Betty Hinton

[Citizenship and Immigration, December 2nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, while the minister of immigration fast-tracks work permits for exotic dancers, she ignores legitimate compassionate cases.

A Korean student, the victim of a vicious assault while jogging, is living with the possibility of her caregivers being sent back to South Korea. They have been waiting almost two years for an answer and the minister is dragging her feet in giving them landed immigrant status.

When will the minister get her priorities straight? If she cannot, when will she resign?

[Veterans, November 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed an honour to rise in this place to pay tribute to Canada's veterans. As we prepare for the launch of Veterans Week, it seems to me that a week is an insufficient amount of time to remember the many accomplishments of our veterans and the sacrifices made on Canada's behalf.

We in fact should never forget for a moment that without these gallant men and women we as a nation would not be where we are today. We enjoy a reputation throughout the world as a nation that will come to the aid of those in turmoil. This reputation has been achieved at a very high cost to those who built it.

This year the theme of Veterans Week is “Canada Remembers the Italian Campaign”. I have just returned from Italy where I had the opportunity to accompany veterans of the Italian Campaign on a pilgrimage to the cemeteries that are the resting place for 5,900 of their comrades in arms. It is sobering to see row after row of headstones with the name and unit etched on them, but it is when one sees the age of these soldiers that it impacts a person the hardest. Many never reached their 20th birthday.

Veterans continue to give to this country by going to schools and reliving their experiences so that Canadian children have at least an idea of the pain of war. It is important that we know and remember what war is all about. It gives us the incentive to keep the peace.

As we don our poppies and take our places at cenotaphs across the country this November 11, I would like to share with my colleagues and Canada an inscription I read on a headstone in Italy. It was the headstone of one young Canadian soldier and it told the story of every Canadian family that lost a loved one. It read:

To the world he was only one, to us he was the only one.

[Foreign Aid, October 18th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise today and share my thoughts about the community I am honoured to represent.

The constituents of Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo never cease to amaze with the kindness and caring they show to others. Recently more than 1,000 people gathered at the local university to hear retired Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire speak about human rights and how we as a country and as individuals can effect change around the world.

Every day residents prove that philosophy with action. This year Ken Woodcock and Donna Greenlay of Kamloops are again, as in years past, behind the drive to send backpacks and shoeboxes filled with essentials and treats to Russian street kids and orphans.

As we speak, Charlene and Pete Nightly are preparing to leave the comforts of their home and community to start up an orphanage in Angola. They will be taking along their four children who range in age from nine to fifteen. I want to thank them and everyone else who remembers there is a whole world out there to care for. They make me proud.

[Criminal Code, October 13th, 2004]

Madam Speaker, I would like to begin with just a moment of your time to congratulate you on becoming Chair. It is very nice to see you there and I am very pleased for you. I think you are going to enjoy the job very much. It makes my job tonight that much easier, because tonight I am going to speak not as a member of Parliament to the Chair but woman to woman.

This has been said many times before, but it bears repeating: Canada's children are our greatest natural resource. We take extreme measures to protect other natural resources and we should do no less for Canadian children. Bill C-2 falls far short in this regard. In fact, we can start right at the definition of a child. The government defines a child as anyone 14 and under when it should certainly be 16 and under.

Child pornography has become a multi-billion dollar industry and Canadian children should be protected from it. How do we do this? We must make every effort possible to shut down this industry, and that includes legislation making child pornography a very unattractive way to make money. We must make the punishment for producing or buying child pornography so tough that the risk of apprehension and prosecution is too high. It is simply unacceptable that these young people are robbed of their youth in order to fulfill the perverted desires of adults.

There is no defence for child pornography. This includes so-called art. Our courts routinely hand out slap-on-the-hand sentences for pedophiles. Karl Toft is an example of this exact thing. There was a man in a position of authority in a boys' training school. He molested hundreds of boys, did irreparable damage to these young men and received a 13 year sentence. To add insult to injury, this man now walks the streets of Edmonton in relative freedom, from a halfway house, and he collects his full government pension.

Can anyone call this justice when many of his victims have been incapable of making a living due to the psychological damage he inflicted on them?

In March 2002, B.C. superior court judge Duncan Shaw ruled that John Robin Sharpe was not guilty of possessing or distributing written child pornography because of the artistic merit of the work. Judge Duncan had no choice. This was included in the Criminal Code then and it will be again if Bill C-2 becomes law. Under the guise of legitimate purpose, we will find the word “art”. How can anyone interpret the brutalization of a child as art? Let us ask a child who has been brutalized if she or he would have allowed this to happen to them for the public good. Let us ask an RCMP officer who deals with this repulsive material during the course of an investigation if he can work the word “art” into the description of the material.

I had the opportunity one or two years ago of listening to a delegation from the Toronto police force that had the horrible chore of dealing with child pornography on a daily basis. They took our caucus into their confidence. They showed us films and told us what it is they deal with on a day to day basis. I still to this day cannot close my eyes without seeing those images. In this House of Parliament we are very careful not to offend the sensibilities of anyone, so I will spare members the details of what I saw. But I hope it is enough to say that I simply cannot allow this to continue.

I want to have a very strong law in this country. Bill C-2, in its current position, is not strong. The term “liable to a term not exceeding” should be replaced with “liable to a term of not less than”. This would leave the judges no room for wrist-slapping sentences for child abusers. This would give this law teeth. I could support it if this were to happen.

If the government is sincere about getting child pornography under control, it must occupy itself with the rights of the child, give the authorities the tools they need to bring these perverts to justice and mandate the courts to carry out the full force of the law.

In the short time I have been here, just under four years, we have stood in the House and we have heard the government present arguments called artistic merit, public good, and now, legitimate purpose.

This is not difficult. Madam Speaker, you are a women yourself and I am sure you understand as clearly as I do that there is no justification for child pornography. If we cannot stand up and protect our children then we fail miserably as a government.

In my riding of Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo we have a wealth of natural resources, including a copper mine. If someone came in and stole the copper from that mine they would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. There should be no less a consequence for stealing a childhood.

We as parliamentarians owe this assurance to the people we represent.

[Agriculture, October 12th, 2004]

This is serious. The member can heckle me all he wants.

I stand here because I represent 100,000-plus people in my riding who are seriously hurting. I am sorry for the things that are going on in other people's ridings. If they are suffering, they have my sympathy. If you want my support to make it better for your riding, you have it. I am standing here tonight asking for your support for an industry that is in jeopardy because the government has failed miserably. The cost of that is not going to be on the shoulders of the government. It is going to be on the shoulders of families who have worked for years in an industry that you are helping to destroy.

My riding has been faced with all kinds of things. The government dropped the ball on softwood lumber. That killed a whole bunch of industries in my community. It killed a whole bunch of families' incomes. Now you are killing the cattle ranching industry but it is not just cattle ranches. I told you what has happened to sheep producers, goat producers and many other producers. Stop being adversarial in the House--

[Agriculture, October 12th, 2004]

Mr. Chair, it is nice to see such passion at this time of the evening. I wish that passion had been there when we needed it, at the very beginning of this crisis when we could have perhaps done something about it.

My colleague and I represent 70% of the ranchers in British Columbia. They are independent people. They are hardworking people who never ask for help. No matter what the weather is like, no matter what the conditions are, no matter what is happening in their families, they have a job to do and they do it without complaint.

The fault lies with the government. The government did not do enough at the very beginning. In my opinion, it has not done enough since the crisis hit to save these people's livelihoods. The government brought them to their knees. Some ranches have been in my riding for over 100 years. Ranchers have now been brought to their knees, not through their own incompetence, not through something they did, but through something over which they had absolutely no control. It was in the hands of government. This problem has been mishandled from the beginning.

I am not standing here tonight to bash the government. I am standing here tonight to tell the House that I want a cooperative effort made to open the borders and to save an industry that is in dire jeopardy.

[Agriculture, October 12th, 2004]

Madam Chair, I will be splitting my time with my colleague from Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock.

I rise tonight in this 38th Parliament to speak once again on behalf of both my rural and my urban constituents on the issue of BSE. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people of Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo publicly for their vote of confidence in sending me back to be their voice in Ottawa.

Since May 20, 2003 I have spoken often about a specific need not being met by government: a solution to the BSE crisis. The situation is becoming more and more serious with each passing day.

In 2003 there were 28 cattle ranchers that declared bankruptcy. For the first six months of 2004 there have been 32 and one can only imagine what the last six months of the year will bring. These are not just statistics. These are real people who work very hard to make a living. They deserve a government that works equally as hard to ensure their future success.

A live weight steer that would have fetched $1.60 a pound two years ago at auction may get up to 65¢ per pound. That is a huge discrepancy between what was happening before and what is happening now.

Farmers are having to take outside jobs to keep their farms going and that leaves the farms to deteriorate. The feed farmers are not selling their feed because the ranchers simply cannot afford to buy it.

In my own riding we have had a double whammy. We had forest fires last year. There was no production of feed. Everything was burned and we relied on the good graces of the people from Wild Rose county in Alberta to get us through a very tough summer. We are very grateful for that, but we have to look toward the future.

I have told the House before what the impact has been. Independent self-sufficient ranches that have survived for 100 years have suddenly been brought to their knees by a government that is incompetent. What has the government done? The answer is next to nothing, unless we count the excuses, the press releases and the head patting that has gone on which the Liberals think passes for progress.

We are talking about people, livelihoods, lifestyles and the Liberals are talking about covering their backsides. How callous can they possibly get. This is yet another industry in Canada where we can hear the flushing as we speak. We have to do more than we have done to date.

The Liberals talk about a consultation process, but it did not take place. The proof of that lies in the results. The Conservative Party has consulted and it has done so with those who produce. If we want answers and we want to know what the problems are and we want to know what the solutions are, it is imperative that we speak directly to the people who are affected. The government has not done that. It says it has, but it has not.

Those who have been completely overlooked in this disastrous situation, aside from the cattle ranchers, are ranchers who produce other ruminants. It has been 16 months with no recognition from the government side for those people who raise goats, sheep and a variety of other ruminants. Those people have had absolutely no say in their future and have had absolutely no input into what the government is planning to do.

We are not talking about a few dozen head here. We are talking about two million head. To not even discuss this situation with them is very serious.

We have to ask ourselves a question in Canada: Are we going to be independent producers of our own food or are we not? One of my constituents who is a sheep rancher told me that his own son is having second thoughts about carrying on the family tradition. The reason for this is not that he has lost his love for the family ranch; it is that he has lost even the most minuscule amount of faith in a government that has let this happen to his family and to hundreds of thousands of other families.

It is time to wake up. We have to do something fast and we have to do something serious or we are in jeopardy of losing yet another industry in this country. A government that would allow that to happen is not fit to govern.

[Breast Cancer, October 8th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today for the first time in the 38th Parliament on an issue that has affected myself and my family very personally.

Breast cancer is an insidious disease that claims the lives of many thousands of women every year. It is estimated that 21,200 women will develop breast cancer this year and of those, 5,200 will succumb to it.

My sister, Doreen Buss, dedicated her life to teaching children. Her legacy lives on in two generations of residents of Trail, B.C. who benefited from her talent.

In my riding of Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, women are given hope and research funds through the efforts of the Salituro family who organize the annual Pink Ribbon Ball, and to others, like Kathy Roberts, who dedicate their time to raising funds through fashion shows.

Finally I would like to pay special tribute to every Canadian woman who is now fighting, or has in the past fought, this disease. We will beat cancer.

[Petitions, April 28th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure of presenting a petition signed by constituents of my riding of Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to recognize the institution of marriage as being a lifelong union of one man and one woman. They call upon Parliament to do whatever is necessary to preserve the traditional meaning of marriage in Canada.

[Cattle Industry, February 24th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it is hard to believe that any government could mishandle a $30 billion industry that creates 225,000 jobs in this country, but that is exactly what the government has done in response to the crisis in our cattle industry.

Canadian ranchers have lost $2 billion due to the BSE crisis and the government is still quibbling with the province about who should help. Some provinces have already paid compensation to their beef producers, but this national issue begs a national response.

Matters are even worse for ranchers in and around my riding of Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys, who are still waiting for federal assistance to re-seed and re-fence land ravaged by fire last summer. Again, our legitimate pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

After the challenges they have faced, it is a shame that Canada's cattlemen must now suffer the consequences of this government's dithering.