaland”. It mentions a 70-year-old woman who has been kicked out of our country and denied citizenship because of archaic laws. I cannot underline strongly enough, for the importance of our reputation abroad, that we bring the our Citizenship Act in compliance with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is 25th anniversary and it is time.

When the Prime Minister was in Australia, he said to the Australian parliament and the press, “I have Senate envy. You elect your senators”. The Prime Minister should have had citizenship envy. Australia suffers from many of the same problems we do with citizenship in our country. It enacted its citizenship act on July 1, Canada Day. It is time for us to catch up. We do not belong in a report of the United Nations that lists countries that make people stateless.

The other issues I have, since I cannot be positive all the time, is Kyoto, from 10, from great, from hero to zero. Abandoning the Kelowna accord is inexcusable. The level of child poverty in our country is inexcusable.

I want to touch on some issues like the democratic deficit, which I fought to help eliminate or make better in the previous government. It is back in spades. Members of the Reform Party used to stand and say that they were here to speak for their constituents, and I was sold on that. I stand and speak for my constituents. Now they stand and speak for the government. That is not the role of a member of Parliament. That really has to change.

The promises of the government to bring in a new citizenship act have been abandoned. The promise of the government to never take away citizenship behind closed doors has been abandoned. They are broken promises.

I want to touch on another issue. The Prime Minister says that he wants a mandate from Parliament to do his programs, that he wants to govern as if he had a majority. I have news for the Prime Minister. A mandate for a majority comes from the citizens of our country through an election. It does not come from politicians.

I want to talk about broken promises. The Prime Minister, when he was opposition leader, came up with some good suggestions as to how to democratize Parliament, such as electing committee chairs. The first thing he did when he came into office was appoint the committee chairs.

I will touch on this issue about the neo-conservative crime fighting agenda. The government has said that it will bring crime rate down. The chiefs of police have said that to reduce crime, it will not be done with more prison guards or more police. It will be done through social development. The government is trying to make Canada as safe as the United States of America, the best laboratory to show that the neo-conservative approach does not work.

I said I would end on a positive note, and I will point to my community in the Waterloo region. The city of Waterloo is celebrating its 150th anniversary. The University of Waterloo is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Canada's Technology Triangle is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Communitech is celebrating its 10th anniversary. My community has something from which the government could take a great lesson.

Our prosperity in the new economy is based on investing in education. It is based on investing in research and development. I am proud to represent the riding that brought to this country the BlackBerry, a company that 14 years ago had 13 employees. Now it has over 5,000 employees and growing.

I will close with the spirit of the University of Waterloo. Waterloo does things differently. Innovation has always been encouraged and rewarded, not just in the research centres across campus, but in the classrooms and the studios, on stage and on the playing fields. Waterloo is not a traditional university. It does not ask why, it asks why not? Why not eliminate child poverty? Why not have a plan that includes Kyoto?

[Myron Thompson, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, first of all I would like to say to the member who spoke that he alluded to the fact that I, because I am on this side of the House, do not speak for my constituents. I would suggest to him that if he goes to Wild Rose and makes that statement he had better wear a hard hat because that simply is not true.

I want to get to crime and the topic that we started off with today. Specifically, the member talked so much about rights that come under the charter and the protection of people and all that. I would like to ask him if he can explain to me why in 1993, when I came here and my colleague from Calgary Northeast and we began right away on a project of doing things to create legislation to protect children from child pornography, sexual assaults and all the terrible things that were happening to kids, and we wanted to raise the age of consent back in those years, we had to fight with the previous government time and time again?

I sat on the justice committee and I saw what the Liberals and the Bloc did. I have to give credit to the NDP. They pretty well were fighting on the right side for the protection of children. This was a subject that was constantly brought before the House and was never accomplished. For 14 years child pornography was never addressed by the previous government.

Today, 14 years later, legislation regarding the age of consent and the kinds of laws that would protect our kids have been passed by the House. Those laws have arrived at the Senate and have sat there for months, simply because in the Senate there is a Liberal majority.

I ask the member, why are the Liberals objecting to passing legislation that would protect our kids in this country, such as stamping out child pornography and raising the age of consent?

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I remind the member that he was one of the ones who taught me how to stand up and speak for my constituents. I have not seen much of that lately coming from that member.

On the issue the member just raised, he and I sat on some committees relating to child pornography. I will say that it was the previous government that put in legislation on child sex tourism that would charge Canadian citizens abroad if they engaged in that activity. The proof is in the pudding, charges have been laid and the warrants are out, and as soon as that person is caught he will be extradited back to Canada to face justice.

Let me tell the member about crime prevention because this is something I know a little bit about. Prior to becoming a member of Parliament I was involved in crime prevention. I do know that when we spend a dollar on prevention we save $7 on incarceration. I know it costs more money to put one person in jail for a year than what it costs to put a person through university with room and board for four years.

I know about one of the causes of crime and that we have to campaign against is bullying in the schools. This is one of the most important crime prevention tools that we can have.

I say to the member opposite that his Prime Minister is the poster child for a bully and that is something he should be addressing.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the hon. member's comments in the House. What disturbed me is his reference to the government's anti-crime agenda, our efforts to make our communities and streets safer as being neo-conservative.

Yet had he listened to his own leader's comments, the response to the throne speech, his own leader referred to and claimed that he was supporting five of our six initiatives in our anti-crime legislation.

Is the hon. member accepting that in fact his own leader supports the so-called neo-conservative agenda of our government and yet he himself opposes it? He should bring some clarity to the question.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would really love to engage in that debate.

Let me say to the member for Abbotsford that I have been to his community and there is a great injustice going on to many Mennonites who live in his community who are being denied citizenship unduly because their great-grandparents had religious weddings and not civil weddings, so we consider their kids to be born out of wedlock. I hope the member for Abbotsford will do something to fight that in his constituency.

In terms of the issue of crime, in our community we are tough on crime. I helped set up the Community Safety & Crime Prevention Council. That was one of the things I worked on, and we have the best one going in the country outside of Quebec. We have the chief of police, the crown attorneys, the social agencies, the school officials and the city officials working together to prevent crime.

I can tell members that this whole war on drugs that they want to ape from the United States of America is very harmful. What they are going to end up doing is criminalizing hundreds of thousands of young Canadians for no more than smoking marijuana.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Order, please. The time has expired.

Resuming debate, the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, as a former front line police officer and police chief, I know the challenges that are faced every day by the men and women in uniform who patrol our streets. I am proud to be part of a government that appreciates the vital role law enforcement plays and that is prepared to provide the resources and legislative tools needed to make our communities safe.

I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to Cst. Christopher John Worden, who died tragically on October 6 in the line of duty near Hay River in the Northwest Territories.

On behalf of the people of Oxford county, where his wife's family lives, I would like to share our deepest sympathies and pay tribute to the courage and dedication he showed in protecting Canadians.

There is no greater responsibility for a government than to defend the right of its citizens to safety and security. By tackling crime and strengthening the security of Canadians, the government is fulfilling its obligations and moving our country toward greater stability and prosperity. To achieve our overall goal of making Canada safer, we are committed to working on the legislative and program fronts, to provide resources to law enforcement, and to provide targeted support to victims and communities.

Despite the opposition efforts to stall the majority of our crime legislation, the government has been moving forward with investments that are making our streets safer. The Speech from the Throne is a continuation of what the government has so far accomplished for Canadians.

I would like to bring attention to a comment made today by the hon. member across the floor. He said that crime rates are falling. In fact, that is only partially true. The homicide rates in Canada fell, but other serious violent crimes have risen in the last few years. More important, perhaps, one in six homicides were gang-related, and that is a relatively newer phenomenon.

I would like to first discuss what we have so far achieved for Canadians. The government has a number of important achievements under its belt and our renewed focus on tackling crime and protecting communities will build on our successes.

To make our communities safer, we are committed to putting more police officers on the streets. The Speech from the Throne reaffirmed our commitment to provide resources to recruit 2,500 additional police officers on the streets. We are committed to ensuring that all Canadians live in safe and healthy communities. Canadians want effective solutions to the crime that plagues their communities.

We have also delivered on a campaign promise to begin to add 1,000 new RCMP personnel to focus on federal law enforcement priorities, such as border security, guns, corruption, drugs and organized crime.

To train these new officers, we have allocated $37 million over two years for the RCMP to expand its national training academy, Depot, and to accommodate new officers and build capacity to train more officers in the future.

Furthermore, as part of our fight against organized crime, we committed $9 million to the RCMP's integrated counterfeit enforcement teams, which play an integral role in safeguarding our economy.

These highly trained teams have been strategically located in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, where the highest percentage of counterfeit notes are passed and seized. They work closely with the Bank of Canada and local and international law enforcement agencies to uncover and take action against counterfeit operations. The teams are already producing results, having scored several seizures of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of counterfeit banknotes.

Also, as part of our fight against organized crime, the Government of Canada, in partnership with the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, launched a new website called organizedcrime.ca. It will go a long way toward building public awareness of how organized crime affects our lives.

In budget 2007, we continued the important work of protecting Canadians with additional investments for law and order, as well as security.

Most notably, we committed almost $64 million over two years to implement a new national anti-drug strategy. Nearly one-third, $21.6 million, of this new funding will be dedicated to support increased law enforcement activities. We will specifically target illicit drug producers and traffickers as well as the organized crime elements behind them, including gangs.

Earlier this month, the Prime Minister unveiled the new anti-drug strategy. The Speech from the Throne clearly commits the government to implementing the strategy, which will give law enforcement agencies powers to take on those who produce and push drugs on our streets.

In addition to tougher laws, the government will provide targeted intervention to prevent drug related crime in communities and to support victims. The new strategy will inform youth and their parents of the dangers of drug use and attempt to dissuade youth from using drugs, offer help and treatment to those who use or are addicted to drugs, and punish those who prey on young people and others by producing and selling drugs. Someone who sells or produces drugs will pay with jail time.

In keeping with our support for the police, we are working closely with the provinces, territories and law enforcement partners to ensure that officers have the tools they need to significantly reduce illegal drug production and distribution operations. This should help cut off the supply of illicit drugs produced in lucrative marijuana grow ops as well as synthetic drug operations such as methamphetamine laboratories.

We can ask any parent or grandparent, including me, and they will tell us that no resource is more precious than our children. Law enforcement agencies around the world are working more closely than ever in the area of preventing the sexual exploitation of children. They need protection from a vast array of predators and threats, whether they are walking along the streets of our communities or running down the blind alleys of the Internet. That is why budget 2007 allocated an additional $6 million per year to enhance current activities aimed at protecting children from sexual exploitation and trafficking.

Some of this funding will be allocated to the completion of the Canadian Image Database of Exploited Children, which will help investigators identify victims and offenders depicted in child sexual abuse images. The Canadian database, which will be linked to the international one operated by Interpol, will ensure that Canadian investigators are effective and efficient in these important investigations.

A one time contribution of $70,000 was also recently granted to Cybertip.ca, Canada's national tip line for Internet facilitated child sexual exploitation. Cybertip.ca works closely with law enforcement and is experiencing additional workload pressures resulting from the heightened awareness of Canadians, which is increasing the number of tips received from the public.

But all of these measures are not enough. That is why the measures to protect families and communities against crime, like those introduced in this morning's tackling violent crime bill, including the threat of sexual predators, are so important. These reforms will further strengthen Canada's child protection laws, which are among the most comprehensive in the world. This investment will help our law enforcement agencies to, among other things, field test new tools and technologies to be used in the work of protecting children.

Our first budget in 2006 committed $1.4 billion over two years to secure Canada's borders and better protect Canadians in their homes and communities. The government has taken action to facilitate the smooth flow of legitimate trade and travel while securing our borders. We recognize that this is vital to our national economy and will help protect the safety of our local communities.

To that end, we are hiring 400 new permanent border officers to end dangerous “work alone” situations. In addition, we are training and equipping a total of 4,800 border officers with side arms. In fact, the first of these armed officers are now on the front lines. We intend to move forward as quickly as possible on this important initiative.

There is no greater responsibility for a government than to protect the rights of citizens to safety and security. In the last session of Parliament, the government introduced a suite of legislation to fulfill this solemn duty, but some of the most important provisions did not pass. Despite the resistance by the opposition to passing laws that will make our streets safer, we made significant financial investments in law enforcement and safe communities.

To complement these measures, the government will go further with a safer community strategy to deal with the critical intersection of drugs, youth and property crime. We will bring forward new initiatives to fight the abuse of older adults, as well as the emerging threat of identity theft.

With this package, the government has all the bases covered. On the one hand, it will pose tough new penalties on offenders. On the other, it will provide targeted support to communities and victims.

These are measures whose time has come. I encourage all hon. members in the House to acknowledge Canadians' right to safety by supporting the government's Speech from the Throne.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to the hon. member's comments. I honour him for his contribution to Canada as a former police officer.

Nobody has a hammerlock on public protection and the interest that we all have in reducing crime in our communities and across the country. Where we differ, perhaps, is in how we want to accomplish that goal.

My colleague from Mount Royal, in fact, if we want to talk about facts, actually was part and parcel of introducing the child sex offender registry and some of the toughest anti-porn laws in the entire world against children. He is an individual who has contributed mightily to public security.

We want to work with the government to enhance that, so I would ask my hon. colleague a couple of questions.

Why on earth would his government end the early learning head start program that the Liberal government put forward, a program asked for by the police, a program which ensures that children have their basic needs met and, in so doing, reduces youth crime by 60%?

My second question is in regard to drugs. Yes, drugs are a scourge in our country and we want to decrease drug use. Why on earth would his government attempt to challenge and try to eliminate the Insite supervised injection program in Vancouver and the NAOMI project, also in Vancouver? These are projects that have worked spectacularly well at reducing drug use among some of the toughest, most intractable drug users in Canada, at bringing these people into treatment, reducing crime, reducing harm, reducing public disturbances, saving the taxpayer money, and reducing demands on our health care system. It is a win-win situation for all concerned.

Will the member support the Insite supervised injection program for three more years? Will the government have a broader expansion of that program and the NAOMI narcotic replacement program for drug addicts in Vancouver and allow that to spread across Canada for those people who have a drug problem that should be treated as a medical problem, not a judicial problem?

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to hear that my colleague opposite supports our crime prevention initiatives and the crime bills that we are going to bring forward.

In the last session, the government provided a great deal of resources for families. That is where we believe the emphasis should be: on building strong families. At the same time, we have provided a great number of tax dollars to crime prevention initiatives across the country in each and every province.

If my hon. colleague looks at the whole package, I think he will see that we have done a great deal on crime prevention and strengthening families.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I noted the member's statements about the general decline in homicides against the increase in other crimes. Despite the fact that he made mention of this, there was absolutely nothing in the throne speech to address that very thing, that being crimes committed against women and the violence women are experiencing, with young women fleeing abusive partners, 500 aboriginal women missing from the streets of Canada and murdered, and immigrant and migrant workers.

All of these women face real violence and the reality of violence in their lives, yet there is nothing in this throne speech to address that violence. There is nothing about affordable housing. There is nothing about child care with an educational component. There is nothing about changes to employment insurance and maternity and paternal leave. These are the very things that would address the needs of women and would prevent the very crime that members of the government give lip service to.

I would like to ask the member why there was nothing to change the direction of Status of Women Canada, nothing to address the issues of women and nothing to prevent the violence the government seems to be so particularly concerned about.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Speaker, obviously I share some of the hon. member's concerns. As I indicated, I was a police officer for 30 years. I spent a great deal of my time investigating criminal acts committed against various members of society. I was a member of organizations that supported the individuals of whom she speaks, so I understand that, but our laws are addressed to Canadians and they include those people.

That is the whole issue of our crime-fighting agenda. It is to protect all Canadians, not one segment as opposed to another but all Canadians. I think this particular package does that. I think it does provide protection for Canadians, and those same victims of whom she speaks are also members of our community who deserve to feel that they live in a strong and safe community.

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for the great speech we heard this morning. With his 30 years of experience as a police officer and then a police chief, we certainly appreciate his perspective on this matter.

As I travelled around my constituency this summer, there were many times when the people in the riding of Crowfoot would ask if our government was still going to proceed with its priorities, because they understood that the Liberals and other opposition parties were doing everything they could to stifle and slow down the agenda for the mandate the government had as far as fighting crime and the other priorities that it laid down were concerned.

A number of speeches we have heard this morning mentioned exactly the process in which the Liberals took on the government, especially on crime fighting. It was a process of passing bills in the House, sending them to committee and absolutely gutting the legislation at committee. Then, if it got through committee, they allowed it to go to the Senate, which just sat on it, stalling the legislation and never letting it come back and receive royal assent. I am wondering if the hon. member could speak about one of those areas, which is the area of tackling violent crime. We have seen that process happen.

Another thing the Liberals did in order to show they were tough on violent crime was to strengthen the maximum sentences received by those convicted, but they would never address the minimum mandatory prison term. I wonder if he, as a police officer, would talk about that. On violent gun crimes specifically, the government intends to make sure there are mandatory minimum sentences.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Crowfoot obviously has a serious interest in all of these matters. He is absolutely right in that a great deal of this legislation, when it did eventually clear the House, ended up being stalled by the unelected Liberal majority in the Senate. It never got through the Senate to receive royal assent, which certainly has held up an agenda Canadians want to see brought forward.

The member is absolutely right. When we increase the mandatory sentences but there is no minimum, the courts tend to look at the lowest end of the spectrum. I certainly heard the same comments from people in our community about the revolving door of people being charged and convicted of very serious offences but getting back on the street and recommitting. Canadians from coast to coast to coast have made it very clear to all of us that they want to see an end to this. They certainly want to see people who are prone to committing crimes do the time that is expected. That is exactly what this suite of crime bills will do after going through the House.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I was happy to hear the member mention the drug strategy. I wonder if he could elaborate, particularly in the area of treatment. A number of people in my riding need treatment for drugs, as do people in all ridings, and they are constantly referring to the lack of facilities for drug treatment. I wonder if there is anything in the plan to deal with that.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if the member for Yukon had followed the release on the drug strategy, he would see that in fact there were provisions in the strategy for encouraging young people to not be involved in drugs, but also for detox facilities.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first I would like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Saint-Jean.

I am very pleased today to speak to the amendment to the amendment moved by the Bloc Québécois. The purpose of this amendment is to make the Speech from the Throne acceptable to Quebec.

The Speech from the Throne that was presented to us does not meet the needs of Quebec in terms of its development, nor does it satisfy the five conditions put on the table by the Bloc Québécois to reflect what the nation of Quebec wants.

When I heard the Speech from the Throne for the first time and when I re-read it, the first thing that came to mind was that the people who were planning to run for the Conservative Party in Quebec must have decided to stay home.

The government announced its desire to extend the mission in Afghanistan by two years, until 2011. However, we know that this mission is floundering, that it is extremely militaristic and that it is not achieving the desired results. There is no balance between the efforts in international aid and the so-called diplomatic efforts. None of this corresponds to what Quebeckers want.

As far as the environment is concerned, the Conservative government is going completely against what Quebeckers want. Quebeckers want the Kyoto protocol to be applied as soon as possible in order to give people a basic quality of life again and to stop the current deterioration of the planet.

There is a strong consensus on this in Quebec, but there is nothing about it in the Speech from the Throne. The Conservatives take it one step further by associating themselves with the handful of countries that do not acknowledge the Kyoto protocol. That is the second contradiction between the vision of the Conservatives and that of Quebeckers, who want to move forward.

For my riding, what gets me the most is the lack of any real position on the forestry crisis. This issue affects all the regions in Quebec. We are still struggling to get the industry out of its slump so that it can face new situations. There is a general consensus in Quebec that the federal government needs to do something about this.

I heard the Premier of Quebec, Jean Charest, and the Minister of Natural Resources and Wildlife for Quebec, Claude Béchard, both Liberal federalists, hoping Ottawa will put in some money as soon as possible. That is the general consensus in Quebec: the federal government must do its part.

Yet, there is absolutely no indication in the throne speech that the federal government will do its part. It merely repeats the same old rhetoric heard in this House for the past year and a half, that is, business as usual. The Conservatives simply tell themselves that the economy is doing well, so we should let market forces prevail. However, on a daily basis, businesses are announcing that they are closing. Naturally, this has serious repercussions on employment and on the workers.

We would have expected the government to finally announce a real assistance program for older workers. I would like to repeat what I said yesterday to the Prime Minister, who has remained insensitive to this situation, as though he did not even know what was happening.

During consideration of the 2006 Speech from the Throne, the House adopted a Bloc Québécois amendment to implement an assistance program for older workers. The Conservatives decided to sleep on the idea. Later, when it was time for the budget, a committee was formed and was supposed to present a report in September. That committee's mandate was just extended until December and we still do not have an assistance program for older workers.

In the meantime, people who are 55, 56, 58 or 60 years old who have been laid off must rely on social assistance. Some have even become ill. Unfortunately, there have even been some cases of suicide in my riding. I find this situation unacceptable.

Last year, the government’s financial statements showed a budgetary surplus of $14 billion. That surplus was used to eliminate part of the debt. This year, according to expectations, the same amount will be applied against the debt on March 31, 2008. Meanwhile, people who have contributed to the progress of our society and who have supported their families over 25, 30 or 35 years are losing their jobs and we have not been able to find the means of enabling them to make the transition to their retirement.

To evaluate our society, we must not only evaluate how riches are created but also the way those riches are distributed.

On that score, the Conservatives clearly do not deserve a passing grade. Changes absolutely have to be made.

In the same line of thought, there is an employment insurance pilot project covering 21 regions of Canada that have high unemployment rates, especially in terms of seasonal employment. After a struggle lasting many years, we have succeeded in gaining an additional five weeks of employment insurance. However, that has not yet been incorporated into the act. It is only a pilot project.

In June 2006, for the first time, under the pressure of questions from the Bloc, the government agreed to an extension until December 2007. However, we have been forced to return to the offensive because the government has not done any of the evaluations that it said it would do.

On December 9, if the federal government does not decide to grant another extension, those people who are affected by the crisis in forestry and the manufacturing sector will fall back into the situation that existed a few years ago: the spring gap or “black hole,” a period of several weeks in which there are no more employment insurance benefits or welfare payments; a time when people must draw money from RRSPs or find some other type of funding.

To digress for a moment, I listened to the speeches by the Conservatives this morning. If I lived in the country they were describing, I would be very unhappy. I hope that people do not live with that level of daily violence because that would be terrible. The reality is that there has been a decrease in crime in Quebec for several years. Yes, action needs to be taken and improvements are required. However, the state of crisis that the Conservatives are trying to create does not correspond to the reality, either in Quebec or the rest of Canada. It is proper that appropriate measures should be taken but to make this an obsession, as is being done now, makes no sense. That leads to contradictions like the following.

There was a federal program to assist young people in the regions who dropped out of school. In my region, a project of this kind had already been submitted. By the old criteria that applied under the Liberals, the project would have been approved. But the Conservatives changed the criteria and decided that it would now apply only where the crime rate was very high. So our region, which would have been entitled to an assistance program so that it could provide street workers, no longer qualifies, because it has a low crime rate. Nothing could be more absurd than this! Do we expect our young people to move to regions that have higher crime rates so they can qualify for this kind of measure?

All sorts of other things can be done, like prevention. We have to abandon this obsession and go back to doing things in a way that will let us give people an adequate income when they are working and when they are unemployed, so that they can meet their needs, support their families and pass on proper values to their families. Creating poverty, tolerating an ever-widening gulf between rich and poor in society, a gulf that the Conservative government encourages, those are the kinds of situations that lead to crime. This is unacceptable.

So Quebeckers really do not see themselves in this throne speech. I have referred to Afghanistan, the forestry crisis, the environment. There is also the federal spending power, on which the Conservative government has been swallowed up by the federal bureaucracy.

I was somewhat surprised by the Speech from the Throne. So I got out my notes. Some passages in the speech are exactly the same as what Mr. Chrétien said when he was Prime Minister. In fact, in those passages, we are told that we have to continue being centralist, and ensure that when the federal government establishes a program in an area under shared jurisdiction, the province does the same thing and does not adopt the same program as the federal government. This produces absurd results: in Quebec, we have developed a good child care system. But according to the throne speech, if the federal government decided to adopt a similar system for Canada as a whole, and if Quebec wanted to receive funds, it would have to institute a similar program, even though it already has one. The money it needs is not necessarily to create a child care system; it has other needs that have to be met. It has already met that need to a large extent and it has a system that is operating properly. This is another unacceptable measure.

This is not a sovereignist position, it is the position of a Quebecker who respects the traditional vision of Quebec and has long been calling for the power of the federal government to spend in areas under Quebec’s jurisdiction be eliminated. This is not my political opinion. Robert Bourassa, the former Premier of Quebec, stated it very well some years ago. This opinion existed before him, and it still exists today. That is why this throne speech, today, does not in any way reflect the will of the Quebec nation.

This is why the Bloc Québécois adopted, stated and clearly expressed its positions in advance. The Conservative government has decided to ignore those positions. Today, I challenge someone, someone who is not a Conservative candidate or hopes to be one, to stand before the voters in a riding in Quebec and say that he or she supports extending the war in Afghanistan by two years, and not honouring the Kyoto protocol. Anyone who does that is going to be looking at a perfect storm.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the throne speech stated:

At the end of 2005, Canada's greenhouse gas emissions were 33 percent above the Kyoto commitment. It is now widely understood that, because of inaction on greenhouse gases over the last decade, Canada's emissions cannot be brought to the level required under the Kyoto Protocol within the compliance period, which begins on January 1, 2008, just 77 days from now.

Does the member agree or disagree with that?

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's question is particularly insidious. He admits that the situation is intolerable and that we are headed for an ecological disaster, but the Conservatives think that since they cannot achieve the initial goals, they do not need to set any goals at all. They seem to be saying that they cannot be bothered. They do not seem to care that the quality of our environment has deteriorated to the point that major climate change is inevitable. It is as though they are asking us to give up the fight to change things.

The Conservative government and the Liberal governments that preceded it have a lot to answer for on this score, as do all members of our society. That being said, we do need clear goals.

Right now, the Conservative government is telling us that we should keep on polluting and that they will set targets eventually. According to the Conservatives, it does not matter if we increase production and aggravate problems related to climate change and greenhouse gases because we will just live with the new reality.

An unequivocal message has been sent to the Conservative government and every other government around the world: this has got to stop.

That is what Mr. Gore, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the IPCC, has concluded. If we want to ensure peace in the world in the near future, our priority should be to ensure the planet's viability.

The Conservative government is ignoring its responsibility and is not committing the resources needed to turn things around. Quebeckers could not disagree more with the Conservative government on this issue.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not believe that the Bloc members will surprise anyone today when they say that they cannot support the Throne Speech presented this week. Several of my colleagues have referred to the five Bloc conditions. We were the first political party to establish what we were and were not willing to accept. That did not happen overnight. There were discussions in caucus. Our members are very involved in their ridings. When we meet with our citizens, we listen to their concerns, points of view, fears, what they like and what they don't like.

The five conditions established at the outset by the Bloc Québécois are rooted in the Quebec experience. They reflect what Quebeckers think. In our opinion, only one of these items may perhaps be acceptable, supply management in the agriculture sector. The government has said that it would continue to offer solid support in that area. As for the rest, it is a far cry from what the Bloc asked for.

Our planet is dying, but our Conservative colleagues say that the Kyoto goals and targets cannot be met. I understand; there has been no movement for years. We said we would sign the Kyoto protocol and that we would meet the targets; but now, 80 days or 3 months from the deadline, we are saying that we cannot do it. That is obvious; but did we try to meet the targets? Not only did we fail to reach the targets but we did so intentionally.

The Prime Minister attends international conferences where he associates with the greatest environmental delinquents on the planet, the United States, Australia and others. There he says that we will not meet the Kyoto targets and that we will do something else. The voters are not stupid. They understand very well that this position in Canada protects economic interests, particularly the oil interests in western Canada. This is done at the expense of the environment and is not in keeping with the intentions of citizens elsewhere in Canada. The government will certainly pay the price.

This is also the case for the forestry industry, which is experiencing a major crisis. The government is not lifting a finger to help. All manner of measures could be implemented, such as the reform of employment insurance or the re-establishment of assistance programs for older workers. The government could not care less and continues to defend major corporations, mainly the oil companies.

There is also the matter of federal spending power. This government has always said that it would stop interfering in areas under provincial jurisdiction. That is not what we are hearing today. It will be business as usual for old programs, and the government says that it wants to monitor new programs. It is still interfering. Federal spending power has not changed. We cannot accept that.

The last point I want to discuss in greater detail relates to my own area of expertise: Afghanistan. I think we should review the Bloc Québécois' track record of responsible action since Canada first went into Afghanistan.

I would like to go back to October 2001, when the Bloc Québécois said that the mission appeared to strike a balance between defence and development. We were told all about development, about how little girls would be able to go back to school, about how clinics, wells and irrigation systems would be built. We agreed to the mission because it was sanctioned by the UN and because NATO supported it on the basis of article five, which states that that an armed attack against one member of the alliance shall be considered an attack against them all. We agreed with this, so we agreed to deploying troops in Afghanistan.

Then, in February 2002, ground troops were sent in and things got more complicated. Initially, there were no ground troops involved. We sent boats and planes in on reconnaissance missions. We were less involved. Sending in ground troops meant more money spent and more soldiers' lives lost. That was when we started setting some limits.

In November, a major decision was made to leave Kabul, the capital—which Canada and its allies had managed to stabilize—and go to Kandahar. That was when we realized that there would be a very high price to pay. Still, we supported the troops, but we also started asking questions about detainees and speaking out against anti-personnel landmines and so on. We agreed to sending our troops to Kandahar in November 2005. However, as things went on, we realized that the mission was becoming unbalanced; it was leaning heavily toward combat and away from reconstruction and diplomacy.

At that point, we began to set limits. The Bloc Québécois introduced a motion on May 16, 2007 echoing what the Conservatives had said when they were in opposition. For example, how long would the mission last? Could the government tell us? What was the state of the personnel and materiel? We wanted to know the relationship between combat operations and humanitarian activities, reconstruction and diplomacy. What assessment criteria would be used to develop an exit strategy? Could we have those assessment criteria?

The day after this motion was introduced at the Standing Committee on National Defence, the government introduced its own motion to extend the mission to 2009 and asked us to sign a blank cheque. There had been barely a day of debate, and the government had not yet answered our questions. There was no answer to any of the questions I just mentioned. Nevertheless, we were told to close our eyes and jump from a tiny platform without knowing where we would land.

Given the circumstances, the Bloc Québécois said no to extending the mission. It is important to remember this. Where are we at today? The mission is still completely unbalanced. When I went to Kandahar, I attended briefing sessions where I asked how many Canadian soldiers were in Kandahar. I was told there were 2,500. I asked how many people were working for Foreign Affairs, engaging in diplomacy and holding talks with the state governors, the Afghan provinces and the municipal authorities in the villages. I was told there were six people.

CIDA is doing the development work, digging wells and building clinics and schools. And how many people does this agency have to evaluate projects? Six as well. At that point we had really had it and our patience was at an end, because for months we had been asking this government to reverse this trend.

Now, what have we learned from the throne speech? We have learned that not only does the government not want to end combat operations in 2009, it wants to extend them. The government also uses the Afghanistan mission to justify its recent purchase of more than $20 billion in military equipment and indicates that more spending is planned.

We believe it is unacceptable to invest billions of dollars of taxpayers' money in military equipment in order to extend the conflict. We are going in the completely wrong direction, and I am not the only one who thinks so. When I went to Kandahar, I met the top general, General Richards, who told me—and the delegation—that we could not achieve our goal through military force alone. Just like the Americans and Mr. Bush, this government is more interested in a militarization of the conflict, and we know that that gets us nowhere.

The Bloc Québécois is not very happy with the throne speech, in particular the military aspect of the mission in Afghanistan. When I see this government in action, I see that it has completely departed from the foreign policy Canada has developed over the past 50 years, during which Canada has had a good reputation. If we had to go to war, we went. If Canada wanted to go to war, it went.

Canada has participated in two world wars and the Korean War, but in those days it was known as a great mediator. This is no longer the case. Now, it is all about the military. The Canadian dove has decided to perch alongside the American hawk. This is terrible and will have tragic consequences. This battle cannot be won by military force alone. The government did not understand, it did not meet our condition on Afghanistan, and that is why we will vote against the Speech from the Throne this evening, next week and at the final vote.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his speech. I have worked with the member on committee and I quite appreciate his work. He is an excellent committee member.

However, I am a bit disappointed in his lack of knowledge on the environmental file because I thought his party was particularly keen on that. Maybe he was overexuberant in his partisanship but to say that nothing has been done really shows he lacks knowledge if he is not aware of the green plan and all the programs. He should know that environmental groups have suggested the reinstatement of over 100 Liberal programs that have been cut since the green plan. Some programs have been reinstated with less money and more stringent regulations so they are not effective.

There was work on wind energy, carbon sequestration, clean coal, renewable energies, biomass and partnerships with the provinces. All sorts of things have been done by many Quebeckers working as scientists for the federal government under the direction of the government.

My question is not related to that at all. My question is related to the suggestion by the Prime Minister and the government that bills will be forced through committees. The committees do excellent work and all members do excellent work on committees but government members will be saying no to amendments and then rush the bills through committee. Does the member think that is democratic? Does that give respect to Parliament and to the committees?

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my Liberal colleague for his two questions. As an aside before answering the question on parliamentary democracy, I would like to say that it was in fact the Liberal Party that signed on to the Kyoto protocol and its objectives. The then Liberal government signed an agreement that recommended a progressive decrease of greenhouse gases. At the end of their mandate, we ended up with a substantial increase in greenhouse gases. That party is just as responsible for what is happening to the environment.

As far as democracy is concerned, my colleague is right. This Prime Minister constantly says that it is important to give a voice to parliamentarians, the publicly elected members. And yet the first thing he does, on the issue of Afghanistan for example, is hand the whole thing over to a panel, by using Liberal gimmicks, since the former Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Manley, is now chairing this working group. I think it is a gimmick in an attempt to trick the political parties. He should have handed this over to parliamentarians. That is what we are here for. We are here to assess the situation, but we are not being given the opportunity to do so.

What is more, there are many other situations in which the Prime Minister is going back on his word to give more power to parliamentarians than to lobby groups.

My colleague is right. This Prime Minister is renouncing parliamentary democracy.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in today's debate on the Speech from the Throne, a speech that directly addresses Canadians from coast to coast and issues that are very important to us all. One of those issues is safety on the streets and in the communities—the lifestyle that has defined us as a people and as a country for many years.

I would like to focus my remarks today on building a stronger, safer and better Canada.

Since becoming Minister of Justice and Attorney General I have had the opportunity to talk with Canadians from all walks of life, concerned citizens, parents, community activists, police, lawyers, and representatives from non-governmental organizations, about their concerns about crime and how we can better protect our families, our communities and our way of life. I have been impressed by just how much is going on at the community level to address this issue and by the efforts of so many individuals and groups to safeguard their communities, but still more is required.

Canadians are clearly looking for us to demonstrate leadership through concrete action to tackle crime in this country. I am pleased to say that the government has listened. We understand and share this concern. This is why from the very outset tackling crime has been a priority for this government and we have delivered on this priority.

In the last session we came forward with an aggressive criminal law reform agenda that included 12 crime bills. At the time of prorogation, six of those bills had already been passed.

Bill C-19 created a new offence that specifically targeted street racing. I can say that this is very much welcomed in many communities across Canada. This new offence of street racing calls it for what it is, a reckless and dangerous act that too often claims innocent lives. Under this new offence, those who treat our public streets as a racetrack will be dealt with more seriously. This legislation has support right across this country.

Bill C-9 amended the Criminal Code to prevent those convicted of certain serious crimes from receiving conditional sentences, or what is sometimes known as house arrest. Under this law, which will come into force in a little over a month, our message is clear. Those who commit serious violent crimes will serve their time behind bars and not in the comfort of their homes. I cannot really leave this subject without mentioning that members of the official opposition gutted a major part of this bill at committee. That was very disappointing to me.