Debates of Nov. 26th, 2009

Child Protection Act (Online Sexual Exploitation)

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to this bill today, Bill C-58.

It is our second day of debate and I would expect that we will be moving this bill to committee in very short order because it seems to me that all of the parties are onside.

There are certainly some criticisms as to the government's role, how it promulgated the legislation, and how it presented the legislation in the House, because as the member for Mississauga South has just said, there has been no legislative summary, no briefing notes, no nothing. As a matter of fact, the first we heard of it was from CTV's 24-hour news coverage from Monday morning on and we never got a copy of the bill until yesterday.

Nevertheless, it is a bill that is going to be supported and hopefully will be improved in committee. Certainly, when the minister announced it yesterday, she said that $42.1 million would be provided over five years to provide law enforcement more resources, so I asked her about that because it seemed to me that that had to be the focus.

We have a very effective law enforcement system in this country. As a matter of fact, the police tend to be the ones who do catch the guilty people, up to this point anyway. Our concern is that they do have proper resources, so I really wanted to know whether this was another $42 million on top of what they are already getting or simply previously announced money that they were dealing with, and she was not aware.

As the member for Mississauga South said, one would think that on a basic information piece like this, the government would have that answer available.

Best practices is another area that we should always look at when looking at legislation. I have made the argument that while the Conservatives claim to be tough on crime, we on this side of the House want to be smart on crime. We are prepared and we have examples where jurisdictions have used best practices, have looked around the world and picked examples of where a certain action worked, and simply adopted that, as opposed to the Conservatives who simply rely upon old, outmoded crime initiatives from Ronald Reagan's days in California, which have proven not to work.

They seem to be very still in their ideological approach to government. I know that it is dissipating over time. They are moving slowly but surely to the middle, and I think we are going to see more of that in the future.

I want to give a brief history of this problem, how it developed in regard to dealing with the web.

It was not until 1995 that email became prevalent. It had been used in universities for a few years before that, but email became prevalent right around 1995 and the web started after that, but at that point, most people still had monochrome screens. The frame rate was very low. It started at 15 frames a second and then they got it up to 30 frames a second.

I recall the Rolling Stones, just about the time they were appearing in Winnipeg a number of years ago, claiming to be the very first rock band to put one of their songs on the web. I looked at it and it was very slow. People here will remember when the first webcams came out. People were trying to talk to their relatives in other parts of the world and the voice did not match with the picture, and the picture was very choppy.

There was a period there where this really was not a problem. In fact, bandwidth became a problem around the mid-nineties.

Once again, to make this system work successfully they had to get faster speeds and they had to have better bandwidth. The ISPs had to do that in order to be able to transfer the material that we are talking about right now.

As other members have alluded to, we have had a virtual explosion of child pornography on the web just in the last five years. Once again, clearly the horse is out of the barn. As usual, the government is in a reactive position. Governments rarely lead. They usually are found to be following. In Canada, over the last few years, we have had a lot of instability with a change of government and an election every two years, starting back from scratch again on legislation and a fairly substantial slowdown.

The development of peer-to-peer computing was mentioned yesterday. That was a very big development that basically exploded overnight. We have all heard of Napster. It is out of business right now, but that was basically the beginning of peer-to-peer computing and making file sharing easy.

Therefore, logically when the technology developed the way it did and as fast as it did over time, it was just common sense that organized crime would be getting involved in the system. The police forces are aware that it is not only child pornography but it is also organized gambling rings who set up their servers outside of U.S. jurisdiction because they did not want to be prosecuted and put in jail by United States laws. Clearly, laws have had some effect.

There was a Bloc member yesterday who pointed to the bill and was touting the fact that these offences are going to slow these people down. However, as mentioned by the member for Mississauga South today and others, the fact of the matter is the penalities are not that large at all considering the money that is involved.

When we are dealing with organized crime and drug dealers, fines of $100,000 are probably just part of the cost of doing business for these people. These are not particularly strong fines in any sense.

We have the organized crime syndicates involved, so a system of penalties, fines and imprisonment and so on will deter some people for sure, but I think at the end of the day, if we pass this legislation and we find after a couple of years, and hopefully we will monitor its results, that the legislation is not working and the fines are not high enough, we will have to increase them. If we find that child pornography is still be produced at an increasing rate, then we are going to have to look at something more drastic.

I asked one of the government members of the government today whether the government had looked at best practices in other jurisdictions and the member said no, that he was not aware that the government had looked at other jurisdictions at all. Yet, yesterday the member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe was very clear in his presentation on the bill when he pointed out that there are other jurisdictions that have taken action and have dealt with the problem. These are his words and his claims. I would assume that he is correct in making these assessments and it should be easy to check. For example, the member drew our attention to Brazil where he said that the ISPs in Brazil have to follow a set of ethical rules that govern what they accept on their sites

He mentioned Sweden. It had a policy of blocking child porn. He mentioned Germany and the European Union as the best examples. Once again, he said that Germany was blocking access to the sites.

So, who are we trying kid here? If the answer is to simply block the sites, and if it works in Germany, then why are we getting ourselves tied up in knots here, spending huge amounts of money on police forces, $42 million over five years? That is probably on top of what we are already spending. Police forces are doing great work, and there is no doubt about it, to basically play a hide-and-seek game with these perpetrators over the Internet.

To me, a far more decisive, a far more effective, certainly cost effective, way of dealing with this would be to simply block the sites completely, and it is being done. I do not know what the rules are in Cuba, but I believe there is no Internet porn there either. It is certainly technically possible.

I know members may not agree with that and that is fine. The fact of the matter is, when the United States set up its penalties, people simply went offshore. To get around the American penalties, they simply took the path of least resistance and moved to a country that does not have penalties, that does not have these laws.

Another member, yesterday, pointed out that Canada is very high up in terms of not only sales of child pornography but also the production of it. This country is either number two or number three in not only the production but the distribution, the selling and the possession of child porn. So, it is certainly a major problem in this country and it is certainly growing.

Another fact to mention is that local computer repair depots have been reporting child pornography on laptops and computers brought in for repair. Recently, the customs people have been finding it on laptops. They have been checking laptops routinely for the last three or four years now at airports and customs sites, especially when people come from Thailand and places whether there is a lot of sex tourism. This is just basically, I think, making a small dent in the problem. As a matter of fact, the statistic I picked up on in the conversations over the last couple of days is that Canada is second in the world for hosting these sites.

In September 2008, the federal, provincial and territorial ministers responsible for justice agreed that Canada's response to child pornography could be enhanced by federal legislation requiring any agency whose services could be used to facilitate the commission of online pornography offences to report suspected material.

I know this was an initiative of the provinces, and I do give the provinces top marks. Yesterday we had a couple of Liberal speakers pontificating about how it was their party who started the ball rolling in this whole area and how the irresponsible Conservatives in government did not do anything for four years, and here we are today. That is fine for parties to pick their own little victories here and there, and try to embarrass the other side.

However, there has been activity at both the federal level and the provincial level over the years. My home province of Manitoba is one of three provinces that has rules stating that all people must report child pornography. I believe Nova Scotia and Ontario also have laws in place right now. Manitoba was an early mover in this area.

The Government of Canada's proposed legislation would enhance Canada's capacity to better protect children against sexual exploitation by making it mandatory for those who supply an Internet service to the public to report online child pornography. This legislation would help safeguard children by improving law enforcement's ability to detect offences and reduce the availability of child pornography on the Internet. This is a requirement in the bill but providers would not be obligated to search for it. If they happen to notice it, then they are obligated to report it.

There also is a 21 day rule in the bill but I do not know if that is a long enough timeframe. I am looking at a lawyer here in the House who could probably tell me whether that would be long enough or not. However, when the bill goes to committee it might look at making that a longer period of time because 21 days might be too short.

Under the proposed legislation, suppliers of Internet services to the public would be required to report to a designated agency tips that they might receive regarding websites where child pornography may be available to the public. They are required to notify police and safeguard evidence if they believe that a child pornography offence has been committed using their Internet service.

I am told that the well-known large ISPs are fairly cooperative in this area and that it is the smaller ISPs that are evidently less inclined to want to report, so they are the ones that will need to be given a bit of extra attention.

The legislation was carefully tailored to achieve its objectives while minimizing the impact on privacy. We will want to deal with that issue at committee because members of our caucus are concerned about that aspect.

Suppliers of Internet services would not be required to send personal subscriber information under this bill and that would be helpful as well.

Failure to comply with the duties under the bill would constitute an offence punishable by graduated fines of up to $1,000 for the first offence. The member for Mississauga South, among others, has taken exception to that as being too low. We might be looking at making an improvement there in committee, maybe a higher limit.

The bill also indicates that for a second offence the penalty would be $5,000 and for subsequent offences the possibility of a fine up to $10,000 or six months imprisonment, or both for sole proprietorships.

If it is a corporation, I would suspect there may be some sort of organized crime involved in it, but I may be wrong in that. However, if a corporation fails to comply with its duties under this act, the graduated fine fee would be $10,000, $50,000 and $100,000. Once again, I do not have a comment about whether that is a high amount or a low amount but it seems to be awfully low. If a criminal organization is producing child pornography and making a huge amount of money, although I have no idea how much money it would make on something like this, but $10,000 might be nothing more than the cost of doing business.

Again I find that I am short of time and once again only about halfway through my comments. I am used to those 40 minute speech slots that we had in Manitoba for many years. It is a hard habit to break. As a matter of fact, in the House of Commons just 30 years ago members had longer periods for their speeches. However, I do like the current time allotment as well.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Madam Speaker, I think my hon. colleague was right when he said that when we think about the Internet, pornography and child pornography, all of us in the House agree that it is an odious thing that happens to young children and we need to put a stop to it.

I would like him to articulate a little further about how we should address the issue to ensure it ends and that we protect our children, which, in the end, is what we really want to do. Clearly, the bill is lacking in some areas where it perhaps needs to be stiffened and could be helped out.

The hon. member started out to explain jurisdictions in the world that are making progress on this very heinous crime that is perpetrated on our young. I was hopeful that he could perhaps take some more time. I know he indicated that in other legislatures in this country members gets a little more time and perhaps, through my question, he could take some more time to explain to us what other countries are doing and how effective they are in ensuring these crimes are not perpetuated against children.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, from what I have been able to glean from the comments of pretty much all of the speakers on this side, no one is super critical of this bill. We are all saying that we will support it, but we just do not think it is tough enough to deal with the problem.

This probably would have been the measure to take five or six years ago when the problem was not as big as it is now. I think the member for Mississauga South was right. We should be looking at the best practices we can find. There may be others. We mentioned that Sweden simply blocks the porn sites and that Brazil has set up ethical rules.

If we do not want to follow Sweden's example and block the sites, then maybe we should look at Brazil where the ISPs have ethical rules set up that somehow must restrict access to them. We are told that Germany has the best system where it blocks access to the sites completely. To me, that would grind it to a halt, at least as far as our jurisdiction is concerned.

I was not born yesterday. I know the criminal elements will try to find a way around it. Maybe they will move their servers to some other country and then at a certain point we would need to chase down the perpetrators somewhere else. However, the bill covers the whole range. It covers production and possession.

Once again, I am saying that we need this bill because it is important. The provinces want it and they agreed to it. It is all part of a package.

I know the member for Mississauga South thinks we should have a complete package and add even more things into it, even beyond the scope of the bill. I do not think we need to look at that right now, but in terms of this bill, I think the government should seriously look at other possible alternatives that it can throw into this as a package and move along together with this bill.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Madam Speaker, at the beginning of my colleague's speech he talked about some of the questions he had asked the minister about resourcing. He asked some other members whether they had done this or done that when it comes to resource allocation, new moneys and old moneys, but he could not get a response because they were not sure.

This leaves one to question. If the bill is so seriously needed, one would think that they would want to resource it appropriately so that we can act on it. We need to not only get this done, we need to resource those law enforcement agencies.

As my colleague pointed out, we can go after and get ethical rules around ISPs, perhaps following the examples of Brazil and Germany in doing that, but what happens if there is a criminal element? We need the resources and a police function that will attack that. Some of the police agencies across this country have said that they are underfunded and under-resourced. They do not have the people because of the resource part of it to get the job done that they need to do to curtail this heinous sort of crime. All of us in the House agree that child porn is heinous and that we need to stop it.

What does my colleague think the government should do when it comes to resourcing? If it slides toward the criminal element and away from the legitimate providers, how will they be resourced and how should they tackle that particular crime group that would want to do those sorts of things?

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I would draw back to the original speech by the minister in the House when she said that $41.1 million over five years would be provided to law enforcement to give more resources. Properly resourcing the police force is something that we on this side of the House are particularly interested in because the police are the ones who will be dealing with the problem.

I think the bill was hastily drawn together. The government basically lurches back and forth like a ship in a sea. One day it is doing one thing and another day it is doing something else. The bill starts to be reported on CTV News on Monday morning. Every half hour it is being reported on and Parliament does not have a copy of it. We have no notes to go on. When the minister does make the statement and I ask her about the $41 million of resourcing for the police, she has no idea whether that is new money, old money, enough money or what it will do. Surely members who are going to speak on the issue would be well briefed, would have notes and would have answers to possible questions.

Even today, when I asked the member for Leeds—Grenville, who made a very well informed speech, for best practices, he could not tell me whether they had even looked at any other best practices.

I worked on bill 31 in Manitoba, which, at the time, was the electronic commerce legislation, the most comprehensive of its kind in Canada about 10 years ago. We used a uniform law template to put that legislation together. We cannot just make things up as we go along. There is always some sort of basis upon which we start when drafting legislation.

We know the Conservatives must have looked at other jurisdictions. I would be shocked if they had not. I just want to know who they looked at and why they rejected, for example, Germany. If they did look at the rules in Germany, I want to know why they decided not to follow the German example. If they looked at Brazil, I want to know why they decided its system was not what they liked. If they looked at the Swedish example, I want to know why they decided its system was not what they wanted.

The member talked about organized crime. We tend to think that people involved in child pornography are average people. I am sure thousands of them are, but given the amount of money that is involved in this business there has to be the long tail of organized crime. If we do not know that, we had better start looking. If we talk to police forces that deal with organized crime they will tell us that, certainly those in my home city of Winnipeg,

I want the focus of the criminal justice system to be on chasing the Mr. Bigs. We keep chasing the little guy at the bottom of the totem pole who gets nailed for a little bit of cocaine or distribution, but the reality is that it is the guys at the top who are making the big money. Those are the guys wearing the suits. As a matter of fact, most of them do not even own motorcycles in Winnipeg and they live in fancy houses in the suburbs. That is the kind of criminal that I want to see us focus on. I think we will see that some of them are involved in this area as well.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to a bill that has been a long time coming. This bill is important for all members and for all Canadians. It is absolutely crucial that Parliament take a closer look at this bill and address an extremely important issue, that is, the protection of our children.

This is not a new issue for me as a member of Parliament. It is not a new issue for some of my colleagues who were here with me in 1999-2000 when a decision was made in British Columbia by Justice Duncan Shaw with respect to the Sharpe decision. That decision created a panic throughout Canada. The protections that had been passed by Parliament in the past were then subject to judicial review and many provisions meant to protect children were knocked out.

It became very clear to parliamentarians, many of us who took these issues very seriously on a bipartisan basis, I might add, that what we were witnessing at the time was a lack of understanding and appreciation of those who were excited, those who would offend and those who would continue to use any means at their disposal, including technology, which I will come to in a moment, the purpose for which this bill has been created, to feed their addiction of exploitation of children.

It appeared at the time that there seemed to be a lot of misunderstanding, if not innocent ignorance, as to what was behind it. Many people thought this was a matter of expression, that we could not ban some of this information, particularly if it was written, because it might be analogous to banning the book Lolita.

No one wanted to put those two imperatives of protection of children against the right of privacy, one against the other. Rather, what we have seen in the past eight or nine years from parliamentarians, Canadians, psychiatrists, police forces and coordination through our crowns and judges is a better understanding of the pernicious nature of child exploitation and child pornography.

I want to give a message of a much stronger Parliament. I know there has been some discussion about where Canada falls short, but in my experience of working with the Toronto police force, going back to 2001, with the Ontario Provincial Police, under Project P, and with the RCMP, we are further ahead than we give us ourselves credit for. I am not here simply to toot our horn, but we are teaching other countries how to coordinate and build capacity to combat child exploitation, particularly through cyberspace exploitation or exploitation through the Internet.

Part of what is being addressed here today is about obligations. Many colleagues have spoken about how Internet service providers are in fact responding to the call and helping our law enforcement agencies trap, monitor and detect those who are engaging in the distribution of this information. This no doubt leads at one end to exploitation and at the other end to deal with providing people the medical and other kinds of interventions and help they need. What we have before us today is a very important first step in terms of ensuring and compelling Internet service providers to do what is necessary.

Some of this did not just happen in a vacuum. We will recall in April of 2002, I convened a meeting in which about 40 or 50 colleagues from all parties joined in a film or demonstration or depiction of the seriousness of the problem. I recall full well Paul Gillespie, who is now with the Kids' Internet Safety Alliance, a pre-eminent advocate, as well as Detective Sergeant Gary Ellis, who later became inspector before his retirement, along with Sergeant Bob Matthews from Project P, Roz Probert from Winnipeg and others attended a conference organized very quickly by members of Parliament.

After that 30-minute presentation, we got it. Not only did we get it, but within about two months our good and capable parliamentary secretary at the time, Paul Macklin, former member for Northumberland, was able to convince the government to provide the initial fund and first tranche of some $50 million to create a cyberspace network to help and facilitate so in smaller communities across Canada police could get the kind of training they needed to detect, share and arrest the behaviour.

We have done a lot over a period of time dealing with Internet service providers. We have also encountered some very unsavoury examples of where there has been reluctance by carriers not to provide information for whatever reason, such as privacy, cost, et cetera. We got around some of those.

However, I suspect the biggest stumbling block we faced then continues today. When a police officer is confronted with all these images, perhaps in the thousands at any given time, and a charge is brought against the individual, in order for the process of the charge to be laid and to be heard in a court, the evidence has to be sworn through each and every image. Because of a decision in the R. v. Stinchcombe case, it makes the job of our police forces practically impossible.

We are at a stage now, although there is better understanding of how to help police do a better job, where we need to do more. Certainly the bill goes in that direction.

I want to talk about something that is far more important to where we go. The minister was asked by several reporters what would be done once the domain of someone who was distributing child pornography was identified. We have no way of breaking down or knowing how to combat or how to address this issue. It is great to have a database and to be able to provide and get this information, but can we go after each and every one? I am not sure. We need to look at whether we have the ability and the resources to tackle the great numbers that we see out there.

This leads me to a bigger point, which I hope the committee will be able to address. I would ask the indulgence of all colleagues in the House to understand that it is more than just Internet service providers and people downloading information. It is really the peer-to-peer expression or the peer-to-peer sharing of files that is the most pernicious part of this. I am not sure if the legislation will be able to cover this, let alone if we can get our minds around the more modern way of distributing this information, which is undermining the integrity of young children and destroying their futures.

Short of going to the Orwellian perspective of big government watching everything people are doing, we need to come up with a better solution, not just for Canada but around the world. I salute those many organizations, including our RCMP, the Toronto police force and the OPP in my province, that have done yeoman's work of training the rest of the world.

However, we need to begin to look more fundamentally, more specifically, at the underlying new way in which information is shared, file to file. How we get around that will require a bit of dexterity in looking at these networks. We will have to find ways to train them. We will need to have the best practices, but we will also have to avail ourselves of the greatest technology out there.

Yes, questions will be raised about privacy. I suggest, as the RCMP has done in the past, that the number of people who may be sharing this information is not 65,000. There was some information a while ago from the RCMP that there may be as many as 65,000 people in the country who are in receipt of this information and share it. However, this number could easily exceed one million.

I am not one who is given to the notion of throwing numbers around, but the committee that looks into this legislation will need to know and be comfortable with the size, the dimension and the seriousness of this issue. While we have a number of solutions, there is no point in talking about solutions if there is not a better understanding of the problem.

As we look at not only trying to provide practices and building capacity in other countries and recognizing the mandate of Parliament, I hope we are prepared to give a very strong and important blank cheque to our law enforcement officials, to those on the front end, the smart people, those who understand how the Internet works.

We need a forum and focus to match what the private sector does. I think of the Kids' Internet Safety Alliance that is going it alone. It does not have support from the government. We have nice words coming from the government about how it is going to do this and it is going to set up a facility here and there. Frankly, this is taking off. Canadians understand this. Agencies involved in good will recognize the ability for us to use our collective strengths, the brains that we have out there, the technological wherewithal to understand the complexities by which child pornographers try to hide and disguise their craft and their evil.

I suggest for all members and colleagues that each and every one of us can talk about this issue, but we do ourselves a service as members of Parliament if we anticipate the road ahead, not just for the purpose of protecting our children but to help other countries that do not have the technological capacity yet alone the resources.

On the road of goodwill, we have lost a few things along the way. Frankly, we are going down a road and we do not know where it is taking us. It is very clear to us that if we are not prepared to recognize that the bill, which is several years late, and I will not get into the politics of it, is really to address an issue that took place some time ago, the next big challenge for Parliament will be to deal with new technologies in the digital age that are used to circumvent, to get ahead and to continue exploitation.

Canada does not play a minor role in this regard. We have heard stats provided by a number of colleagues in the House of Commons as to the number of Canadians who may be involved with it and where we are in terms of protection of children. On the surface, the statistics look grim, but there is no doubt there is a will within Parliament. There are other very good statistics that demonstrate that our front line men and women, psychiatrists, police officers and those in the judicial system, are doing yeoman's work and are trying to find what is the best way to approach this ever-changing challenge.

Someone said that it was a little like trying to tack jello on to a wall. However, the frank reality is we have to continue to be aware of where the emerging problems lie in order to provide the kind of solutions that we owe our next generation.

Behind the technology are broken individuals who exploit. These are individuals who, short of legislation, also need therapy. These people cannot help themselves. These individuals need the state, they need society and they need rehabilitation. We can talk about penalties, but we also have to talk about prevention, as my good colleague from Mississauga South alluded to a little earlier. I cannot think of a better example of where we have to get it right for the benefit of all the children out there who might otherwise be exploited.

These are not comments that we simply take as members of Parliament wanting to do good. We recognize in our country and around the world that the issue of child exploitation is a greater threat than most, perhaps, against the next generation. We have to marshal the collective forces in our country and around the world to work co-operatively. I do not see that in the bill. I see we will do our own job from the ISPs' perspective, and this is only ISPs that exist within Canada, because we have no international reach. I suggest that is the way we ought to go.

I want to point out something we did in 2002, with a number of colleagues present. I recall one colleague, who was also very big on this, and I miss him a lot, Myron Thompson, the member for Wild Rose, who, with myself, made it abundantly clear that on both sides of the House we would work very hard to see this legislation would someday be a reality. Though he is not here today, I am sure he is very pleased to see we have moved down this road.

In 2002, to be specific, we suggested that there ought to be some changes on retention of information by Internet service providers. I will read what all colleagues at the time, or their predecessors would have known and were participating in legislation required or an amendment to the existing legislation at the time with Bill C-15, said concerning the retention of client information, records by Internet service providers. They said that ISPs must be able to furnish police with data, records on suspected child pornographers. We also urged, at the time, to make it mandatory for ISPs to keep client logs for at least one year, following the U.S. model in subjecting ISPs to substantial fines for non-compliance.

Those were some of the ideas that flowed from a very quick meeting that members of Parliament had. There is no doubt that the intention of Parliament has been focused on that ever since. Yes, there have been several elections in between, but thank heavens we have continued in the belief that we can stand up for those who have no voice and who would otherwise see their lives destroyed by those who truly need our help.

I am also convinced of the proliferation, the sophistication, the pervasiveness of technology. I had my BlackBerry here a few minutes ago. When I was elected as a member of Parliament in 1993, such devices did not exist. The ability to communicate, good and bad, is ever present and, as I suggested earlier, pervasive.

This requires parliamentarians of all parties to recognize that the changes that are taking place are challenges that we can overcome, particularly if they are used for nefarious and heinous ends, such as exploiting children, not just in Canada but around the world. We have an obligation to listen to those who can demonstrate a better way.

There is only so much bandwidth. I will not get into the issue of telecommunications; I will leave that for a consumer story at some point down the road. We have the ability to monitor the traffic. We cannot be seen as intrusive but at the same time we have to be ever vigilant. If we know something is taking place and it is being done by certain modalities such as, file sharing, network to network, or computer to computer, the government has an obligation to look and to test judicial chill, or Cartesian charter chill, with a view to saying that what must be done here is in the higher and best interests of Canadian citizens.

It is not good enough to say that we will adopt best practices from other countries or that we are going to look around the world and vicariously get some form of child protection in Canada. We have to be at the table. We have to recognize the changes that are taking place. In none of the speeches that I have heard today have members been focused on the next concern, which is the existing means by which child pornographers are disseminating their material.

I am asking parliamentarians, as they go through the committee process and as they ponder and consider this, to be more focused on what are some very obvious challenges to us, but ones which I think we can overcome.

I would also like to take a moment to thank the former members of this House who helped develop this bill and to point out some of the measures previously taken by our Liberal government.

I was proud to be here to see the changes and to see the amount of money invested to ensure that our agents, our police officers and Crown officials are not only aware of the scope of the problem of the exploitation of youth, but also that they can continue to promote and ensure best practices for other police forces around the world.

Last month, I attended a conference in Durham, in my region, at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. A KINSA agency was giving training to representatives of police forces from Indonesia, Chile and Brazil. Other countries may know what to do, but we also have practices that are the envy of the world. However, we still need to make some improvements and recognize the people who work with us.

My hope and experience leads me to believe that the committee will bring forth the experts that I am referring to, the psychiatrists, those who understand technology, the software program writers, those who know how the devices used to exploit are being used against us and against the next generation. These are the people we should be hearing from.

If we really want to protect and stand up for the next generation, for posterity, I suggest we get with the program, that we understand the technology and bring in the bright lights. In that way we will guarantee for the next generation a much safer future and at the same time, keep Canada where it ought to be, defending the interests of those who have no voice.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the good work the member opposite has done over the years. I know he has put a lot of time and effort into this issue. He has hosted various seminars on the Hill, which members who were around in those days definitely benefited from in terms of the specific help, the specific exposé the police gave on those occasions.

The member opposite mentioned the very important need of monitoring, keeping on top of the ever-changing technology. We need to be vigilant so that we can truly protect our children the vulnerable, innocent children of the present and the future, from these heinous crimes against these most innocent vulnerable children.

Having said that, I would be interested to know at this juncture, either in a private member's bill or maybe some very specific amendments for the committee, what might be the major outlines going ahead from here, acknowledging as he did the good benefit of this government bill?

What might be the major outlines of a bill that he would do to even improve upon this bill, or that he might see in the future in terms of things that we could do further to get at and stomp out this very pernicious evil that we have in society today?

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Madam Speaker, I know the member for Saskatoon—Wanuskewin was there back in 2001 and 2002.

It is a reflection of the genuine belief that we can do better. We should look at having a full-time committee, a blue ribbon panel that would report to the Minister of Justice, but more important, to Parliament as to the evolution of best practices. It should be something that provides an annual report on the state of cybercrime in Canada and the state of the level of child exploitation in this country. It should not be used to panic people but to actually give some focus and perspective.

Some of this commissioning of information is done through the victims of crime organizations, but to put this in proper perspective, the RCMP and a number of agencies that are involved with child exploitation internationally and domestically who hold conferences could also bring out what is being done internationally and relate that to whether Canada is a hindrance or part of the solution.

We need annual reports and updates. By the time we get through elections and parliaments get around to doing good work, often those who exploit children have moved on. We need to continue to have a rapporteur, for lack of a better term, that would provide an update to Parliament each and every year on the best practices and most important, on what we are doing and what we are not doing.

I appreciate the hon. member's suggestions. That is an area the committee should look at. We have a bill and that is great. It deals with the problem today or perhaps the past few years but we need to look ahead.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Pickering—Scarborough East said he was elected in 1993, but I remember him from when I was the consumer critic for gas prices among other things in Manitoba. I would listen to him quite often on the radio and I would marvel. He is a very knowledgeable guy.

I notice that the definition in the bill includes more than ISPs. It also includes those who provide electronic mail services, Internet content, hosting services and social networking sites. Does the member think that is the all-encompassing, all-inclusive group? I am not up on all these issues as much as I used to be.

I would like to ask the member about peer to peer. Peer to peer came in big time with Napster and peer to peer is still around. He seems to think that is the most difficult area to work with.

I would like the member to take some time to explain to us why he thinks peer to peer is the biggest problem.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Those are excellent questions, Madam Speaker, and I am very happy to answer at least some of them to the best of my knowledge.

A cursory discussion with those on the front lines will tell us that peer to peer is de rigueur. It is the new means by which file sharing and downloading is occurring. It does require working through the networks but that seems to be the favourite way of doing things.

When police attempt to break a cyber network the police are actually finding a lot of mirrors. A lot of sites that come up exist for three hours and then move on. It is a very elusive game.

Does this legislation cover this? Yes and no. It talks about things in generalities but does not get to the specifics. My colleague from Moncton and I discussed this over the past few days. It does not actually get into where I think many of those who are on the front line are actually pointing to as being an area on which we need to focus.

The hon. member talks about Kazaa and Napster and other things. Of course those have been regulated in certain ways. I do not want to get into the issue of music or content, but rather deal with where the infrastructure is that is being used to deliver this information. It makes the job of trying to cover so many angles that much more difficult. I want to focus on this.

ISPs are not just the hosts, those who host websites, for instance Google and others. I am thinking of URLs that are used with hotmail. All of these are now caught by this legislation.

I want the committee members to focus on where the problem exists as it stands today. I do not think this is hot off the press but I also think that we have to be purposeful. We should be asking what we are doing with the information too.

Is it good enough to say we are going after ISPs and URLs? We get the domain names, but how are we prosecuting them? I do not think that question has been answered. It is important that we look at that as well.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Madam Speaker, I want to get right to a question involving the Criminal Code.

This bill is outside of the Criminal Code. Section 163.1 of the Criminal Code makes it an offence for any person who accesses child pornography. How is it different? Why is it a lesser offence for the people who allow and set up the system and do not report the fact that child pornography exists than for someone who accesses it? I want to know if he thinks that is proper.

In part V of the Criminal Code there is a hierarchy of offences: sexual offences, public morals and disorderly conduct. Why is it that the government is leaving these offences in the realm of public morals and not sexual offences? At the root, these images are evidence of criminal sexual abuse or rapes. The images reflect a crime. Those images, therefore, should be higher in the hierarchy than saying that we feel it is not proper conduct in this realm.

Why is the Criminal Code not used, and does the member endorse using the Criminal Code?

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Absolutely, Madam Speaker. I agree wholeheartedly with the member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe.

He has raised a point which I had not considered until now, the question of hierarchy of harms.

We all agree that there is child exploitation. Child exploitation is the destruction of human life, whether we like it or not. If the Criminal Code is not able to reflect that, or this legislation is not consistent with the opprobrium that Parliament and the Criminal Code hold against those who exploit children, that also would have to be a decent recommendation or amendment that the party should, on behalf of our critic, propose at committee.

I am not on committee. I am simply trying to provide some guidance with the latest of information which I think parliamentarians from all parties are going to have to look at more intensely.

I say these things because I think it is anticipating where we ought to be and it will put Canada back where it must be.

Yes, some Internet service providers have been helpful, some have not. Some have charged. Some have obstructed. Some continue to use issues of privacy, I think, indiscreetly. I agree with my colleague that optimal legislation would also include the ability to have a reasonable expectation of conviction, a reasonable expectation of stopping the practice in Canada. As well, what I think is the maximum of importance of this legislation is to give enforcement agencies the resources they need. If agencies in this country are creating true centres of cybercrime prevention that are in fact protecting Canadians and the international community, we have to be backing them with resources by Parliament, and not leave it to the private sector to, shamefully, do what we as parliamentarians want our government to do.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Madam Speaker, I am proud to rise to debate an initiative that is extremely imperative to anyone who is a parent.

Child pornography has been with us in many forms for many years, but it is extremely despicable on the Internet because a lot of it goes underground.

I want to congratulate a former colleague, a long-term member of Parliament, a former attorney general of Saskatchewan, Mr. Chris Axworthy. In early 1994, Mr. Axworthy introduced a child Internet pornography bill that was supported by many police organizations across the country. When he left the House of Commons, I resumed his bill and I have re-introduced it on four separate occasions. Every time I have done that, I have handed the bill over to justice ministers to get them to do something about the scourge of child pornography on the Internet.

I am pleased to see today that the Conservatives, under their justice minister, have tabled a bill that mentions child pornography and what may or may not be done.

We have to ensure that this is simply not window dressing. We cannot just say that we are going to do something about Internet pornography and then not give the people who operate under these confines the resources they need to do it. This cannot just be about political opportunities.

I want to tell the House about an event that happened a few years ago that was told to us by an officer of the Ontario Provincial Police. This particular officer worked eight hours a day sniffing out child pornography on the Internet. His job was to find the scourge of our society and bring them to justice. For over three hours he explained how quickly young children can be trapped by professionals who lure them on the Internet. They entice young children to do acts beyond their comprehension.

He told us that he posed as a father with an eight year old child who were both willing to swing in this regard. That information is put out on the Internet to try to get people to latch on to it. He put that information on the Internet, and by the time he was finished talking to us he had over 50 hits, 20 of them from Ontario alone. In those three hours, 50 people wanted to partake in that type of activity.

I do not know how sick we have become as a society, but the reality is that something needs to be done and it needs to be done quickly. The NDP had a similar bill in the House over many years. We have given it to various justice ministers, asking them to carefully look at it to see what parts they wanted to use in their own bill.

Nothing will come of this if the government does not put the financial and human resources and the tools that are required to allow our police forces, the RCMP, the OPP, the Sûreté du Québec, municipal and regional police forces across the country to do their job effectively, the end goal of which is protecting our children.

Child abuse and child pornography have been with us for a long time. We have heard about the Christian brothers in Newfoundland, the residential school abuse. I just cannot imagine what it would have been like to have been ripped out of my parent's arms, put into a residential school, and then abused for many years.

I am glad to hear that a truth and reconciliation commission will be coming forward in order to help first nations, Inuit and Métis people deal with what happened at that time. I only pray to God that they find some solace and peace when they get their stories out.

It is rather quite ironic that a guy like myself would stand up and talk about the Internet because I do not use a computer. I do not have a Blackberry. I still wish that Blackberries were banned because I find them a lazy way to communicate.

The reality is that the Internet can be a wonderful tool for information, but it can also be a dangerous place for unsuspecting individuals. What we need to do at the end of the day is make ISP providers, large and small, partially responsible for assisting and monitoring their sites. They do not have to do it all on their own.

This is where the federal government has to be proactive and ensure they get the additional resources, so that they can monitor their sites and with judicial oversight, we can protect the privacy of all individuals and ensure that they have legal rights. We must ensure that if the ISPs suspect something is happening that they are able to forward that information to the police. That is enough of what we should be doing.

As a father of two young girls, and I know many of us here are parents, it would be just a horrendous feeling to know that possibly one's child was sexually abused because of something on the Internet. I do not understand that for the life of me. I have tried to comprehend the thinking of an adult who thinks it is pleasurable to have sex with infants or very young children, but I just do not understand that type of thinking. I do not know if there is any type of rehabilitation for those types of individuals, but what is most important is that the government has recognized this as a scourge on our society, and we are please with that. I remind everyone that the number one goal of any government is the protection and security of its citizens including those who are most vulnerable, our children.

We will work with the government through the committee process. I know my colleague, the justice critic for the NDP, from Windsor—Tecumseh is one of the most knowledgeable people in the country and in the House when it comes to justice issues. I am sure he will be offering recommendations and amendments to make the bill even stronger, so that at the end of the day what the government purports to do, which is to rid or as best as possible eliminate child pornography on the Internet, we will ensure that the justice minister gets the help that he needs.

Most importantly, the justice minister in turn must provide those financial and human resources to all the police agencies across the country. They need the technology. They need the human element and they also need the financial commitment to ensure that they have the tools to do the very really dirty job that we ask them to do, which is to protect our children from child pornographers.

If we do that it will not only compliment the minister but it will compliment the House, and at the end of the day maybe one less child will be subjected to child pornographers on the Internet.

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

Madam Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-58 today with mixed emotions. We have been dealing with this issue in the justice committee since late 2006 or early 2007. It has been better than three years now. We actually had some consideration of it in Parliament in 2004 and 2006 as well, so it is going on five years.

I rise with mixed emotions because I am concerned. We are supportive of this legislation as far as it goes. Our major concern with Bill C-58 is that there are a number of other issues that should have been addressed long before this. Some of them have now been addressed in this bill, but there is a number that have not been addressed.

Addressing those issues and building a framework so that our police, prosecutors and judges would have greater ability to try to stamp out child porn on the Internet and the technological transmission of it would be a major step forward. We have not gone far enough on this and I am going to address at least some of those points.

I do want to set this in its historical context. When we were dealing with the legislation that dealt with the luring of children over the Internet, what came forward at that time was a good deal of evidence from various police forces, particularly from the Ontario Provincial Police and the Toronto Police Service. I do not want to disparage other forces, but at that period of time they were probably the most advanced forces in trying to combat child porn on the Internet.

The problem that we are now addressing came forward three to five years ago. We are addressing it to some lesser degree in Bill C-46 and Bill C-47, which are now before the public safety committee. The problem is getting at the service providers, which are in most cases the methodology, mechanism and technology by which the producers and traders of child porn are using to trade and sell this child porn.

What came out in the course of those hearings was that a number of service providers were refusing to co-operate with police forces both here in Canada and internationally. As a result of a number of fairly strong comments that came from members of that committee at the period of time when we had to deal with this, we have seen an increase in co-operation from the service providers in terms of giving police officers information, putting them on notice when they identify child porn on their service technology, and co-operating as fully as they can with the police.

That is not universally true to this day and that is why we are seeing this legislation. We really should have seen this legislation at least three years ago because it was very clear at that point that we had a problem. It was only because of some of the threats that came out of the justice committee at that time that we got greater co-operation from the service providers here in Canada.

It is still a major problem when we try to deal internationally. There are certain countries who are very co-operative with us and are actively engaged in trying to shut these sites down and to prosecute those who they trace the child pornography back to. However, there are other countries in the world that have no mechanisms at all to deal with this.

In that regard, I think it is worthwhile to note the assistance we got from Bill Gates and Microsoft. They assisted the police forces in developing a technology at quite a substantial expense to that corporation. It was in the range of about $10 million in human resources to develop the technology and the actual expenditure of funds to produce it.

It is important to note, both with regard to this bill and just generally, how child pornographers work. They put the information on one service provider and then skip it through a number of service providers. We have been told in some cases this material will go through up to as many as 50 service providers around the globe.

Through this technology, which was developed by Microsoft, through the Toronto police force's initiative, and funded by Mr. Gates, we are generally able to trace the material back to the source. So we may skip through a whole bunch of service providers, but we can eventually get back to the source and get the site shut down. We have seen at least several major busts in Canada as a result of this technology being deployed. A number of people were charged and in some cases convicted. Other cases are still working their way through the courts.

The technology was crucial and it was the first time it had been developed in the world. We are now sharing that technology with other countries with whom we are cooperating so they can use it to track things back to the child pornographers.

That was a major step forward. It was interesting to see in the media this week that some of the other technology that we have been working on in order to be able to register sites has not been developed. We had a five-year program that I think was initiated in the 2004-06 Parliament. We are close to the end of that. Under that program, people identify the site and advise the police, and then we have a registry of that.

That registry is still not up and running, because of technological problems. According to the article in the Chronicle Herald on November 25, as much as 40% of the budget that was allocated over that five-year period has not been spent because we do not have enough police officers actually working on this, and we do not seem to have been able to put enough resources into fully developing that technology.

That five-year period is just about up. I have no idea what the government is going to be doing in terms of continuing that funding until the service is up and running effectively. It is quite clear from the article that more police officers should have been specifically trained and designated to work in this area, and that has not happened.

With regard to the bill itself, one of the concerns I have is that, as is typical with the government, the government is out front, promulgating the notion that this is the be-all and the end-all. I am being a bit too harsh on them and I will admit that, but the reality is that the real work that needs to be done by government is to fund our police forces.

There are very few large police forces in this country that do not have at least one or two police officers specifically designated to deal with child pornography, mostly on the Internet but in print as well. We need more of those officers. We need a lot more of those officers in order to be able to deal with this problem.

This is a growth industry. It continues to grow because of the Internet. We have always had child pornography in print and even in paintings. We can go back hundreds and hundreds of years, maybe even millenniums. The explosion occurred with the Internet, which provided for easy transmission of this pornography, and it tapped into a substantial market that was unavailable before, crossing international boundaries and making it very difficult for national police forces to be able to deal with it.

I have to say this, and it is not just about the current government but also about the previous Liberal government and also about a lot of other countries. There are very few countries we can point to, England may be one of the exceptions, that have in fact dealt with this problem in an efficient manner, that is by moving enough human resources into combatting this.

We know that the province of Manitoba was one of the provinces that moved on this by establishing a snitch line. England has done the same thing and has funded it. It seems to be fairly effective in getting the public, when they are scanning various websites, to identify child pornography and to get that information to the police. The police can then deal with it in an efficient and rapid fashion, to shut the sites down and to try to track the producers of the sites.

It is working in that regard, in that we have a methodology, but we do not have enough resources. It is really a shame that our police forces are still struggling with that, because they have nowhere near the capacity to combat the sheer volume of what they have to deal with on the Internet.

In that respect, I urge the government in this coming budget to take another look at this area in particular. If we are really serious about protecting our children, we need to put more resources into doing that.

This legislation will help a little. I do not want to deny that completely, but it is a very small step in comparison with how much more effective we would be in combatting this scourge if there were more police officers working on it and also on developing technology. Police officers need training and they need companies like Microsoft to come into the field and cooperate with them to try to develop better technology to track this right back to its source. That is the only way we can effectively shut it down.

With regard to the bill itself, I have some concerns. There was a lot of debate before the bill got to the House over whether service providers would have a legislatively mandated responsibility to monitor their sites.

Going back to the bill on child Internet luring, the committee heard some evidence to the effect that it was going to be difficult for the smaller service providers to do that. On the other hand, it might, quite frankly, be possible to develop technology so that the computer would do the monitoring.

There are any number of other technologies and services that we use on computers that can do the search on a random basis. That technology needs to be developed and deployed. Maybe that is something we have to impose on the industry.

However, we have just given up. This bill does nothing to require the service providers to do any monitoring at all. All it requires is that if somebody tells them there is a site on their technology, the ISPs have to report it to the locator and a police force. They are under no affirmative obligation to monitor the websites using their technology.

I think the government backed down too much. At the very least, we should be looking at imposing some responsibility on them. It appears obvious that this bill is going to go to committee, and I am hoping that the committee can look at this again and perhaps strengthen the bill in a meaningful way to impose some responsibility.

I want to make a point about the penalties in the bill. The penalties assume that service providers are all corporate, so there are only fines in the bill. We need to take a look at that and see whether we should be pulling back the corporate veil.

I know the test will not be easy from a legal standpoint, but where we have been able to identify service providers that are abusing their responsibility to protect children, we should be pulling back the corporate veil, and police and prosecutors should have the ability to prosecute individual members, whether they are part of the executive or the board of directors, of those companies for these crimes.

We have been able to identify that in some cases it was quite clear that the corporate entity knew about the sites and did nothing about them, simply allowed them to continue on. If we have that kind of a scenario or that kind of conduct, then we in fact should be going after individuals and not just the corporations.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

The hon. member will have five and a half minutes remaining in his speech as well as time for questions and comments.

Volunteer Firefighters

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Madam Speaker, some Canadians voluntarily put their lives on the line to help others. They are our volunteer firefighters.

Cities and towns across Canada have volunteer firefighters who, when the call comes for help, answer. They answer these calls no matter whether they are at their regular jobs or spending time with their family and friends or it is the middle of the night. They use their training, done on their own time, with equipment they helped raise funds to buy to save lives and property.

This happens while their families wait at home hoping for their safe return.

These dedicated volunteers do all this and much more to make our communities safer. These facts were highlighted when a fatal car crash in my riding last weekend claimed the lives of four young women. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families.

First on the scene were our volunteer firefighters, who helped save the life of the sole survivor of the head-on collision, a six-month-old baby girl. Their brave response to such a terrible tragedy is to be commended, and we remind them that all their efforts were not in vain.

Holodomor Memorial Day

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, at the height of the Holodomor, the Kremlin-engineered famine genocide in Ukraine of 1932-33, Zina, a village girl, wrote to her city-dwelling uncle:

We have neither bread nor anything else to eat. Dad is completely exhausted from hunger...unable to get on his feet. Mother is blind from the hunger. Uncle...Please do take me, please. I'm still young and I want so much to live a while. Here I will surely die, for everyone else is dying...

When the uncle received the letter, he was told of her death.

Hundred by hundred, thousand by thousand, million upon million lay down their starved skin-and-bones bodies and became one with Ukraine's fertile black soils, their life extinguished.

On November 28, we memorialize the Holodomor. All our resolutions and our statements of responsibility to protect are nothing more than fine-sounding rhetoric unless each of us makes a pledge of a responsibility to intervene, to act when genocidal crimes occur.

[Member spoke in Ukrainian as follows:]

Bil'sh nikoly.

[English]

Never again.

Francine Ouellet

[Claude Guimond, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am proud to point out that, on October 17, because of her work in the maple syrup and forestry industries, Ms. Francine Ouellet, from Sainte-Rita in the Lower St. Lawrence, was named the 2009 female farmer of the year at the Saturne gala held in Drummondville by the Quebec federation of women farmers.

This multi-talented woman also co-owns the Erablière April et Ouellet sugar bush. During the economic downturn, she applied her leadership skills to launching a cooperative to produce medicinal plants, Les BIOproduits de Sainte-Rita.

The citizens in her area have also recognized Ms. Ouellet as an outstanding woman and re-elected her Mayor of Sainte-Rita in the Basques RCM.

My Bloc Québécois colleagues and I warmly congratulate Ms. Ouellet for her entrepreneurship and leadership.

Christmas

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Madam Speaker, with the Christmas season fast approaching, I am really looking forward to watching A Charlie Brown Christmas again.

Part of it is to remind me of my childhood, but this year in particular, it is because I find myself asking the same question as Charlie Brown, who spent the whole episode wondering why Christmas was so commercialized: “Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?”

The Conservative government sure does not. It wants Canadians to go out and spend, anywhere on anything, as long as consumer spending gets us out of the recession, but that is asking the victims of the recession to fix the recession.

Many Canadians are barely scraping by. Adding to their difficulties by encouraging rampant spending is irresponsible, especially when the government has done nothing to regulate the credit card interest rates that will make life even harder once the bills come in.

It is fun to have people over, to go to parties and to give and receive gifts, but let us help each other in the process whenever possible. Let us support charities, buy local, buy union or buy green, and above all, let us remember that all of that is really secondary to what the season is really about.

Charlie Brown knew it, and we know it too. Merry Christmas.

Holodomor Memorial Day

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Madam Speaker, today we remember Ukraine's Holodomor, truly a genocide, a crime against humanity that the world had chosen to forget.

More than seven million souls perished in Ukraine in a forced famine created by Stalin's despotic 1930s regime. This annihilation was not caused by the ravages of nature, nor the scourge of pestilence, nor by the obliteration of war, but by the hand of a dictator consumed with hatred.

Why mankind wreaks death and destruction on its own in such unimaginable numbers might not even be understood by the Almighty in the hereafter.

The millions of Ukrainians starved to death in the breadbasket of Europe are being remembered in ceremonies across Canada and around the world. We remember today the victims of the Holodomor, of the dark side of humanity, and by remembering that we help the world guard against those who would repeat such genocide.

Employment Insurance

[Gurbax Malhi, Liberal, Bramalea—Gore—Malton, ON]

Madam Speaker, the Conservative government has claimed that 90% of the economic stimulus package was already under way and creating jobs. However, every day we are witnessing more and more Canadians suffering from job losses.

Since October of last year, approximately half a million Canadians have lost their employment. The recession's toll and the government's inaction is being seen in record increases in the use of food banks.

In March alone, almost 790,000 Canadians visited a food bank, which is an increase of 18% from March 2008, and 37% of those assisted were children.

The government needs to wake up, stop spending money on shameless party promotion and instead focus on the Canadians who are having serious difficulty making ends meet, and immediately reform employment insurance.

Montreal Alouettes

[Maxime Bernier, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Madam Speaker, after the Alouettes' commanding victory over the BC Lions last week in Montreal, our heroes are returning to the field this Sunday in Calgary to play in the 97th Grey Cup.

For the Alouettes this is their second Grey Cup in two years. Last year they played on their home field.

I hope their victory in Calgary against the Saskatchewan Roughriders will be as resounding as their victory last weekend in Montreal in the East division final. As a former football player, and one who plays fair, I would like to tell the Roughriders to get ready to face one amazing team.

As an Alouettes fan, I want to wish them the best of luck. You have what it takes to succeed and win the Grey Cup. Go Alouettes! I hope to watch the Grey Cup parade in the streets of Montreal.

Young People in the Regions

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, my colleague from Chicoutimi—Le Fjord and I delivered 3,000 postcards in support of Bill C-288 to the office of the Minister of State responsible for the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec.

Bill C-288 proposes the introduction of a tax credit to encourage the return of young graduates to designated regions, and allow the development of secondary and tertiary processing industries by giving our entrepreneurs access to qualified workers.

In the last parliament, only the Conservative government refused to put in place these measures that would benefit both our young people and the regions.

With Bill C-288 soon heading to committee, we hope that the Liberals and the New Democrats will continue to support this Bloc Québécois initiative and that the Conservatives will set aside their partisan ideology and act in the interests of young graduates and the regions.

Marcel Prud'homme

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to pay tribute to a great Canadian parliamentarian, Senator Marcel Prud'homme, who is retiring from the Senate.

After first being elected to the House of Commons in 1964, he was re-elected eight more times. He was appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney on May 26, 1993, and has now devoted a total of 45 years to parliamentary life.

Senator Prud'homme represents a true institutional memory for Canada. He is known for his openness towards every country in the world and for emphasizing the importance of maintaining dialogue.

He believes that Canada should play a unique, original and positive role in the world, and suggests that we put more time and effort into dealing with international issues.

Senator Prud'homme, today, all of Canada thanks you for passionately defending the country and for representing us with integrity all over the world.

Terrorism

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one year ago today, we joined with people across the world in horror as we watched what was to be two days of terrorist actions in the Indian city of Mumbai.

Like so many other such assaults upon humanity, these terrorist attacks served to remind us of the terrible hatred and extremism that still exists in our world today. Those innocent people who lost their lives in Mumbai will live on in our memories forever.

Anyone doing these deeds can never win however, because in the end good people always triumph over evil.

As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “You must never despair of human nature”. The world is full of good.

We in Canada join with our brothers and sisters in India in commemorating this dark day, but more important, we remember those who left us and whose light will continue to shine forever.

Our resolve will never falter as we join good and decent people everywhere in resisting hatred, intolerance and destruction in our world.