House of Commons Hansard #166 of the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was c-15.

Topics

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

12:40 p.m.

NDP

Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON

Mr. Speaker, under the present legislation, there is an opportunity to do what eventually happened on September 27, close the plant. As draconian as that is, that ability always existed. The issue was how to time it when we saw the plant not doing the things we wanted it to do as far as the details, data, the timeliness, all those sorts of things. It is like a sledgehammer but it is there to be used. That could have happened.

The other part is that it does not matter how good this legislation becomes if it is not transparent and open and there are no spokespersons on the government side to tell folks what is happening. By the time the CFIA posted the timeline on its website, a lot of questions were being asked. Then there was the confusion of who told who first? Did the Americans tell the government? Did they find out at the same time? In fairness, it looks like it was at the time. The problem is that when it is not open and transparent, we do not know.

We not only need good legislation but a plan that shows how we intend to implement the legislation and what it means for Canadians in the longer term. We need to talk to them in an open and transparent way about that as well.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

12:45 p.m.

Glengarry—Prescott—Russell Ontario

Conservative

Pierre Lemieux ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture

Mr. Speaker, my colleague spoke about the bill being started in the Senate. I would like to explain to the House that it is concurrent activity. Once the House returns after the summer, we have legislation to deal with in the House but the Senate does not. We started the bill in the Senate so that it could be sent to the House of Commons and we could use Senate time most effectively when it did not have other parliamentary bills to deal with upon its return after the summer.

My colleague knows that Bill S-11 is not a partisan bill. It is a bill that deals with food safety and about giving more regulatory authorities to the CFIA to help inspectors do their jobs effectively and efficiently. I am glad that my colleague has committed to passing this bill expeditiously. What I would like to ask is what types of things he likes in Bill S-11.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

12:45 p.m.

NDP

Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON

Mr. Speaker, I agree with my friend, the parliamentary secretary, this is not partisan, which is why we on this side are hopeful that when we bring forward a series of amendments that we believe are constructive and would enhance the bill, the other side will be open to that.

As for what is good in the bill, I will leave those comments for when the agriculture committee meets because I want to ensure the discussion happens there. I will be glad to share my comments with my colleagues at the agriculture committee.

As for the other place, for the New Democrats it is a fundamental piece. It has nothing to do with concurrent legislation. The issue is about where the people's legislation should start. In our view, it should start here in the people's House, not in the other place. I have respect for the other place in the sense that it is a historical tradition. We are not debating today whether it should exist any more or not, so I will leave that for another debate, but this legislation should have started here and not in the other place.

As far as moving this legislation along, I am hopeful that, in the spirit of co-operation and non-partisanship, we can give Canadians what they truly deserve, which is the best food safety regime in the world. However, we will only do that by putting ourselves in a place where we can take off our partisanship hats, put them aside, look at the legislation, find out where the weaknesses are and make them stronger. Where things are a little unclear, we should make them clearer. Where we do not have compliance and enforcement, we should change it so that we can go forward with the type of food safety that Canadians deserve across this country. That is my hope as we move forward with legislation.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

12:45 p.m.

NDP

Jasbir Sandhu NDP Surrey North, BC

Mr. Speaker, I want to highlight some of the points that my colleague made in his speech.

I have met with a number of people in my riding of Surrey North who have similar concerns in regard to having safe food available at our grocery stores and on their tables so it is safe for their children to eat.

The Americans banned the importing of beef two weeks before the Minister of Agriculture banned it in Canada. This legislation has been stuck in the Senate for 120 days. The government has had six years to come up with better legislation to address the food safety concerns of the Americans. What would be the honourable thing for the minister to do?

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

12:50 p.m.

NDP

Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON

Mr. Speaker, most Canadians still have an outstanding question. On September 13 and 14, when the U.S. said no thanks to Canadian beef from XL Foods and the CFIA removed its licence to export, why did Canadians continue to get that beef? I think that question still resonates with most Canadians across the country. If it was not good enough to export to the Americans, why was it still good enough to give to us? That is the type of question that we need to address.

If we have legislation that says that if the same plant is processing the same beef then we will not ship it to that place, wherever that place happens to be, then it should not be given to Canadians. That is what the legislation could look like. We need to have the sense that both things will happen simultaneously. As soon as we say that the beef is no good to go anywhere, then it is no good to go anywhere. That should be anywhere, not to maybe this place or that place, and, most important, certainly not to Canadians. That is the type of thing I am talking about. When we sit down and work through this legislation in the spirit of co-operation, we should find ways to make it so that all of us are protected at the same time, not some protected at one moment in time and others protected later. That is really what it amounts to.

As for the other place and the timelines, the other place has its own timelines. It could have worked through the summer but it did not. My friend, the parliamentary secretary, and I worked through the summer at its request. We said yes and we came in and worked during the summer here in the House in a special co-op committee. We even wrote the report. I congratulate my colleagues on the other side who were part of that wonderful committee. I congratulate the parliamentary secretary who spearheaded that committee. We wrote the report before Labour Day. We were done before the end of August. Not only did we have the entire hearings, the witnesses, but we wrote the report. The other place could have done the same thing. It could have done it in June or July instead of going home for the summer if it was that important. If the bill needed to go over there because we could not get it here in a timely way, then the other place ought to have finished it before the summer and sent it to us as soon as we resumed in September. There is no reason that could not have happened.

However, that is water under the bridge. It is what it is. It is here now and we need move this legislation forward. We need to get it done in order to get the best legislation for food safety that this country has ever seen. Let us do it in the spirit of co-operation.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

October 22nd, 2012 / 12:50 p.m.

Liberal

Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today and speak to the modernization of our food safety system. It has been a long time coming. If anything has been made clear by the recent outbreak of E. coli at XL Foods in Brooks, Alberta, it is that we need to take a closer look at food safety in Canada. We need to take a closer look because a system that the government recently claimed is one of the foremost in the world has inexplicably failed and left 15 people sick across Canada.

After nearly a month of constant coverage in the media, Canadians are all too familiar with the constantly evolving situation at the XL Foods establishment 38 in Brooks, Alberta, which led to the largest beef recall in Canadian history. It is important that Canadians watching this are not that fooled by the feigned urgency of the minister or his government when it comes to this legislation. The government is simply trying to change the channel on a rather dire issue.

When Conservative senators first introduced the legislation in the upper house in June, there was no urgency to seeing it debated expeditiously. In fact, it did not become a priority until the Conservatives were embroiled in defending their cuts to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in the last month.

Bill S-11 gave the minister an opportunity to claim that inaction on our part would hinder giving powers to inspectors that would prevent food safety breakdowns like XL's in the future. Unfortunately, this is a terrible ruse, an all too familiar tactic by the government.

Let us assume for a second that Canadians were not aware that under the current provisions of the Meat Inspection Act, the inspectors at XL Foods in Brooks were unable to request the documents they needed, which of course is not true. Why would the government let a bill granting these authorities languish for a summer in the Senate if that were the case? This is all to characteristic of the government. There is no willingness to make good public policy for the sake of Canadians. Instead, it waves it around the House like a hammer, scoring cheap political points.

The bill is important, but Canadians need to understand that it is no panacea. Once the bill is passed, Canadian food inspectors will not magically be able to prevent further outbreaks of food-borne illness and will not have that many more tools than they already have at their disposal. In effect, the bill will streamline some of the elements of inspection at the CFIA. Many of the changes are superficial, and all are primarily designed to modernize our food safety and inspection system. While it is nice to build a more efficient and modern vehicle, we need to ensure that we have enough resources to drive it.

This spring the government announced some drastic cuts to the CFIA, including a reduction of $56.1 million in the budget. Only recently did we discover that the government had no clear picture of the resources available to the CFIA before making those cuts, because it had not performed the comprehensive audit of resources that had been requested by the independent investigator into the listeriosis crisis.

We support modernizing our food safety system. After all, it was a Liberal government that introduced Bill C-27 in November 2004, a legislative measure designed as a second step in our modernization process, intended to consolidate and enhance the existing inspection and enforcement powers of the CFIA for food, agriculture and aquatic commodities, agricultural inputs, animals and plants.

Interestingly, the member for Haldimand—Norfolk, now a minister but then the official opposition agriculture critic, complained that the bill might restrict industry too much and noted that her party “supports a less intrusive approach to regulatory policy in Canada”. The bill died the following year upon the dissolution of Parliament. Since then there has been a major food safety crisis, one that killed 23 Canadians and made many more extremely ill.

The first lesson we learned from the 2008 listeriosis outbreak was that once the contaminant is in the market, it is already too late. Food-borne illness targets the most vulnerable of our population: children, seniors, pregnant women and their unborn. The only way to fully protect them is to catch contaminated food before it hits the shelves.

An independent investigator, Sheila Weatherill, was appointed in the wake of that tragedy to determine what went wrong and delivered a series of recommendations on how to ensure that the situation would never happen again.

In responding to her report, the government has made great fanfare about completing all of her 57 recommendations, Bill S-11 included as the final one. Yet the proof of this completion remains to be seen.

Before this House passes another bill on food safety, the government will have to reassure this party and Canadians that if it is to make real and meaningful changes, it will provide independent assurances that the CFIA will finally get the resources it needs and, in that regard, doing a comprehensive resource audit is required to see what it needs.

On its face, Bill S-11 is relatively straightforward. It would consolidate the Meat Inspection Act, the Fish Inspection Act, the Canada Agricultural Products Act and the food provisions of the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act into a single act.

Furthermore, it would establish a parallel inspection and enforcement structure for all food commodities, meaning there would no longer be dedicated meat or fish inspectors but inspectors trained for all commodities. This is slightly concerning to me. I have the greatest esteem for our inspectors who work so diligently to ensure we have safe food once it reaches our tables, but I know that even right now they are not given all the tools they need to perform their roles to the fullest. We are asking inspectors to become jacks of all trades, spreading expertise even more thinly than it is right now.

I ask the government, what mechanisms would be instituted to ensure that all inspectors receive adequate training across all commodities, when it has still not, four years later, trained all inspectors on the comprehensive verification system?

This issue was highlighted very recently in the wake of the E. coli outbreak at Brooks. Mr. Bob Kingston, the president of the Agriculture Union at the Public Service Alliance of Canada, made the following comments at the Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture about this bill:

You will be interested to know that in the XL plant, only a small portion of the inspectors are actually trained in CVS. That is right; for more than four years after CVS was introduced, most inspectors there have not been trained in how to use it. Why, you might ask? The answer is actually simple. The CFIA cannot afford to deliver training any faster and does not have enough inspectors to relieve those away while being trained. As well, resources are often diverted to address crises, which further derails training.

This revelation strikes right at the heart of the oft repeated myth that the current Conservative government has hired more inspectors than ever. Moreover, it is another clear indication that while the government is willing to build a car, it will not pay to hire a proper driver or, in this case, train one.

It is concerning to us on this side that we might only be increasing the uphill battles that inspectors are facing while training to keep our food safe.

Mr. Kingston continued in his testimony to say:

This situation is not limited to XL. As a matter of fact, we were just at a conference this weekend and we found the exact same scenario throughout Quebec. This is yet another example of industry self-policing gone wrong because the CFIA is not adequately resourced to verify compliance.

What then happened in Brooks, Alberta? This kind of food safety decay does not happen overnight. A plant does not get shut down for three weeks for a faulty nozzle; a plant gets shut down for three weeks because there are compliance problems from top to bottom.

The minister stated that the Brooks facility boasts 40 inspectors and 6 veterinarians. How many of those inspectors are fully trained on the compliance verification system? Where in the legislation has the government addressed the number of inspectors required for each plant?

Pretending this legislation has the answers that Canadians need is disingenuous and not at all reassuring, because it creates no clarity and gives no answers to the issues I have just raised.

The bill would also establish a number of prohibitions, primarily relating to importing, exporting and interprovincial trade, as well as the manufacture, preparation, and sale of food commodities. It would also bring in tougher penalities for tampering, hoaxes or other deceptive practices. Here, we agree that the CFIA should be given the necessary tools to enforce import standards and to penalize deceptive practices. However, simply giving the CFIA a bigger stick is not reassuring to inspectors.

Since the outbreak of E. coli at XL, the government has tried to claim that the CFIA does not have enough enforcement powers at its disposal. The minister claimed that it took two weeks to issue a recall of contaminated meat because CFIA inspectors on the ground were not given timely access to documents that would have shown that XL was not monitoring trends leading up to the outbreak.

That is a convenient narrative. However, the existing Meat Inspection Act already gives powers, compelling:

[that] any person produce for inspection, or for the purpose of obtaining copies or extracts, any book, shipping bill, bill of lading or other document or record that the inspector believes on reasonable grounds contains any information relevant to the administration or enforcement of this Act or the regulations.

Additionally, the current regulations state:

The owner or person in charge of a place or vehicle referred to in subsection (1) and every person found in that place or vehicle shall give the inspector all reasonable assistance to enable the inspector to carry out his duties and functions under this Act and shall furnish the inspector with any information the inspector may reasonably require with respect to the administration or enforcement of this Act and the regulations.

As recently at this February, the CFIA made its regulations for processors clear on its website in “A Processor's Guide to Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) Inspections”, which reinforces the legal requirement to provide information to and assist an inspector when requested.

In reading the government's release on Bill S-11 from earlier this year, it is clear that the power to request documents is not new. Question 8 of the FAQ sheet asks if inspectors are getting any new powers. The question is answered as follows:

Under the Safe Food for Canadians Act all inspector powers of the Fish Inspection Act, Meat Inspection Act, and the Canadian Agricultural Products Act have been consolidated into one suite of authorities with a modernized language. The Safe Food for Canadians Act does not distinguish between different food products, as each individual statute did.

So far, the only new thing about this is that the powers are now uniform instead of separated. It goes on to answer:

The main new authority that did not exist in any of the former food safety statutes is the power to request a warrant by telephone. In addition, the proposed legislation provides more explicit authority for an inspector to pass through or over private property to get to a place for inspection purposes or to take photographs.

This new act gives the power to phone in a warrant and to make private property more accessible. Perhaps my colleagues across the way could tell me how that would have helped the 40 inspectors on the ground at XL Foods. Were they somehow unable to monitor the lines? Was it a closed-door facility they were unable to gain access to? It does not seem that way, as the ministers claimed they had a very close working relationship with the XL Foods staff. However, the answer continues:

Many authorities have been updated from their previous version to reflect new drafting conventions and to make them clearer for all stakeholders. Some of these authorities include the power to request that an individual start or stop an activity to prevent non-compliance with the act, the power to ask for documents to be produced, and the prevention of obstruction and interference with an inspector carrying out his duties.

Finally, we have the piece that they claim was missing, except, as the department clearly states, it was already there. This super power that finally will be granted to inspectors was there all the time, but the drafting language just needed to be made clearer. This is information coming right from the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food's own department. I am glad that the language will be made clearer, but it reinforces further that this legislation is not the magic bullet our food inspectors need.

Our inspectors need, and consumer safety demands, that the government includes in this bill a comprehensive third-party resource audit, including human resources like the one our hon. colleagues in the other place attempted to include and which our leader, the hon. member for Toronto Centre, requested from the Auditor General.

In fact, the audit was first called for by the independent investigator into the listeriosis outbreak, Sheila Weatherill, who said:

Due to the lack of detailed information and differing views heard, the Investigation was not able to determine the current level of resources as well as the resources needed to conduct the CVS activities effectively. For the same reason, we were also unable to come to a conclusion concerning the adequacy of the program design, implementation plan, training and supervision of inspectors, as well as oversight and performance monitoring.

Accordingly, she recommended:

To accurately determine the demand on its inspection resources and the number of required inspectors, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency should retain third-party experts to conduct a resources audit. The experts should also recommend required changes and implementation strategies. The audit should include analysis as to how many plants an inspector should be responsible for and the appropriateness of rotation of inspectors.

To this day that has yet to be done. A mere survey was undertaken and the former president of the CFIA, Carole Swan, stated that the review was not the same as a comprehensive audit. The government could not answer who its inspectors were, what their roles were or where they were located. It obviously cannot answer the question of whether there are enough or if we might need more. The members opposite will attempt to observe that the Auditor General already has the power to inspect the CFIA. However, having studied the last omnibus bill closely, all of the members opposite will also have noted that at page 187 the bill removed from the authority of the Auditor General of Canada the power to request that the CFIA provide information about the agency's performance. Certainly, it is within the mandate of the Auditor General to examine whatever departments he or she sees fit, but there are restrictions on how many audits he or she can perform yearly.

Furthermore, if the Conservatives object so strenuously to the Auditor General performing the review, they should open up a transparent third-party, arm's-length process so that we might finally know which resources are required, where they are required and if we have enough, among other things. Sadly, for the government it is all about communications victories, not real assistance for Canadians. In the minister's speech today, he talked more about us in the opposition than his own bill. While this bill contains a number of important measures that we could support, it does not go far enough to ensure there are appropriate resources allocated, and we have given the Conservatives every opportunity to date to add viable and important measures like an audit, yet every time they have refused.

We agree with Bob Kingston when he says:

Generally speaking, the bill is a good start but we need to ensure that the proposed appeal mechanism does not give industry too much power to undermine the work of CFIA inspectors.... The government has made an important policy statement today with the tabling of the Safe Food for Canadians Act. Now it’s up to the government to provide the CFIA with the resources to enforce the new rules and CFIA management to adopt a prevention mindset.

We will be moving this bill to committee next. I sincerely hope that the government will be more amenable to making the necessary changes to ensure that our inspectors have adequate resources. I hope that the members opposite can make this about more than scoring cheap points, and I look forward to the opportunity to take a closer look at the bill in the coming days.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

1:10 p.m.

Glengarry—Prescott—Russell Ontario

Conservative

Pierre Lemieux ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture

Mr. Speaker, in his recent speeches on the issue of food safety in the House there have been inaccuracies that have had to be corrected. I too hope that the opposition will not play partisan politics with Bill S-11, an important food safety bill before the House that will be moving to committee.

However, I want to follow up on a comment the member made during his speech and in earlier speeches too. He said that the CFIA currently has all the powers it needs and he asked why it did not do more. Sylvain Charlebois is the associate dean of the University of Guelph's College of Management and Economics, a university that is, of course, in this member's riding. Mr. Charlebois recognizes that the CFIA does not have all the powers that it needs today and says: “The CFIA...does not have the authority to compel the speedy delivery of information from industry during an outbreak”. What Mr. Charlebois said seems to be contradicting what this member just said. Could the member clarify for the House who is right?

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

1:10 p.m.

Liberal

Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary never relinquishes an opportunity to mention Mr. Charlebois' name, because he knows that I know Mr. Charlebois. While I know him and while he is in my riding, I do not always agree with him, but we have a deep respect for each other's opinion.

If the CFIA did not have the authority it needed, why is the plant closed? If it did not have the authority it needed, why are other abattoirs in Canada functioning properly? If it did not have the authority it needed, why did it it ultimately take the steps necessary for requiring compliance? I said in my speech and the government has said it in its bulletins as recently as February of this year that it must do everything necessary to accommodate any request by the CFIA.

What is troubling is that the member and his party are trying to deflect from the fact that there is no comprehensive audit required for us to fully understand the needs of the CFIA, and they are using it as a ruse so that Canadians will forget about the fact that 15 people are sick because of the government's failure to act on time, and are now claiming that this act would be the panacea for food safety when it is not.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

1:10 p.m.

NDP

Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON

Mr. Speaker, I welcome some of the comments by my colleague from Guelph on how this food safety legislation, if it had been passed in the spring, would have made no difference to XL. We would have been faced with the same situation because there is no teeth in this legislation. It is the proverbial toothless tiger. One can talk about having some dates. It reminds me that we have some fines too.

Could the member speak to the fact that we have fines in the present legislation. The new fines will go up, but what do the fines really matter if no one actually applies them, if no one sanctions folks who break the rules, makes them comply and if they do not, they will pay a penalty? We teach youngsters that for certain types of behaviour there are repercussions. Why do we see a certain type of behaviour, yet we see no repercussions for that behaviour? Could my colleague comment on that aspect of the legislation?

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

1:15 p.m.

Liberal

Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Welland for his insight and for his work on the bill and at committee. It is funny that we had this conversation before when the bill was first discussed before the summer recess. This is yet another typical response by the Conservative Party, which will not provide the resources, will not provide the programs, the training so this will not happen again, but it will increase the fines. We know that tough on crime government has solution to everything that ails us, which is to increase the fines. From my understanding, no fines were levied under the old legislation.

If members do not think a $5 million fine is not the answer, XL has lost a heck of a lot more than $5 million for this food outbreak. Just the loss in the marketplace from sales should be sufficient for it to avoid these kinds of circumstances.

I repeat, at the risk of the comment being ignored, that we need to know what exists at CFIA through a comprehensive audit and then provide it with the resources it needs to implement good, sound policy. Increasing fines is not the answer.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

1:15 p.m.

Conservative

Rick Norlock Conservative Northumberland—Quinte West, ON

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member and he used a lot of interesting phrases such as “scoring cheap political points”. I have not heard more cheap political points in five minutes than I heard coming from his corner. Because members raise their voices and yell does not make their point that much truer. The truth is we did increase the number of inspectors.

The member also asked why one plant was closed and the other plants were open. That is because this plant failed to comply and that is why CFIA closed it.

Why does the member choose to utilize certain phrases when in actual fact he is the perpetrator of most of these phrases? Why does he not recognize the fact that Bill S-11 is designed to make a good system, a system that the OECD says is a good system, in fact, it has used even higher words of praise? We want to make it even better. Why is it so difficult for the member to admit that and say that he wants to work with us to make it better? Why does he have to score those cheap political points?

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

1:15 p.m.

Liberal

Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON

Mr. Speaker, I will speak less loudly. It is not a cheap political point to ask for what Sheila Weatherill asked. It is not a cheap political point to ask for a comprehensive resource audit. It is not a cheap political point to ask for the very thing that is needed for which the people at the CFIA asked, which is a full comprehensive audit to know what they have, where they are, how many inspectors, what they do. We cannot know what we need if we do not know what we have.

I regret the hon. member opposite thinks that these are cheap political points, but they are what has been requested by Sheila Weatherill in the inquiry. To reduce my request to a cheap political point undermines the efficacy of the effort that was made by the Weatherill committee on its investigation into the listeriosis outbreak.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

1:20 p.m.

NDP

Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB

Mr. Speaker, while we would agree there needs to be a thorough audit of what went on, along the lines of what Sheila Weatherill recommended for listeriosis, would the member agree that it would be useful, as was the case under the Environmental Protection Act, to actually bring in the field level inspectors and union representatives?

The member for Medicine Hat had previously said that not only temporary foreign workers but refugees also work in this plant. Would the member agree that it would be useful to take these hearings to Brooks and hear from the people who work on the ground?

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

1:20 p.m.

Liberal

Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON

Mr. Speaker, I asked for an investigation into exactly what went wrong, both of the CFIA and XL Foods managers and staff, and it was refused by the Conservative-dominated committee.

I completely agree with the member that we should attend the XL plant. However, to have a fulsome inquiry and discussion about this, we need the co-operation of the government. But for this act, everything else is refused.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

1:20 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Barry Devolin

Is the House ready for the question?

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

1:20 p.m.

Some hon. members

Question.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

1:20 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Barry Devolin

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

1:20 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

No.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

1:20 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Barry Devolin

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

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

1:20 p.m.

Some hon. members

Yea.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

1:20 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Barry Devolin

All those opposed will please say nay.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

1:20 p.m.

Some hon. members

Nay.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

1:20 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Barry Devolin

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Call in the members.

And the bells having rung:

A request has been made to defer the vote on this matter until the end of government orders tomorrow.

The House resumed from October 19 consideration of the motion that Bill S-7, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act and the Security of Information Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Combating Terrorism ActGovernment Orders

1:20 p.m.

NDP

Rosane Doré Lefebvre NDP Alfred-Pellan, QC

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I was interrupted the last time we were in the House because the time allocated to this bill ran out. I will therefore continue my speech.

I took the time to review the content of Bill S-7 and the text of our international agreements, as I mentioned the last time I rose to comment on Bill S-7.

As I pointed out then, I delved deeper into our stance on terrorism, particularly at the international level, and into the international agreements that Canada signed or agreed to in principle. I believe it was important to do that in order to get to the heart of the issue of terrorism and examine what has and has not been done about it.

I looked at the Counter-Terrorism Committee and what it was introducing. The members of that committee have a very interesting guide called the “Technical Guide to the Implementation of Security Council Resolution 1373 (2001)”. The resolution was unanimously adopted by the United Nations on September 28, 2001, if I am not mistaken, following the attacks on September 11, 2001. The events required an immediate response and an international consensus, and that is what was achieved.

It is interesting to note how quickly it was adopted, and unanimously at that, by all the countries represented at the United Nations, including Canada. I looked at chapter 2 of that technical guide, a chapter that deals with two very interesting points. The second point talks about eliminating the supply of weapons to terrorists and point number 10 talks about effective border controls.

I began by exploring the issue of effective border controls, an extremely important aspect of combatting terrorism. It is interesting that we are talking about these things now. On the weekend, some of my colleagues and I went to the Canada-U.S. border at Stanstead, which is about a two-hour drive south of Montreal. I learned some very surprising things, along with my colleagues, the member for Compton—Stanstead, the member for Brome—Missisquoi and the member for Sherbrooke, who is also affected by this, since his riding is only 30 minutes away.

Many surrounding communities are affected. Unfortunately, Stanstead is known as a porous border crossing. In 2006-07, there were about 42 illegal entries. This number has gone up every year. By August of this year, there had been over 300 illegal entries at that border crossing. This is a growing problem.

I know the mayor of Stanstead has tried to mitigate the problem in several ways, for instance, by closing Church Street to traffic. Unfortunately, this only moved the problem elsewhere. People are going around the barriers, simply not stopping at all at the border and continuing straight ahead.

People caught recently were mostly refugee claimants. There are international treaties to deal with such cases. Canada welcomes immigrants, and the case of every individual who claims refugee status must be examined.

I completely agree that we must examine the case of every refugee claimant. However, what I found troubling—although oddly enough, a Conservative senator said yesterday that it was not all that troubling—is the fact that the people who entered the country illegally then phoned the police when they reached Magog. They phoned the police to inform them that they had arrived and to ask them to come and get them. As soon as they cross into Canada, they are the ones who contact the police. Honestly, I find that a little troubling.

Why have we not caught these people ourselves, questioned them ourselves or discovered that they have crossed the border?

These illegal immigrants are the ones who contact us to inform us that they are here and are claiming refugee status. That is troubling.

The Conservative senator believes that this is not troubling and that they are simply people claiming refugee status. I agree that we must examine refugee status claims. The NDP filed access to information requests and discovered that human trafficking was taking place through Stanstead. That is very serious. It seems that clandestine networks are being set up, especially at this border crossing. This is a very serious problem that we must deal with.

What is the connection to terrorism? Those people are able to cross the border, reach Magog and then telephone police to announce their presence without anyone going after them or trying to stop them. However, if people enter Canada illegally, not to claim refugee status but to illegally transport weapons, drugs or tobacco, for instance, they will not call the police to inform them of their whereabouts and ask to be arrested. They will probably continue on their way in a truck carrying weapons. They will not stop.

The fact that the government is not taking action in this regard is of serious concern. What is even more worrisome is that the Conservatives are boasting about attacking the problem of terrorism through Bill S-7 when, in the last budget, they cut funding for Canada's border services by over $140 million.

In Quebec, the border services officers' union indicated that 260 jobs were in jeopardy, which means that 260 people would have received a notice telling them that they were going to lose their jobs. For all of Canada, that number was 1,351. That is a lot of staff when other more practical solutions could have been found.

This measure is completely unrealistic, and the government should be increasing the staff when our country is facing such problems. Officers could be mobile so that they could leave their posts to pursue people who cross the border in this manner.

The Government of Canada website clearly indicates that “[The Government of] Canada supports action by the Security Council on international terrorism.” I think that we should focus more on effective border control than on passing a bill that, as we can see, will clearly not make a very big difference when it comes to terrorism.

The second thing that I found interesting in this technical guide is the proposal to eliminate the supply of weapons to terrorists. I considered this issue a little more carefully and wondered exactly what was being referred to in this chapter. I therefore checked the exact definitions that are found on page 16 of the technical guide against terrorism, where it talks a little bit about arms brokering. It says:

(iii) With respect to brokering: regulate brokers and sellers of SALW...

We are talking here about small arms and light weapons, and the point just before that says:

(ii) With respect to possession: set rules and regulations governing civilian acquisition, possession, transportation, licensing of dealers, record-keeping, and tracing of the various categories of SALW, and rules requiring the reporting of lost or stolen SALW...

That made my hair stand on end. Last year, the firearms registry was abolished here in the House. We fought against it on this side. My colleague from Gatineau and I fought tooth and nail to save the registry. Quebec recently won a court case regarding the data from Quebec, which will not be destroyed. I have also heard that the government will unfortunately appeal that decision.

The Conservatives will not give up. I cannot believe it. This government proudly adopted a resolution condemning the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, and it has since supported the anti-terrorism measures taken by the Security Council.

This guide calls for tracing or a firearms registry. But what did the government do the first chance it got as a majority government? It abolished the registry.

That is not a good way of doing things. It is demagogic to think that it can introduce a nice little bill coming from the Senate that will not change much at the end of the day, when we already had practical solutions.

The firearms registry may not have been perfect, but it was a tool that could be used. We could have improved it so that it would be more robust, more relevant, more interactive and less expensive. The parties here could have come to a consensus. We missed out on a great opportunity to work together on this. What is more, the government has signed agreements with other countries, but it does not even honour these commitments. It is very disappointing to see this.

Also—and I have often mentioned this in the House—I am a hunter and I come from a family of hunters. We had no objection to registering our guns. In fact, we feel safer. Many people I know and many members of my family find that it is safer and that it makes sense to register guns. Personally, I completely agree with the United Nations resolutions. I find it sad that those resolutions are not being honoured here.

Why not deal with the real problem? I think it is sad that with this bill, the government is missing an excellent opportunity to work with the other parties. This bill will make unnecessary amendments to the Anti-terrorism Act. In fact, many experts, including the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association, Mr. Copeland of the Law Union of Ontario, the Canadian Islamic Congress and plenty of other individuals, agree with us that the measures in Bill S-7 are not necessary.

I agree that we must take all threats of terrorism seriously. Members on this side of the House feel that we must do anything but take these threats lightly. Indeed, we must tackle terrorism more efficiently, but unfortunately, with Bill S-7, I do not see how we can tackle international terrorism efficiently. I find that terribly sad.

I would like my colleagues opposite to consider the fact that our very own land borders are becoming porous. We have serious problems at borders in many of our communities, not just in Quebec. I would suggest that the government talk to Canada Border Services Agency officers to see what the people on the ground think of the situation.

As for gun control, as noted in the Special Senate Committee on Anti-terrorism's technical guide, it is time to deal with this issue, not to turn a blind eye to it. We have to do this because it is extremely important.

As an expectant mother, I am very worried that the government is not taking this issue seriously enough. I am extremely disappointed that the government is turning terrorism into an extremely political issue. The government should focus on national security, it has to honour our international agreements, and it is really missing an excellent opportunity to work with all parties in the House.