Betty Hinton

[Supply, February 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, that was an interesting speech and I am sure it was very heartfelt.

On behalf of the Canadian Alliance I attend the Council of Europe where I heard firsthand testimony from a Kurdish woman who explained what had happened in her country with Saddam Hussein using chemical warfare against his neighbours as a test. During this test there were many people killed, but worse than the killing was the fact that it changed the DNA of those survivors for the rest of their lives. The result included spontaneous abortions and many birth defects. There were also other worse things that happened to these people. Although they still walk, they are dead. Their DNA has been changed forever and their history has been wiped out.

Would the member who has just spoken concur with me that war is the last thing we want as a country, but we have an obligation to the people we represent to ensure that everything remains stable, safe and secure for Canadians. Would he concur that the best way to do that with a man like Saddam Hussein, who earned the name “the butcher”, is to stand with our allies and make it clear without any question that we will make him do what the UN has asked him to do, and if he does not, we are prepared to back that up with force?

[Petitions, February 3rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to present a petition with the signatures of 6,320 Canadians in support of Project Guardian, protecting Canada's kids.

[Carrie's Guardian Angel Law, February 3rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great frustration that I rise today to speak to Bill C-6. The bill aims to establish a centre for the resolution of aboriginal specific claims up to $7 million. The centre purportedly would reduce the time and expense of making specific claims. The legislation as written does not guarantee this. In fact, it may likely increase the time and expense involved in gaining a resolution of a claim.

The Canadian Alliance supports the fair and expeditious resolution of claims in a manner that benefits the relations between aboriginal Canadians and the people of Canada. Article 56 of our declaration of policy states:

Our position in land claims negotiations will be to ensure respect for existing private property rights, affordable and conclusive settlement of all claims, and an open and transparent process involving all stakeholders.

There is no provision in the bill for the respect of existing private property rights or an open and transparent process involving all stakeholders. We need a process for resolving these claims that is fair to aboriginals and other Canadians as well. All citizens, regardless of who their parents are, should be equal partners in Canada, and we have to, over the long term, work toward accomplishing this goal.

The process of setting up a claims commission has been going on since 1947. I was not even born then. When a joint Senate and House committee in 1947 recommended this, it was put into place. The Liberals have advocated for such a body since 1963 when they initiated legislation on it. One would hope that after all of this time they would have come up with something better to present to Canadians than this flawed bill. Unfortunately, for all concerned, the government has chosen to draft a bill creating an expensive patronage bill of bureaucracy that has no guarantees of hurrying along the settlement process.

There are no guarantees to spend and no timelines are mandated in this process. In fact, there are numerous opportunities for the government to delay and stonewall. For example, in clause 30, the government is given the right to hold up the process as it decides whether or not to hear a claim. It contains no timelines or final deadlines for the government to provide, and has no mechanism for the commission or the claimant to move the process forward in the event of an extended delay by the government. This clause should be deleted.

Government members in the committee of aboriginal affairs and northern development voted against all amendments that would require the government to declare openly its reasons for deciding against a claim or for holding up the claim process. Because of that, the claim centre could summarily reject claims and the decisions secretly made would never be publicly explained. That is not transparent.

Another problem is that the bill creates a false hope of speedy resolutions and correspondingly lower costs. The exact opposite would happen. The bill opens the floodgates for more claims that have been held back. The claim centre risks being overwhelmed by cases, just like the Liberal gun registry, resulting in an even larger backlog and less expedient helpfulness.

In three decades the government has settled only 230 claims. That bears repeating: three decades, 30 years, 230 claims. Not much of a record. Some 500 are still waiting to be heard. Aboriginal representatives say that they expect up to 1,000 more claims to be filed once the new centre is opened. This new bogged down claims process would further confirm the fact that claims between aboriginals and the people of Canada result in few benefits to any except lawyers, with all due respect, who keep getting richer and nobody wins.

How can the government say that this claim centre will be successful and expedite matters when the only thing it would do is create thousands more claims? It seems that the government has it backward. Instead of clearing up the claim backlog and resolving aboriginal issues, this institution will create more delays and dissatisfaction. The bill would not speed up the resolution of claims, particularly more costly claims.

We should work toward a way to create an environment where trust and open agreements, arrived at openly with respect for private property holders, can work.

One plus is the government's understanding that there should be at least some semblance of accountability contained in the bill. Government Motion No. 7 is something that we can support as being an expression, however small, of that accountability by mandating the minister to submit a report to Parliament of any change in the centre. Unfortunately this does not change the fact that any changes are at the whim of the minister and Parliament will only be told about these changes long after they are done.

The bill would create an institution that would be just one more in a long line of adversarial, bogged down bureaucracies big on promises and short on delivery. The 1993 Liberal red book promised an independent claims commission that would be jointly appointed by aboriginals and the Government of Canada. Bill C-6 breaks yet another promise from that book.

Since all the adjudicators and commissioners in the Canadian centre for the resolution of first nations specific claims would be appointed by the minister, the idea of an independent impartial body to oversee the resolution of claims is already ruined. There is too much power in the PMO already and adding more useless appointments that benefit no one makes it worse.

It amazes me that the minister, who put this forward, is a resident of British Columbia, as I am myself. As a member of the Canadian Alliance, one of my first assignments was to spend a full year as the chairman of the leaders advisory committee on Indian and Northern Affairs. My job was very simple. I was to go speak to both aboriginal people and non-aboriginal people, the other stakeholders. I did that. Some of the things that I learned were amazing. I have tried to share them with the government on other occasions but it has had no time to hear it.

Let us look at B.C. just as an example. Under the bill there is not supposed to be any geographical limit which means B.C. could be a part of the process. We count on the other parts because the government has decided to dump the responsibility onto the provincial level of government and we have been unable to do anything to prevent that. However in this case, because there are no geographical limits, B.C. could actually be covered under specific claims. It sounds good on the surface but wait until we dig a little deeper.

There are no claims in B.C. for under $7 million. This is according to the claims commission and the aboriginal people of B.C. When we put a limit of $7 million on it, once again the government has told B.C. to figure it out for itself because it does not want to get involved. It has a fiduciary responsibility to be involved and again it has abdicated it.

I spoke with aboriginal people across the country who make up, according to census figures this year, approximately 4% of Canada's population. Of the 4%, about 0.2% of that population had a driving urge to have the land claim issue settled. Those people are a minority among the aboriginal people to whom I spoke.

The people to whom I spoke were everyday band members. What everyday band members want is what all Canadians want. They want the opportunity for their children to have a better life than they have. They want to have some measure of success and they to have that opportunity to make that success happen. Aboriginal women want equality. It is something we enjoy in the country as non-aboriginal women but for aboriginal women it is lacking.

I realize I have gone off the subject of specific claims but I do not think there is much else that can be said about it. This is not an answer. It does not listen to the other stakeholders involved in the process, whether they are ranchers, tourism people or private property owners and it does not answer the needs that aboriginals have related to me. Because of those reasons, I will not be supporting the bill and neither will my party.

[Petitions, January 31st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition, which has been signed by many hundreds of people, asks that Parliament ensure the protection of our children by taking all the necessary steps to ensure that all materials which promote or glorify child pornography and the exploitation of children be met with swift punishment.

[Petitions, January 31st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to once again rise in the House to present petitions from my constituents of Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys.

The first petition asks Parliament to repeal section 13(5) of the Canada Post Corporation Act.

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, January 30th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, when we come to the House of Commons we accept that we are going to take responsibility for some very serious issues. This is no longer a simple world and some of the things we have to deal with in the House of Commons today are ethically challenging. There are moral issues and issues such as the possibility of a potential war.

I do not think any issue has had a greater impact on me than this issue. I am not a scientist and I have no scientific background. Like many members of the House, what I have to rely on to make decisions and to think things through is my experience. I add to my experience by listening to the experiences of my constituents.

I do not need to tell any member of the House that the volumes upon volumes of information that flows across our desks every day is almost impossible to keep up with. However, if we read it and listen to debates and talk with colleagues throughout the House, we gain a different perspective and I hope that is what we are supposed to be doing here. We are supposed to be representing all of Canada and those perspectives are very important.

I know there are a great number of members in the House who first and foremost consider this to be a moral issue. I respect that point of view. There are members in my own caucus who feel very strongly about that side of this and there are members across the House and other members of opposition parties who feel equally strongly.

Before I try to explain how I drew the conclusions that I did on this bill, I should give some background. As I said, I am not a scientist but I am a human being and I have lived a few years and have had some experiences. That is what I have based my conclusions on.

When my husband and I started our family, we were blessed with three children. When our first daughter was born we were absolutely delighted, as are all parents with their first child. As parents we learn a little later on that there is going to be some trouble that goes with those children but we do not think about that. We are just overwhelmed with the joy of having these children.

Our first daughter was born looking perfectly healthy, slightly jaundiced, but perfectly healthy and we were very delighted to welcome her into our home. As it turned out, there was a small defect called a biliary atresia and in this case it was called a complete biliary atresia. Unfortunately, even in this day and age it is an incurable problem and the child simply cannot survive. Most children born with this live to be three months old. We were very blessed. She lived to be 10 months old.

From my own perspective as a mother and from my experience of going through that, if someone had offered me a solution that would have saved my daughter and let her live, I would have taken it. Whether that solution was embryonic stem cell or adult stem cell would not have mattered to me at that point in my life; all I wanted was something to take away the pain and to cure her. It was not available and as I said earlier, it still is not available.

For those people in Canada who wonder how we arrive at our decisions, I want to let them know that I can empathize with situations where they have a chronic disease that is going to kill them or they have children born to them who have something terribly wrong with them and they are going to lose them. I know from experience I would have walked through fire to save my daughter as would have my husband, but it was not possible.

When I talk about embryonic and adult stem cell research, I want people to understand that because of that experience, this is not a moral choice for me. I would be lying if I stood in the House and said that there would be no way I would go either way if it would have saved. I would have. From my perspective, I had to do more homework. I had to read more volumes. I had to think this through more thoroughly and I had to talk to people who were wiser than me on the scientific end about what could and could not be done.

My conclusion is that the best way for us to proceed is to stay with the adult stem cell research. My reasons for that have been outlined by many of my colleagues in the House today, but they bear repeating.

Adult stem cells are easily accessible. They are not subject to tissue rejection and they pose minimal ethical concerns.

On the subject of tissue rejection, that is something we have to think about very seriously. When embryonic stem cell research is used, there will be a rejection problem. The person who receives this life-giving stem cell is also going to receive the penalty of having to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of his or her life.

I do not have to tell members that we are facing a health care crisis in this country. We will work together and we will find a way to fix it. If there will be people all across the country on anti-immune suppressant drugs for the rest of their lives, let me say that the problems we have now will look minimal in 10 years time.

There has been so much positive progress that it is the reason my party has been adamant that the government could avoid this divisive ethical issue by instituting what the Canadian Alliance has asked for. We want a three year prohibition on stem cell research in order to give the potential for adult stem cell research time to develop.

There have been such tremendous inroads made in adult stem cell research. Why abandon that now knowing full well that we cannot possibly as a country afford to do justice to both kinds of research? We are here now to make a choice. To me the choice is clear. Stay with the adult stem cell research, continue on with the good work that has happened and put all the support and resources we can possibly find behind it. There are literally tens of thousands of people in this country counting on us to make the right decision.

I must repeat for those who are wondering, for me this was not a decision based on moral beliefs. I do agree with my colleagues about the moral issue. My decision was not based on a moral decision. It was based on the evidence put in front of me, the experience that I have had in my own life and the constituents who have come to me and explained the situations they are facing.

One in particular stands out, a constituent with a little boy two years old who has diabetes. He came to my office and he asked me if I would be supporting embryonic stem cell research because from everything he had read, that was the answer. I explained to him the research I had done and what I had learned. He left saying to me to keep the course and insist that it become adult stem cell research. We have a vested interest in finding the right cure for that child and every child in Canada.

There are people all across the country who suffer from Parkinson's disease and all kinds of other terrible diseases. They could probably benefit from the research.

It is incumbent upon us to make certain that we do this right. Doing it right does not mean doing it fast. Once again we have a problem in the House in that a committee that is made up of members from all sides of the House spends valuable time and energy considering all of the issues put in front of it. Then those recommendations come in front of the House or go to the minister and they are all overridden and there is an agenda that is put in place of all of that hard work.

I have to repeat what another colleague said earlier. Given that embryonic stem cell research will require a drug for the rest of the days of the person who has received the stem cell research, is it not possible that there may be an agenda on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies that are the ones that promote and push the embryonic stem cell research in the strongest possible way?

Is there not a possibility that those companies may have a vested interest? Maybe we should take their opinion and water it down considerably and listen more carefully and more closely to Canadians who are trying to deal with this problem on a day to day basis.

We have the capability of finding the solution. I hope that all members of the House will work together to do that.

[Queen's Jubilee Medal, January 30th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure today to announce the members of my riding association and constituency who were the recipients of the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal presentations.

Among them were Erin Gammel, a youth swimmer; Cheryl Thomas, a community volunteer; Walter McKague, a community volunteer; Terry Shupe, a judge and patron of the arts; Linda Jules for her art leadership; Kevin Jardine; Allan Manual; Bridget Jensen; Marg Marshall; Mike Puhallo; Isabel Hopcott; Patricia Wallace; Daniel Boughton; Henk Groenevelt; Private Daniel Holley; Master Corporal Duane Russell; Corporal Jason Williams; Corporal Trevor Fehr; Corporal Erin Doyle; and Master Corporal Jeff Spence; all soldiers who served in Afghanistan on behalf of Canadians.

[Criminal Code, January 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would agree that we could do that if we had the will. It is also a very good idea but I would caution my hon. colleague, whom I treasure, to not hold his breath.

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

[Criminal Code, January 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I will bear your words in mind. I will be very careful how I answer the question.

I suppose the best way to answer it without offending anyone on the other side of the House would be to say that we have had enough evidence in the House of Commons over the last two years that I have been here to know that the government is not very good at managing any natural resource of the country. I make specific reference to the softwood lumber agreement.

If the House needs to have an example of the most important and the most precious natural resource that Canada has, it is our children. The government has made no attempt to make certain that they are protected from the kinds of people who are offending in this way.

[Criminal Code, January 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca.

I am pleased to rise and speak today to Bill C-20, an act to amend the Criminal Code with respect to protecting children and other vulnerable persons.

This subject has been high on the agenda of our party for a long time. For years the Canadian Alliance has demanded a national child registry and only recently has the government acted. We have demanded harsher punishments for child predators and more resources for law enforcement to catch them. We have tirelessly advocated raising the age of consent from 14 to 16 so that those vulnerable young people have less of a chance of being cruelly victimized.

I am sad to say that in all these regards the bill is sorely lacking. There are no more resources for law enforcement to do its job, there are longer sentences but not mandatory ones, and the age of consent is still at a shameful 14 years.

Last year, John Robin Sharpe argued before the Supreme Court of Canada that he had the constitutional right to possess child pornography. Sharpe had been arrested in British Columbia after police found photographs of nude boys and sexually explicit written material, most of which were described as extremely violent, and included children as young as six years old.

At his provincial trial in 1999, Sharpe had been acquitted of all four counts of possessing child pornography, with the judge striking down the child pornography law. While the Supreme Court decision substantially upheld Canada's laws against child pornography, the exception created for personal writings was defined in such a broad way that violent and anti-social text, like Sharpe's, could still be justified under the law.

These upsetting court decisions do not properly reflect society's interest in protecting children from sexual predators. Children are the most valuable members of our society and the law must recognize that fact and the courts must uphold it.

This necessity has become increasingly apparent over the recent revelations of project snowball. Two weeks ago, project snowball, an offshoot of a worldwide child porn investigation into 250,000 people, has turned over names from every province and territory to Canadian authorities. These individuals have been paying by credit card to access a U.S. child porn site which a Toronto police detective said included “some of the most evil images of child abuse you can imagine”.

Unfortunately we cannot be sure that those individuals will ever face justice for their crimes. Police stated last week that they had the names of more than 2,300 suspected pedophiles across Canada but that only 5% had been arrested because Canada lacked a national strategy for targeting sex offenders. A lack of resources and appropriate legal tools stand in the way of an effective response to this growing problem. Canadian police are hamstrung and Ottawa must do more. We do not see any help forthcoming in the bill which will help to solve the problems our police are facing.

While police are not given the resources to do their jobs, the government will point to its bill and say that children will be better protected. Bill C-20 aims to achieve this by changing the defence for possessing child pornography from the current artistic merit to public good. The word swap is simply repackaging the same thing. It is something we see from the government time and time again.

The public good defence that the government now heralds is almost identical to the old community standards defence that was rendered ineffective by the Supreme Court in 1992. There is no positive benefit in recycling laws that have already been discredited by the courts. To do so risks even more child predators continuing to walk free.

In order to create the impression that this law will be tough on child exploitation, the bill proposes to increase the maximum sentences for exploiting children. Unfortunately, the courts have consistently failed to proportionately increase punishments when the maximum allowable sentences are raised. Child pornographers will still be entitled to house arrest, an alternative to prison. Without minimum sentences, pedophiles, like John Robin Sharpe, will continue to escape custodial sentences even when they are convicted.

There are areas in the bill that will increase the maximum punishment for child related offences. These include sexual offences, failing to provide the necessities of life and abandoning a child. The government proclaims that children will be better protected because there will be a greater deterrent to the offences that pedophiles and others who harm children may commit. This is simply not true.

Currently the norm seems to be for pedophiles to be given a slap on the wrist and to serve their time in the community, usually the same one in which they have committed their crime.

In this vein I would like to bring to the attention of the House examples of what a lack of minimum sentences result in. John Robin Sharpe received just four months of house arrest at home instead of doing prison time.

Recently five London, Ontario men, aged 33 to 56, nabbed in the Snowball investigation were charged with offences such as possession of child pornography, production of child pornography and distribution of child pornography. The police described the Internet photographs these men had as some of the most evil images of child abuse we could imagine. Two of those men were recently sentenced with both receiving a six month conditional sentence and eighteen months probation. Is that justice?

The Ontario Provincial Police have urged tougher sentencing for those convicted of child pornography offences saying, “Light sentences in Canada are a joke”.

These penalties do not reflect the severity of these crimes. What has been done to these children to make these terrible photographs is simply unacceptable. We will continue to see more of these types of sentences as the individuals caught in Project Snowball make their way through the courts. We will see pedophiles getting off pretty much scot-free while lives are destroyed to please perverted minds.

Another serious flaw in the bill is the continued refusal by the government to raise the minimum age of consent from age 14 to 16. This is clearly shown by the comments by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada who when performing yet another stalling tactic stated that, “there are many social and cultural differences that have to be reflected in the law and we will work within the consensus”. It is unfortunate that working with its cultural consensus results in a toothless bill. I would like this parliamentary secretary to name the culture to which he referred. There are no cultures in Canada that I am aware of that would accept this kind of child abuse.

It still seems under this government parents and law enforcement officers will never see the legal protection and the authority they need to give these children the proper protection from predators. The age of consent in Canada remains at 14 years even though most western democratic nations have legislated a 16 year age minimum.

The Liberal proposal is to bring in a law that requires the court to analyze each case to see if the adult is exploiting the child. This approach is cumbersome and complex and it fails to create the certainty of protection that children require.

Canada's low age of sexual consent coupled with the government's failure to protect children from sexual predators has resulted in Canada potentially becoming a preferred destination for sexual predators to prey on innocent Canadian children.

The need to protect innocent and vulnerable children from pimps and other adult sexual predators is a matter of the highest priority. Even the Department of Justice's own 1999 consultation paper expressed the view that the current age of consent was “too low to provide effective protection from sexual exploitation by adults”. Until this legislation contains provisions to raise the age of consent to 16, neither I nor my party can support the bill.

The federal government's lack of action has given rise to the belief among Canadians that the rights of pedophiles, pornographers and other sexual predators are more important than protecting our own children.

A Canadian Alliance government would institute a comprehensive sexual offence registry, implement tougher sentences for pedophiles, eliminate all the legal loopholes for child pornography, streamline the administrative process for convicting sex offenders and prohibit all adult-child sexual contact.

Possessing child pornography is not a victimless crime. It degrades, dehumanizes and sexually exploits children. It destroys innocence.

One thing Canadians will see in Bill C-20 is that the government is more concerned with protecting the rights of child predators than in making the necessary changes to protect children. Until our parents and law enforcement agencies have the tools to clamp down on these dangerous sexual predators, they will continue to walk free. We cannot allow that to happen.