House of Commons Hansard #197 of the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was programs.
Government Response to PetitionsRoutine Proceedings
Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre Saskatchewan
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons
Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8) I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to eight petitions.
Gord Brown Conservative Leeds—Grenville, ON
Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 12th report of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage in relation to the main estimates, 2015-16.
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
Mr. Speaker, I have three petitions to present.
The first petition is on Bill C-638, an act to amend the Canada Shipping Act. The petitioners outline that derelict and abandoned vessels pose an environmental risk and a navigation hazard, and that regulations must be made to establish measures to be taken for the removal, disposition or destruction by the appropriate authority.
The petitioners call upon the House of Commons to support Bill C-638, an act to amend the Canada Shipping Act.
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
Mr. Speaker, the second petition is on the fair electoral representation act.
The petitioners are calling on the House of Commons to immediately undertake public consultations across Canada to amend the Canada Elections Act to ensure voters can cast an equal and effective vote to be represented fairly in Parliament regardless of political belief or place of residence, are governed by a fairly elected Parliament where the share of seats held by each political party closely reflects the popular vote, and finally live under legitimate laws approved by a majority of elected parliamentarians representing the majority of voters.
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
Mr. Speaker, in the final petition, the petitioners call on the Canadian government to ensure that the right of family farmers to use seeds is respected.
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC
Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to present some petitions here.
The first notifies the House that 11-year-old Grace Wynen was tragically killed by a drunk driver, a person who chose to drive while impaired.
Gracie's family was devastated. Families For Justice is a group of Canadians who have lost loved ones to an impaired driver. They believe that Canada's driving laws are much too lenient. They want the crime called what it is, vehicular homicide.
The petitioners are calling on the government to introduce legislation that would require mandatory sentencing for those convicted of impaired driving causing death.
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC
Mr. Speaker, the second petition highlights that over 200 million girls are missing in the world right now. This gender imbalance is called gendercide.
Ninety-two percent of Canadians believe that sex selection is wrong. The petitioners are calling on Parliament to condemn this discrimination against girls.
Rathika Sitsabaiesan NDP Scarborough—Rouge River, ON
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition on behalf of many people from all around Scarborough. They are calling for the creation of a Canada public transit strategy. Canada is the only OECD country that does not have a national public transit strategy. It is estimated that over the next five years there will be an $18-billion gap in transit infrastructure needs.
The petitioners are calling upon the government to enact a Canada public transit strategy that seeks to provide a permanent investment plan to support public transit; establish federal funding mechanisms for public transit; work together with all levels of government to provide sustainable, predictable, long-term and adequate funding; and establish accountability measures to ensure that all governments work together to increase access to public transit.
I know in my riding of Scarborough—Rouge River, this is very much needed.
Sean Casey Liberal Charlottetown, PE
Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to present to the House a petition signed by many of my constituents, respecting the right of small-scale family farmers to preserve, exchange and use seeds.
This is a petition that has been actively promoted by an organization called Development and Peace. It calls on the Government of Canada to adopt international aid policies that support small family farmers, especially women, and recognize their vital role in the struggle against hunger and poverty.
Matthew Kellway NDP Beaches—East York, ON
Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to present a petition to the House today with respect to violence against women.
The signatories to this petition want to draw to the attention of the Government of Canada that women are 11 times more likely than men to be victims of sexual offences, that indigenous women in Canada are seven times more likely to be murdered than non-indigenous women, that nearly 1,200 indigenous women have gone missing or have been murdered in Canada, and that Canada has clear domestic and international obligations to address violence against women, including the United Nations call for all countries to have a national action plan to end violence against women.
The signatories are calling upon the Government of Canada to create a coordinated, comprehensive and national action plan to address violence against women, and launch an independent national inquiry into the deaths and disappearance of first nations, Métis and Inuit women.
Anne-Marie Day NDP Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
Mr. Speaker, thank you for allowing me to table two petitions today.
The first calls for lowering credit card fees, which are too high, capping ATM user fees at 50 cents, and prohibiting additional fees that penalize people who receive their bills online.
Anne-Marie Day NDP Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
Mr. Speaker, the second petition is about respect for the rights of small family farmers to save, exchange and use seeds.
Leon Benoit Conservative Vegreville—Wainwright, AB
Mr. Speaker, I have three petitions today. The first is regarding prostitution. The petitioners note that the most recent legislation on prostitution was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and they call on the House therefore to declare such sex with a woman, man or child to be a criminal offence and that it also be a criminal offence for pimps, madams and others who profit from the proceeds of prostitution.
Leon Benoit Conservative Vegreville—Wainwright, AB
Mr. Speaker, the second petition is from petitioners across the country who request that no genetically modified fish or fish eggs be sold in Canada.
Leon Benoit Conservative Vegreville—Wainwright, AB
Mr. Speaker, the third petition is regarding gender selection abortion. The petitioners note that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aired a piece that showed that there were ultrasounds being done and if the fetus was found to be female, the female would be aborted. The petitioners call on the Parliament of Canada to condemn discrimination against girls occurring through gender selection pregnancy termination.
Questions on the Order PaperRoutine Proceedings
Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre Saskatchewan
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons
Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.
The House resumed from February 17 consideration of the motion that Bill C-12, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, be read the third time and passed.
Jinny Sims NDP Newton—North Delta, BC
Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure, today, to rise to speak in support of Bill C-12, an act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, as it has been labelled, the drug-free prisons act, though I am often confused how the bill would make our prisons drug free. However, at the same time, we are supporting it.
At this time, I would like to take a minute to acknowledge the amazing work being done by the critic in this area; that is, the member of Parliament for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, who has done an absolutely thorough and very detailed analysis of this piece of legislation, and the work done at the committee to try to strengthen the legislation so that it would actually do what it purports it would. As we know, our colleagues across the way are not really up to listening to any experts or advice as to how to improve bills. In any event, the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, on this whole file of public safety, has put in, I would say, a gargantuan amount of work in order to deal with real issues for Canadians and to ensure Canadians' safety in a real way.
It is interesting that we are debating the bill on the day the budget will be presented. We know that the budget has been delayed. I do not know if it has been delayed because the minister just did not know what to put in the budget or whether they were busy developing their communications or free advertising plan on the tax dollars, but the budget has been delayed. In any event, we look forward to seeing it today. I really hope that when we look at the budget today we will see a significant investment in what the current government purports its agenda to be.
My colleagues across the way often like to see themselves as the champions of public safety but often what we have is a lot of rhetoric with very little funding that goes along with the programs they announced, or lack thereof, or has often been accompanied by cuts as well.
This particular piece of legislation, despite its title, “drug-free prisons act”, I would say is a baby step that we do support. Let me tell members that it would not have the kind of impact that my colleagues across the way seem to think it would because this particular bill would not tackle the real issues that our prisons are facing.
Bill C-12 would add a provision to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that would make it clear that the Parole Board may use positive results from urine tests, or refusals to take urine tests for drugs, in making its decisions on parole eligibility.
Let me assure members that my understanding is this is already being done. Therefore, what we would do is take a practice that is already in play into legislation, and that is a good thing. What it would do is give clear authority to an existing practice, a practice that we do support, but this practice by itself and on its own would not address the serious issues we do have to tackle, which are drug addictions, mental illness and the very fundamentals that lead to more and more people ending up in prisons rather than in treatment.
The title of Bill C-12, as I have mentioned a few times, is misleading. We know the current government has a penchant for coming up with some pretty outrageous, all-encompassing titles for bills, but when we actually dig into the bill we find there is very little substance. That is what we are finding with this bill. The title sounds great but when we get into the bill, all we have is the government codifying a current practice of the Parole Board.
The Parole Board right now retains its discretion as to what use it makes of this information, which is actually how it would remain.
It always makes me proud to sit on this side of the House with my colleagues, because we have been steadfast in our support for measures that will make our prisons safe, while the Conservative government has ignored recommendations from corrections staff and the Correctional Investigator that would decrease violence, gang activity, and drug use in our prisons.
We are not the only ones. We know that the current government is allergic to data and experts. However, most of us know that when we are dealing with the complexities of drug addiction, we have to pay attention to what we know and to the knowledge acquired by the experts in this area. The stakeholders agree with the NDP that this bill would have a minimal impact on drugs in prisons.
This bill is about granting parole and what the Parole Board would take into consideration. It has very little to do with what is actually going to be happening inside the prisons. Once again, the Conservative government is using legislation to create an opportunity to pander to its base and to pretend that it is doing something with no real solutions to the issue of drugs and gangs in our prisons. I would go so far as to say that the government is actually making our prisons less safe by cutting funding to correctional programs, such as for substance abuse, and by increasing the use of double-bunking, which leads to more violence. Our priority as parliamentarians should be ensuring community safety by preparing ex-offenders to reintegrate into society once released, addiction-free and less likely to reoffend.
I looked very carefully at this legislation, because as a mother and now a grandmother and as a life-long teacher and counsellor in a high school and for the school district, I know what a difficult task we have ahead of us as a society as we try to tackle drug addictions. There are no simple solutions.
In my city of Surrey, in beautiful British Columbia, in the last 38 days we have had 23 shootings. On Sunday, what we all feared happened: a fatality, with a 22-year-old losing his life. People in my community of Surrey, like in other communities across Canada, care very deeply about addressing the issues of violence, gangs and drugs. No parents out there want to see their young daughter or sons engaged in the use of drugs or involved in any kind of criminal activity. When these kinds of tragedies happen in our communities, it shakes us to the core and makes us want to hug those around us. Right now, my heart goes out to the family—the parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, brothers, sisters—but also to the whole community as it deals with this latest round of gun violence.
It is because we want real solutions that we want to tackle the real issues. We want to starting looking at the underlying issues.
We need a real strategy and action on mental health, not just talk, that happens in a multi-faceted way. Many people will say that it has nothing to do with this topic. We know that the majority of people in our prisons are there because they were convicted of crimes related to drugs and many of them because they suffer from mental health issues. Unless we start tackling mental health issues in a serious way, I do not think this baby step is going to help us achieve a safer society or make our prisons any safer.
It is like the current government wants to see how many more people it can put into prisons, even if it has to double-bunk them, and the mandatory sentencing has led to more people being sent to prison. I absolutely believe that we need policies that mete out punishments that fit the crimes, but we also need to make sure that there is rehabilitation.
Before we even talk about crimes and people ending up in prison, we need to look at our communities, school systems, and the kind of programming needed. When I look at the public school system, I would say that it has been under attack for many years. When I look specifically at British Columbia, a lot of the preventive work that used to be done on drug addictions in high schools is very difficult to do today, because a number of counsellors have been removed and a lot of the money that used to be available for prevention is no longer there. I look at Surrey and the kind of support system for youth in our community. I look at how many students per counsellor there are today compared to when I came to B.C., when there were 250 students to a counsellor in my district Nanaimo. Now I am hearing that the number can be as high as 800 to 1,000 per counsellor.
If we look at all the pressures on our children through social media and the Internet, and we know, because we have dealt with many pieces of legislation in the House, at the very same time that is happening, they are cutting a lot of the support systems that used to be available. In my school district in B.C., we used to have some of the most progressive, stellar programs to engage youth in a positive way. One was called action Nanaimo. There was also a steps to maturity program, which actually dealt with kids' self-esteem, communication skills, and the issue of bullying and how to deal with that. None of those programs exist today.
This is where we have to have all levels of government and communities working together to provide young people with the kind of supports they need so that they do not end up getting into trouble, whether it is due to mental health or drugs, and do not end up joining gangs and engaging in trafficking drugs. We need to make sure that youth have the scaffolding they need to steer through the many challenges they face in our society today.
I would say that the same is true of those people who are in our prisons today. It is very easy to sentence people to prison, but if once they are in prison we do not provide them with rehabilitation, we are not doing a service to society.
Let me throw out a figure that will be absolutely shocking to most people. The cost to send a person to prison and keep him or her in confinement has risen to about $80,000 to $90,000 a year. We are prepared to spend that as a society. On the other hand, we are not prepared to put even 10% or 20% of that money into education and prevention programs so that our young people do not end up in prison.
If mandatory sentences and putting more people into prisons would get rid of drugs and crime, then the U.S. would have no crime and no drug problem. What we are good at, under the government across the way, is following examples that we know are not good. Instead of looking at evidence, we would rather just blindly copy the U.S. and keep putting people in prison, while the U.S. is sending experts up here to learn about rehabilitation from us.
Once people are in prison, we do not provide them with the resources they need to not reoffend. I find it quite outrageous to sit in this House and listen to the rhetoric of the government across the way when it has failed. It has not only failed to increase funding, it has cut funding to programs that would provide support for those in prison, and in hospitals too. I have a 90-year-old mother who I was recently visiting in hospital. Despite the amazing work being done by the staff at the hospital, I would say that they are facing major challenges as well.
To truly address the issue of drug use in prisons, we need to do a proper intake assessment of an inmate's addiction and then provide the proper correctional programming for that offender. Without treatment, education, and proper integration upon release, a prisoner will likely return to a criminal lifestyle and possibly create more victims. What we have then is what has come to be known as the revolving door.
With mandatory minimums, our prison population is increasing while at the same time both federal and provincial governments are closing institutions. It is quite disconcerting how mental health services are being impacted.
Correctional Service Canada's directive 55, which establishes procedures to normalize double-bunking, is kind of weird to me. When I was young and I went to youth hostels, double-bunking was kind of fun, but I cannot imagine double-bunking in prison.
Let me once again say that we support this. It is a baby step. However, without investments in prevention, education, treatment, and rehabilitation, all we have are words. Our communities deserve far more. I hope that in the budget presented today we will see a real infusion of funds to address prevention, education, mental health issues, rehabilitation, and real support for an effective reintegration policy that will make a real difference and lead to safer communities.
I would say there is no better investment than in the education of our children. I urge governments at the provincial level to please make it a top priority, because our children are our future and they are worth every penny we invest.
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
Mr. Speaker, I will focus my question on the member's priority throughout her speech, which is education.
I agree in many ways how important education is. The leader of the Liberal Party, a teacher by profession, has talked a great deal about the importance of education. For example, he talked about the importance of looking at how we fund first nations education, and that we need to provide a lot more resources.
Earlier today I met with representatives, including Paul Olson, the president of the Manitoba Teachers' Society. We talked about the importance of education. If we do not recognize how important education is to the children of our country, then we will sell short their potential. Many will end up on the wrong side of the law if we are not more proactive in encouraging our provinces, which have the administrative responsibility for education. We also need to recognize the important role that the national government can play. We need to ensure there is a sense of equity across the country in dealing with education as well as issues such as mental health. We need to ensure there is programming that allows for the nutritional well-being of young children even before they enter the education system.
If we had a proactive national government dealing with those types of issues, we could actually prevent more people from going into prisons.
Perhaps the member could comment on those points.
Jinny Sims NDP Newton—North Delta, BC
Mr. Speaker, there are areas in which the federal government plays a key role in education, such as in the education for our first nations people and aboriginal communities. A very large percentage of the people in prison are from our aboriginal communities.
There is a lot of preventative initiatives that could be happening, such as investing in early childhood education, quality education, nutrition, prevention and education programs, and truly in strong and inclusive community building. It is always easy to say that this is not our mandate, as I have sometimes heard my colleagues across the way say. However, once people are in prison, it is our mandate.
Here is an amazing figure from seven institutions surveyed in February 2012: only 12.5% of the total offenders were enrolled in a core correctional program, and there is a waiting list to access these programs exceeding 35%.
They say we should start at home and fix what we can fix, but we have a government that has made cut after cut to services in rehabilitation and education. What we are seeing now is that only 12.5% access services, and there is a wait list for people in prison who want to get away from drugs and take the rehabilitation and education programs, but the Conservative government has made so many cuts that they are being denied rehabilitation. That is disgraceful.
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
Mr. Speaker, as the member has pointed out, the NDP is supporting Bill C-12.
However, there is a misnomer in the title. The short title is “drug-free prisons act”, but in the annual report of the Office of the Correctional Investigator for 2011-12, it was pointed out that a zero tolerance stance to drugs in prison is an aspiration rather than an effective policy. It simply does not accord with the facts on crime and addiction in Canada or elsewhere in the world. As the report states. “Harm reduction measures within a public health and treatment orientation offer a far more promising, cost-effective and sustainable approach to reducing subsequent crime and victimization.”
The member raised the issues around the need for rehabilitation in her speech. I wonder if she could comment on that statement.
Jinny Sims NDP Newton—North Delta, BC
Mr. Speaker, I always like to relate some of the big issues to what happens in our families and how we raise our kids. If parents telling their kids that they must do not do drugs would alone get rid of the drug problem in the world, we would not have that issue in Canada today. I know how hard parents work, and zero tolerance is a great aspiration to have, but until we achieve that, we have to have real expert advice from those who deal with these issues, based on the research and what works. We have to have a multifaceted approach.
Just telling people not to do drugs, hitting them on the head with a baseball bat and sending them to prison is not going to get rid of the drug problem. What is going to get rid of the drug problem is investment in education, rehabilitation and reintegration into society.
Raymond Côté NDP Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Newton—North Delta for her very sensitive speech that got right to the heart of the problem: how to prevent and address the challenges of incarceration. The important thing is not to create more problems, which is what the government is doing, unfortunately.
During the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security's brief study, the Correctional Investigator was very critical. He condemned the lack of resources to prevent drug use in our prisons. We can try to limit supply, but all of the credible witnesses said that focusing solely on supply is unrealistic. We also need to tackle demand.
That means we have to support inmates coping with addiction. We have to identify them at intake and provide good programs so they can progress and make choices with comprehensive support.
Would my colleague like to comment further on the Correctional Investigator's recommendation?