Sue Barnes

[Criminal Code, October 30th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-22. I am also very aware that all the justice critics need to be in committee for clause by clause of another justice bill right after this, so I am going to truncate my remarks to help get all the right people in the room who need to be there shortly after question period.

I will say at the outset that our party will support the bill. In doing so, we are following up on work that has gone on over a number of years. The Speech from the Throne of October 5, 2004 committed the government to cracking down on child pornography. Similarly, in the previous Speech from the Throne, the former Liberal government committed to reinstating former Bill C-20, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (protection of children and other vulnerable persons) and the Canada Evidence Act.

The bill was reinstated on February 12, 2004 as Bill C-12. It was awaiting second reading in the Senate at the time of that Parliament's dissolution for a federal election. In June 2004 the then prime minister reiterated support for reintroduction of the package as the first legislative item in the new Parliament. I know that the former minister of justice, the hon. member for Mount Royal, introduced in the former Parliament Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (protection of children and other vulnerable persons) and the Canada Evidence Act. It received third reading on June 9, 2005, royal assent on July 20, 2005, and came into force in its entirety less than a year ago, on January 2, 2006. Bill C-2, then, is built on reforms previously proposed in the former Bill C-12 and proposed reforms in five key areas.

I might reiterate, too, that former Bill C-12, by a procedural motion, a hoist motion, from the then opposition Conservative Party, was prevented from going forward a couple of years earlier.

Be that as it may, when I hear the Minister of Justice incorrectly saying that nothing was done, I have to put on the record that we did strengthen prohibitions against child pornography.

We broadened the definition of child pornography to include audio formats as well as written material “that has, as its predominant characteristic, the description of prohibited sexual activity” with children “where that description is provided for a sexual purpose“. We prohibited advertising child pornography, increasing the maximum sentences and making a number of offences have more bite.

We wanted to protect young persons against sexual exploitation. One of the things that I like in Bill C-22 is that the government has not disposed of that section that was so important, the section that talked about the exploitation of children. It had prohibited sexual activity with young persons between 14 and 18. Under Bill C-2, a court would be directed to “infer that a relationship is exploitative of the young person based on its nature and circumstances, including the age of the young person, any difference of age, the evolution of the relationship, and the degree of control or influence exercised over the young person”.

Consistent with the existing criminal law treatment of sexual assault, that bill focused on the offending conduct of the accused rather than just on the young person's consent to that conduct. That was always the concern, that it was not just an age number, because the age of 14 has been in the Criminal Code and utilized since the late 1800s. It was the “exploitative” nature, and I am pleased that the bill keeps this, because that helps in our being able to come forward with our consent today.

We did increase the penalties for offences against children.

We facilitated testimony not only for child victims and witnesses under 18 years but for other vulnerable victims and witnesses. This is procedural, to help stop re-victimization in the court process.

We created a new voyeurism offence. Today we have those cameras that take pictures; that is why we needed this.

In 2002 we also created the offence of Internet luring under section 172.1 of the Criminal Code. That prohibited the use of a computer system, including the Internet, to communicate with a young person for the purpose of committing a sexual assault against that person. It can and is being successfully charged, irrespective of whether a sexual assault actually took place. The fact of the offending conduct of trying to lure a child via a computer system is what we were getting at and it is there.

Also, just a few weeks back, a private member's bill on increasing sentences passed in the House.

Today's Bill C-22 is an improvement over former private members' bills, no matter how good the intention was. The fact is that now this bill has the five year close in age exception and that will go a long way, I think, in helping us to accept this bill and give our consent to it.

In fact, in our Liberal justice plan announced last week, this was one of the bills that we said would be put forward and given consent by our party, along with the other bills of conditional sentencing and imprisonment, as amended in committee, such as: Bill C-9; Bill C-18, an act to amend certain Acts in relation to DNA identification; Bill C-19, an act to amend the Criminal Code (street racing) and to make a consequential amendment to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act; Bill C-23, an act to amend the Criminal Code (criminal procedure, language of the accused, sentencing and other amendments); and Bill C-26, an act to amend the Criminal Code (criminal interest rate), which was debated in the House last week under the topic of payday loans.

We on this side will add Bill C-22 to that list of bills. There are about 11 government justice bills. This one makes six that the Liberals are prepared to move forward in the Liberal justice plan, although we do not think that these bills are universally perfect. But we could find flaws with all pieces of legislation in the House. There are sections in this bill to do with unconstitutional areas of the Criminal Code, which we could have fixed. The justice minister has chosen not to do that, but at this stage I think the protection of children should be our utmost priority.

Listening in the chamber today was one of the good police officers who has to work in this area. He was kind enough to give some Liberal members a briefing. Unfortunately, his colleague from the federal police services was not allowed to do that, for reasons unknown.

On this side of the House, we as the official opposition are prepared to support this bill. I am prepared now to move on and give my time so that critics from the other parties can all be present in the justice committee for voting measures later this afternoon on another piece of legislation. There is unequivocal support here for Bill C-22.

[Literacy, October 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it is galling to most Canadians that despite being awash in money, this meanspirited minority government has axed $17 million in funding to help people who want to learn how to read and write.

In an astonishing display of ignorance, the Senate leader of the government, the Prime Minister's confidante, recently said, “this is not an issue that is receiving much attention from people out there”.

Have any of the government members or senators bothered to meet their constituents and read their correspondence? Is this another case of government members ignoring what they do not like and acting in shortsighted ignorance?

[Criminal Code, October 24th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I think it will be for each jurisdiction to determine if it wishes to make it. I do not really see the position of the federal government to be one of intruding and demanding that we make it. In fact that would be ultra vires, out of the jurisdiction of this level of government and it is important that we stay in our area.

The whole intent of this legislation is to allow a carve-out and let someone in. I am aware of governments that are interested. I believe that the Manitoba government has tabled but has not yet proceeded with its legislation. I understand that as of May 3 last year, British Columbia's solicitor general had publicly called on us as the federal government to provide him with the ability to properly regulate payday lenders. On May 29 the Alberta solicitor general asked for the authority to regulate the payday loan industry in Alberta. This past summer, on July 13, Nova Scotia's minister of service said in the legislature that Nova Scotia plans to introduce legislation on payday loans. There are some. I know Ontario had been more reticent at this stage.

There are some who would say that this is a downloading to the provinces. I think there are options here and I view it this way. It is similar to when we were developing the best legislation in consultation with first nations. The way we got five bills through in a minority government was to make sure that on a lot of the first nations governance legislation, regarding economic issues in particular, there was wide consultation. Not only was it done in consultation with the first nations, but often the consultation was first nations led. Here we have a comparable situation where someone is coming forward.

I would also be remiss if I did not mention the advocacy of the Canadian Payday Loan Association, which is an umbrella group of about 850 of the currently 1,300-plus payday loan lenders. This group is striving to clean up the industry and in fact operates inside a voluntary code of ethics. The group wants this legislation. In fact it is pushing for it. Representatives of the group came to see me last spring and I said they would have to push the Minister of Justice.

We were prepared to move forward. We had done the consultations and here we are, some months later in the fall. The Minister of Justice, in April last year, said in talking with the Canadian press that he planned to take action to attempt to regulate the payday loan industry.

I will say that when legislation like this comes forward, it cannot just be worked through one department. We have had the cooperation of industry officials inside Industry Canada. They have been working at it with the original umbrella organization since the year 2000. Finance officials have to be involved. When legislation is worked through the appropriate channels and it makes good common sense, it is important to move on it.

[Criminal Code, October 24th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I remember being the chair of the finance committee when we were talking about bank amalgamations. This matter came up at that time during the course of those discussions. As the member well knows, this is not directly relevant to this discussion on the payday loan bill.

However, the Bank Act itself has the sets of notice provisions. I know that they were followed in each and every case where banks made that business decision to cut. We, in all parties, were concerned and made our representations. I know in my own city I made my representations when a bank and a trust company merged together.

However, we do have to understand that the banking industry is a regulated industry and that there was no branch closing that was not done properly by regulation. Nobody got to shortcut any provisions in the Bank Act. In fact, many worked very hard to give the protections as best they could to all the employees in the areas.

Having said that, I do want to comment on the availability of the small time situation on a payday loan. We should not be confusing a small amount of loan, which would be done in a banking institution, with a payday loan. There is a difference. It is a small sum. There is no security given.

I am told the average payday loan is around $280 for a period of 10 days. It is an advance of cash against the customer's next payday. It is not a form of revolving credit. That is not what this is supposed to be. In fact, those things are among the practices, those roll-overs, that we are seeking to get rid of by instituting some of the protection that is in this current bill.

It is more designed for that one time unanticipated expense where somebody just needs help to get over a short trying period. It is not a payday loan, a long term credit project, nor is it a title loan; by that I mean a loan secured by a title to a property or an asset, such as a motor vehicle.

I am told that payday loan customers are Canadians with near median household incomes and the statistics provided by the Canadian Payday Loan Association puts 53% being women and 47% being men.

It is important to say that to qualify for a payday loan a customer has to be employed and have a chequing account. So it is not really preying at a level that I see a lot of concern.

[Criminal Code, October 24th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, before the Minister of Justice attends committee, I will let him know that my party will be very happy to support this legislation in large part because when we were in government, the consultations started in 2000 with respect to this type of legislation. In fact, we were very close to bringing in legislation when the government was defeated last year.

Good consultation creates good legislation. Broad-based consultation creates good legislation. I think that is a lesson we can learn. If we do wide consultation, not only inside the minister's department but with stakeholders and people affected, we come up with a proper piece of legislation that is capable of moving through this House rapidly.

This is important and a lesson to be learned. Well defined and well consulted legislation makes efficient use of parliamentary time.

I will briefly go over some of the history. The payday loan industry, as we have heard, is a growing industry in this country. Over the last decade it has been estimated that there are more than 1,300 outlets and every year nearly 2 million Canadians utilize some aspect of the industry.

Unfortunately, along with this growth, a smaller portion of people did some practices that included some very costly practices to people who needed these services. In fact, they created things that would have been in contravention of the criminal interest rate, section 347 of the Criminal Code.

Over the course of the dialogue between the Department of Justice, Industry Canada and the Department of Finance, people came to understand that section 347 of the Criminal Code had really been instituted for the criminal organization loansharking type of activity.

The Canadian Payday Loan Association and payday loan groupings try to have a code of ethics and conduct. Even though they are not yet regulated, and hopefully will soon be regulated, in those provinces and territories, they will have to go through the scheme that is in this proposed piece of legislation, Bill C-26. We have some that are working to provide a service in a more ethical manner. Then we have some that obviously work outside the law to create as much money for themselves at the expense of people who are badly needing interim financing.

As the minister pointed out, this is not an attempt to in any way deal with the financial sector. We have the Bank Act and financial services, even though sometimes they would be dealing with less than $1,500 loan situations. We are talking about the payday loan which tends to be an unsecured loan situation for a very short period of time. As the minister has said, it is less than 62 days and the monetary limit is $1,500 or less.

We have here a sensible, working, viable scheme that will exempt those provinces that decide that it is beneficial in their jurisdiction to work with the industry to regulate and come up with some protections and regulations. Those who wish to operate in that area can do so in a manner that will be better protective of the public. That usually is a consumer protection jurisdiction of the provincial or territorial governments and not usually at this level.

That is why we had to move out of that jurisdiction and carve out an exemption in this bill to allow the provinces to do that. Some of the provinces, notably Manitoba, British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Alberta have indicated interest in doing this. Some other provinces may not be as interested. They will still be living under the Criminal Code jurisdiction and will have to enforce that situation in those jurisdictions.

It has taken a few years to get the bill ready. We are in a situation, at least in my party, to say that we do not see impediments, that this does not force any jurisdictions into making a change. It is actually more permissive. It allows them to step in and put legislation forward where they believe it is in the best interests of the people residing in their jurisdictions.

Some provinces, notably Quebec, have already operated in a different manner and the flexibility under the act is there. As noted, the designation of the province will be required under subsection 3 of the bill. In subsection 2 we have the monetary and statutory dates limitation and the licensing authorizations under the laws of the provinces. There has to be an agreement and then the province moves into the designation that is seen in subsection 3.

There is also a provision for revocation under subsection 4 that should not have to be used, but could be used if necessary and that shows some foresight. Again, interest has been defined, payday loan has been defined, and criminal interest rate is already in section 347, which has a maximum rate already.

This is progressive in that it allows jurisdictions that wish it to regulate the industry and to place limits on the costs to consumers of payday borrowing. I believe it would even have been a better ministerial speech had the minister acknowledged the work that predated his government's ascension into power as a minority government. Be that as it may, I listened to the speech by the Minister of Justice and he covered all the bases that needed to be covered in a way with which I would agree.

Having said that, this is legislation that can move forward quickly in the House. I want to reiterate that where my party sees that we can advance pieces of legislation that have been brought forward and we can support, we will do so, but where there are hastily put together, non-consultative pieces of legislation, we have to do different things in different circumstances.

With that I will end my brief comments here today and allow other parties who wish to comment in the House.

[Points of Order, October 24th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order to ensure the record is corrected. I am sure the Minister of Justice did not intend to mislead the House when, in answer to a question in question period, he said that he believed his party had promised to get rid of house arrest.

I will let him answer to this, but Bill C-9 did not get rid of house arrest as presented by the other government. It did try to put a wide net around house arrest but, in the wisdom of all the opposition parties listening to evidence, we narrowed that down to appropriate areas.

[Status of Women, October 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative minority government is showing blatant disrespect to Canadian women.

It has cut the budget for Status of Women by almost 40%, effectively crippling organizations that are fighting for equality for women. It has removed the word “equality” from its mandate. There is no support with the Conservative minority government for the advocacy for women. The government's elimination of the court challenges program is just another example.

Among other groups such as minority language groups and immigrant groups, women's groups need resources to ensure their arguments are heard when they feel their rights have been trampled on.

Last week I talked to young people at the university in London, Ontario who could not understand the rationale for these types of short-sighted decisions.

The Conservative minority government continues to prove that it really does not care about women. I stand with my colleagues in this House who have been maligned by the government.

[Committees of the House, October 17th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, R. v. Beaulac in 1992 is another case considered key to women's equality. The Supreme Court of Canada dealt with the constitutional validity of the definition of obscenity in section 163 of the Criminal Code. For the first time, the court articulated contextualized harms-based tests for determining when material should be considered obscene.

Now the Conservative government has taken the words “equality” out of the mandate of Status of Women. Therefore, we can participate, but we cannot be equal. Is that what we are saying? Last week, when I was in my university classrooms and on the radio locally, the thing that appalled most people was the fact that equality was taken out of the mandate of Status of Women in the mission statement.

[Committees of the House, October 17th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about the fanciful argument that we are used to getting from the new government. Conservatives make things up like this. I have no factual basis to buy into anything of that nature.

However, the reality is there are court costs and this program, in large measure, helped to fund the availability for access to the courts. The most important issue we should address is the fact that funding has been cut, funding that gave marginalized individuals and groups that had real issues to bring before the courts cases involving their language rights and often education rights.

A lot of these cases have been in my area. Susan Abbey v. Essex County Board of Education was a language rights case. The judicial rights case, R. v. Beaulac in 1999 was groundbreaking case in the development of judicial rights. Public services section 20 of the charter grants the right, without exception or limitation, to communicate with the central office of institutions of the Parliament and Government of Canada and the legislature and government of New Brunswick and the official language of one choice.

These are cases that were really important in enunciating principles where rights were being trampled and people had to take that right. There is no other way to say it than those access rights are now being taken away. I do not see how any government can defend this situation and how it can take away, summarily, the moneys that go to the heart of upholding our Constitution and our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

[Committees of the House, October 17th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the debate today is on the court challenges program. That may have escaped the attention of the member on the other side of the House.

I am looking at a letter dated September 27, which has come from a gentleman in Toronto. He said:

I know I am not the only white middle-class male to use the Charter to challenge inequitable laws--I share that distinction with yourself, Mr. Prime minister, who successfully challenged the federal electoral law. The Program is a uniquely Canadian initiative to help make Government more accountable to the people, a goal the Conservative Party has itself put forward and that I certainly share.

If you don't like the way the Program is administered, I suggest an all-party parliamentary committee be convened in order to suggest ways to improve the Program, but please don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

In relationship to each and every one of the justice legislation that comes before the House, as justice critic for my party, I give a speech in which the position is put not only of myself but of my party. With our votes and consultation, just like every party in the House, we make our decision whether to move a bill through the process of going through the committee stage and coming back into the House. We participate fully on that.

There is no doubt my constituents know where I stand on each and every issue because I tell them. I tell them not only here in the House, but I tell them at home and through my communications. Therefore, the member should not worry himself about issues that are not relevant to the debate on court challenges, because I do take care of my own constituents. Not everyone in the House has the ability to think that all their constituents agree each and every time, on each and every issue. That certainly has not happened in my constituency and I dare say that it has not happened to any other member of Parliament.

Everybody is entitled to their stance on an issue. Over time people come to realize that the laws of the land have to be developed in accordance with the Constitution and in a manner that helps the public safety because they will be effective laws that are passed. If good laws were put forward and not hastily put together and if they were consulted widely on in advance in the preparation, a lot of the problems with the legislation we at the justice committee face today and in the weeks ahead would be much simpler and we could efficiently go through them.

As it is, as of yesterday we just added an extra meeting every week for the justice committee to sit in order to do our work more effectively.