Peter Mancini

[The Environment, May 5th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment, the Minister of Health, the Minister of Finance or whoever wants to take responsibility.

Since the signing of the memorandum of understanding for the cleanup of the Sydney tar ponds eight months ago, a number of health studies have identified alarmingly high cancer rates and other serious illnesses. Yet since that signing not one ounce of identified toxic waste has been cleaned up. Nor is there any indication it will be.

I have a simple question. Was there a specific funding commitment in the recent federal budget for the cleanup of the tar ponds and if not, why not?

[Budget Implementation Act, 1999, May 4th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to follow the remarks of my colleague from the Bloc Quebecois although on some matters we may see things differently.

The budget that was brought down by the government can cause us to reflect on other times. It can cause us to reflect upon times when there was a commitment by the federal government in Ottawa to ensure that there were national standards across the country regardless of what community one lived in, regardless of what city one lived in, and regardless of what province one resided in.

It ensured that the harmony of Canada—and I think that is a word we can use with some sincerity—was kept in place because people across the country knew it was a generous country. As a country we shared with one another. Those provinces that were well-to-do because of certain government policies or certain natural resources shared with the provinces which found themselves not as well off for whatever reasons, because of government policies or because of transitions in industry and whatnot.

However, changes adopted by this government and begun by the prior Conservative government began to erode public confidence in the harmony and in the fact that whether one lived in rural Alberta, Manitoba or Saskatchewan one had entitlement to the same benefits as those who lived in urban centres.

When I discuss the new funding formula based on a per capita basis it leads into a discussion about who is entitled and who is not, and what is the real hidden agenda of a government that says it will pay so much money per person without taking into account all kinds of other factors such as unemployment in a particular region or health care concerns in one province or another.

It reflects a move toward an urban Canada. Not only the per capita funding but also the decrease in funding coming from the federal government over the last 10 years has forced the provinces to realign their priorities. The downloading of cuts on to many provinces has meant that they have had to slash health care, about which my colleague in the New Democratic Party has already spoken so eloquently, and to cut back in terms of education and social assistance.

The people listening to this debate or who will read Hansard should be aware that there was a time when the federal government cost shared with the provinces on a 50:50 basis the costs of social assistance. This to me was only fair in light of the fact that many government policies have a direct impact upon whether or not people are employed. If people are not employed they fall on to social assistance rolls, sometimes through no fault of their own.

I come from a community and province which have a great understanding of that. I can point to the recent announcement in January by the Minister of Natural Resources in my own community that will result in the end of the coal mining industry in Cape Breton, resulting in perhaps 1,100 people falling on to the provincial social assistance rolls.

The federal government has decided that it is no longer committed to the economic welfare of the people in Cape Breton. That is a decision it can make. It has a majority. It can decide if it wants to abandon those who are most in need. That appears to be a decision it makes with very little remorse and indeed very little concern.

What does that mean for the province of Nova Scotia as the government turns its back on men and women who have been employed in a crown corporation in my community for some 25 or 30 years? There are men and women, miners who have gone underground, who have injured themselves and are no longer able to retrain in the new technological workforce.

What does it mean when the government abandons such people in the cavalier and callous manner it has chosen? Many of these families will fall on to the provincial welfare rolls or provincial social assistance rolls.

What does that mean for the province of Nova Scotia? Not only does that province lose the $300 million a year spin-off from the Cape Breton Development Corporation mining industry. It means that it has to come up with the social assistance money to provide for these families that have been abandoned by the federal government.

Somewhere in the resources of a province that is already considered a have not province we have to find the money to provide for these families. That means that the province has to cut further in other areas of its jurisdiction. That means that the children of the families on provincial social assistance because of the abandonment of the federal government will go to schools with fewer resources than the children in Ontario. Perhaps I should say in Toronto because the northern parts of Ontario and Manitoba and the rural parts of Saskatchewan will find themselves suffering the same fate as we move to two solitudes. Those two solitudes will not be French and English but urban and rural. Because of the measures brought in by this budget people who reside in large urban centres will perhaps find themselves with the necessary resources to complete the social safety net that we have grown to know. By urban I do not mean cities of 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 or 60,000. I mean large urban centres of one million, two million, three million or four million.

In reality, those who live outside those urban centres will find themselves in a struggle with scarce provincial resources for things like education and health care. They will find themselves forced to migrate to the urban centres where those services may be provided.

That is essentially what is happening if we look at the country. This is why the Liberal Premier of Newfoundland was so adamant in his objection to the type of funding and the formulas proposed by the government. He understands that his province is suffering an outward migration, as are my own community, the province of Prince Edward Island and all other have not provinces.

Within provinces the rural communities are suffering from the migration of their young people, the greatest resource they have, to the urban centres, which I think is the underlying policy of this government.

I go back to what will happen in my community, to the province of Nova Scotia, as a result of this federal government's abandonment. I talked about the impact on schools. Let me talk about the impact on the environment. There was not a shred of evidence in the budget to indicate a commitment by the government to clean up the environment or to ensure that we have a sustainable environment for the next generation.

I appeared before the Standing Committee on the Environment to talk about a major concern of mine and I think of most Canadians, the tar ponds in Nova Scotia. I urged members of the committee to see the tar ponds for themselves. I was well received.

The chair of the committee asked a pointed question of me. He asked what was the municipality's commitment to clean them up. It told the chairman that the municipality had no money. The municipality just had most of its tax base hived away by the Minister of Natural Resources when he decided to lay off 1,100 coal miners in my community.

What is the municipal commitment? It is to try to sustain some sense of order in a community which finds itself reeling because of federal government's decisions reflected in its budget and budget priorities.

I want to make a few other points. There is a real lack of creativity in the budget. We talk about how to stimulate economic growth, but there was nothing in the budget to look at community economic development. There was nothing in the budget to talk about tax credits for investment in communities with high rates of unemployment. We are not only talking about the maritime provinces. We are talking about every province in this federation which suffers regions of high unemployment and unfair conditions.

Let me conclude by saying that I welcome debate on this legislation on behalf of the constituents in Sydney—Victoria. I urge the federal government to reconsider its commitment to ensuring that Canadians in every part of the country, whether they be urban, rural, eastern, western, French or English, have a national standard of which we can all be proud.

[National Day Of Mourning, April 28th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of my party in respect of working people in Canada and around the world to mark the international day of mourning for workers who have been killed at work or suffered work related accidents and illnesses.

Over one million work related deaths occur annually, while hundreds of millions of workers suffer from workplace accidents and occupational exposure to hazardous substances worldwide.

In Canada, a thousand workers are killed on the job annually and close to one million will suffer some form of injury or illness. Many members of our federal public service still remain without even basic workplace health and safety protection.

On this national day of mourning, the NDP joins with workers and their families nationwide in urging the government and members of the House to stand up for working people and put an end to workplace tragedies.

[Supply, April 27th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, we are saying that at this point we stand by our support of the government in its initial phase, and we understand that includes bombing.

However, we are very hesitant to support any further acceleration of military activity. I think the hon. member knows what I mean by that. That is why it is included in the resolution. We have very real concerns about the imposition of a naval blockade that can only accelerate hostilities among the very people that we are trying to bring to the table.

We have very real concerns about bringing in more Canadian troops. The Prime Minister talked about 800 troops today being ready to go to Kosovo. We assume that is in a peacekeeping role, but we view that with very grave concern.

I know that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Prime Minister and the hon. member who asked the question, do not take the support of the other parties in the House for granted, but that support is always contingent upon the absolute diligent pursuit of diplomatic efforts. Movements that will accelerate hostilities will not help bring about the diplomatic solution that Canada so desperately wants.

We are saying at this point that we will continue to support the government and our initial commitment to NATO. We also understand that means bombing today, but it does not mean increasing planes and setting up blockades that will lead to further hostilities.

[Supply, April 27th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to follow my hon. colleague after her well chosen remarks on this particularly sensitive, important and, in some ways, dark debate that we have to have in the House today.

It is important for us to understand and review the history a bit. In these kinds of debates and in these critical times, we sometimes forget where we came from.

A month ago in the House, the government, as a partner with NATO, recognized that there were atrocities being committed or about to be committed in Kosovo. The government and the country, as a partner in NATO, felt that we had an obligation as the peace talks in France fell apart to do what we could to protect the ethnic Albanians in Yugoslavia.

There was no question that there was mounting evidence that those people were in a dangerous situation. We know the history of the Balkans and we know that there is an unsettled political situation there. We also know that there is, as in many parts of the world tragically, ancient grudges and ancient hatreds.

To that end, with all party support, the government through NATO participated in a bombing campaign. No one, I submit, believed a month ago that we would still be bombing Serbia today. That is not to be critical of anyone. I do not think the parties in the House who supported the government in its resolution believed that 30 days from that date we would still be bombing those cities.

No one thought that NATO would move outside the selected bombing targets which we thought, and I think everyone concurred, would be military targets. No one thought that 31 days after the bombing began, instead of bombing military targets we would be bombing the president's home, rightly or wrongly. No one believed we would be bombing television stations. No one believed we would bomb every single bridge across the Danube River. No one thought that we would collectively wreak the kind of destruction that has happened in the last 31 days. No one in any of the NATO countries—so as not to be overly critical here—and I think no one in the House foresaw the immense tragedy that would result in the movement of the ethnic Albanians across the border in such mass numbers, or the slaughter that would take place in their communities.

The evidence of that is in the simple fact that the international community was unprepared to help the refugees. It is a testament to the United Nations Refugee Commissioner that we have since been able to contain some of the tragedy.

However, for the first week across this country and across the world people were asking “What are we going to do about the refugees crossing the border”. I think there is evidence that no participating member of NATO, including Canada and the members of the House, foresaw the kind of long term campaign that has been ongoing.

Time began to change things a little bit and positions began to change. I am proud to say that in this party when Kofi Annan, the Secretary General of the United Nations, laid down what he thought would be five conditions that might bring the parties back to the table, this party urged the government to respect the historic position of Canada as a peacemaker, as a peace invoker and as a diplomat in the world.

We urged the government to go further than that and to say “Look, perhaps we can even drop those demands. Perhaps we can even weaken those a little bit to bring Milosevic to the table. Perhaps if we say, stop the atrocities that are taking place on the ground and come to the negotiating table, then perhaps NATO could stop bombing”. We pressured the government in that direction, all the while maintaining our support because it is important for this sovereign nation to work with the support of the House. The Prime Minister alluded to that today.

However, I think we have to measure the changes in the international climate against a tone that I get uncomfortable with in the House. Sometimes when I hear us talking, I think of us as siblings in the family of man saying we have a problem with another of our siblings. Today, there is a paternalistic tone entering the debate where we say that we will ensure that things happen in Kosovo, that we will ensure that our rules, our demands and our five conditions are met. That is not the historic role of this country. The historic role has been to brokerage between peoples and nations who have those paternalistic attitudes.

We have to stop and examine the history regularly in the debates in the House to ensure that we are proceeding on a direct course to where we wanted to go in the first place, which was to ensure that the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo was met. Whether that meant assisting in the creation of an independent Kosovar state, whether it meant peacekeeping forces as a buffer, whatever it was, that was our goal. It was not to bring Milosevic to his knees. It was not to wreck the Serbian economy. It was to ensure that the Kosovars, the ethnic Albanians, could live in some peace in their homeland.

Rigorously and every day, we in this party have fulfilled our obligation under the Constitution of Canada. Under our parliamentary obligation and responsibility, we have suggested alternative measures to the government. We pursued vigorously in question period, in debate and in all-night debates in the House various other options that the government might pursue. Those included ensuring that the United Nations play a significant role in the peace negotiations in this international crisis.

It is not now and has never been the role of NATO to usurp the United Nations as a governing world body. We must be clear on that. Granted, NATO had to act in this situation because the UN was in some ways paralyzed and we could not afford to turn a blind eye and say that because of bureaucratic situations we simply could not act. Let us be clear when we talk about peacekeeping forces. Let us be clear as we move toward the negotiating table that it is the United Nations and not NATO that is the international force that all countries respect. This party pushed and encouraged the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister to bring that message to the NATO table.

I am pleased to say that over the weekend we have seen, I hope, some significant results because of that kind of pressure. Canada should be proud that it has been singled out in NATO as the country to try and talk to the Russians, who play a crucial role in this debate.

Canada is now pursuing two aspects. We are still fully participating with NATO, but we are aggressively pursuing a diplomatic effort.

We introduced this motion today because we are now caught in a strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Canada has a kind of potion that we drink. On the one hand, we are telling Russia that we are the country that can help bring peace, and on the other hand, we are laying down conditions that can impede that very progress by saying that we will support an embargo, which Russia has adamantly refused to recognize. We are saying that we want to bring peace to Serbia, but at the same time we are saying we will supply more planes if we have to, to continue bombing the very people we want to come to the negotiating table.

In the last minute that I have, I want to review the resolution that my party has proudly brought into the House of Commons, and that is that we call on the government to intensify and accelerate efforts to find a diplomatic solution. That is our history and that is who we are.

There are nations that are very good at making war. We are not one of them. There are nations that are very good at bringing about peace. We are one of those.

We urge the government to accelerate and find a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Kosovo through the involvement of Russia, which everyone recognizes has to be a key player in this, and the United Nations, the governing world body. As signatories to the convention on Human rights, we have a role to play. Surely we cannot ignore the very body that we look to, to enforce that.

We are asking the government to ensure the involvement of Russia and the United Nations to urge NATO not to impose a naval blockade or take any other actions that expand the conflict and stand in the way of a diplomatic resolution. That is our motion. That is our role as a nation.

[Workplace Safety, April 23rd, 1999]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to address the motion of my colleague from Nova Scotia, the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough. It is also my pleasure to indicate that he will have, as he knows, my support on the motion. He will have the support of our party as well.

His motion calls for the government to act upon recommendation No. 73 of the public inquiry of the province of Nova Scotia into the Westray disaster and to amend the Criminal Code accordingly. It mirrors very much a bill that was introduced by the leader of our party in relation to the Westray disaster in January 1999. Our bill details the specific changes to the Criminal Code required to address the concerns of corporate liability and workplace safety as indicated in the Westray report.

I began by saying the hon. member knows he will have my support. I come from the same province. I come from a coal mining community. I remember well the Westray disaster because that day I was not in Nova Scotia. My wife and I had taken some time and were outside the province. When we called home and spoke to the caregiver who was looking after our children we did not talk about the weather. We did not talk a whole lot. The first thing we were apprised of was the situation in Westray.

It is perhaps difficult for those who do not live in mining communities to understand the impact of that news. Coming from Cape Breton we knew that it would be our friends and colleagues who would volunteer to go into those mines to find the bodies of the 26 coal miners who were killed, and they did.

For those who live in communities where there are coal mines, for those who live in industrial communities, it is difficult to describe how ingrained and how we know that disaster lurks around the corner. When a whistle blows, when there is the sound of an explosion from the blast furnace, when we look at the changing colour of the sky and the fishermen are out on the water, we know that there will be disaster.

We live with that reality every day. The miners in Stellarton live with that. The miners in Sydney mines and New Waterford live with that and the fishermen live with that. It colours the way we react. There is some romance around that but it leads to certain harsh realities. It leads to some good realities. It leads to the way we share things. It leads to a sense of community. It leads to a sense of humour that is mirrored in the works of our poets and artists and in the songs of our musicians.

We live with the frustrating knowledge that corporations which exploit workers in areas of high unemployment in dangerous settings literally get away with murder. It is that reality which the motion and the New Democratic Party's bill seek to address.

I say this having listened to the speaker on the government side. I will not dwell on it, but one of the real concerns we have as the government dismantles the Cape Breton Development Corporation is that it will move to a private mine without a union under provincial jurisdiction, without the protections we now have, which were the very circumstances that led to the disaster at Westray. I urge the government to bear that in mind.

There are ways to prevent this. One way is to accept the motion and the New Democratic Party's bill. I will read from the wording of Justice Richard in the Westray report:

The Westray Story is a complex mosaic of actions, omissions, mistakes, incompetence, apathy, cynicism, stupidity, neglect—Viewed in context, these seemingly isolated incidents constitute a mindset or operating philosophy that appears to favour expediency over intelligent planning and that trivializes safety concerns. Indeed, management at Westray displayed a certain disdain for safety and appeared to regard safety conscious workers as the wimps in the organization. To its discredit, the management at Westray, through either incompetence or ignorance, lost sight of the basic tenet of coal mining that safe mining is good business.

The tale that unfolds in the Westray report is a story of incompetence, of mismanagement, of bureaucratic bungling, of deceit, of ruthlessness, of cover-up, of apathy, of expediency and of cynical indifference. It is a tragic story with the inevitable moments of pathos and heroism. The Westray story concerns an event that in all good common sense ought not to have occurred. It did occur and that is our unfortunate legacy. It is in fact our unfortunate tragedy.

There are ways to stop this. There are ways to stop criminal murder by corporations of their workers. That is what our bill will seek to address and that is what the motion seeks to address. There are ways it can be done by amending the Criminal Code.

In that report Justice Richard pointed out those ways. He suggested that there be a new criminal offence that would impose criminal liability on directors or others responsible for failing to ensure their corporation maintains an appropriate standard of occupational health and safety in the workplace, a criminal offence of corporate killing.

Justice Richard said “in the context of Westray these deserve consideration”. They deserve more than consideration; they demand action. Recommendation No. 73 states that the Government of Canada through the Department of Justice should institute a study of the accountability of corporate executives and directors for the wrongful or negligent acts of corporations and should introduce in the Parliament of Canada such amendments to legislation as are necessary to ensure that corporate executives and directors are held accountable for workplace study.

The only disagreement I have with this is the call for more study. We do not need more study. We need legislation. That is why we intend to introduce a bill complementing the motion of my colleague from Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough which will amend the Criminal Code to make this law.

This is not the first time it has been raised. I quote from the Law Reform Commission of Canada back in 1976 which stated: “While the goals of many of our corporations, profit and growth, spur important advances in the technologies of production and—”

[The Environment, April 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment when she said what were the achievements of her minister.

It has been almost eight months since the minister came to Sydney, Nova Scotia, to sign a memorandum of understanding to clean up the tar ponds in Cape Breton. Since then and during those eight months not a single thing has been done by the government.

Why was there no specific commitment in the recent Liberal budget to clean up the tar ponds? Why was it not one of the initiatives that the Minister of the Environment announced which were just referred to? When will the government honour its commitment to the people of Cape Breton, to the people of Canada and to the environment?

[Criminal Records Act, April 21st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to follow the hon. member for Charlevoix with whom I have had discussions on this bill and who sits on the justice committee with me.

It is also a pleasure to say that for the second time in two days we see the beginning of some co-operation between all parties in this House on a particular measure that is important to the people of Canada.

Yesterday we had an opportunity to discuss in this House the unanimous report of the justice committee dealing with victims of crime. The speeches yesterday reflected the commitment of all parties to ensure that those people who are victims of crime have a role to play in the criminal justice system.

For those who are watching on CPAC and for those who read Hansard it is important to know that government sometimes can work together with others. That is not to say there are not some areas in this bill that need addressing and they have been raised by other members in the House.

We in the New Democratic Party will ensure that this important legislation gets to the justice committee as quickly as possible. It deals with protecting those who are most vulnerable in our society, children and adults who may be vulnerable.

This has always been the commitment of the New Democratic Party. It is why we have always pushed for inquiries into child poverty. It is why we have always ensured that the disabled are protected under human rights legislation. We in the New Democratic Party recognize that the strength of our society is measured in the way it protects those who are most vulnerable.

We applaud this piece of legislation. It is important to know that it did come forward in another bill, a private member's bill which is now before the justice committee. Recognizing that there was mounting support for that, the solicitor general drafted his own legislation and introduced it to the House a few days ago and it will now go to committee.

That legislation does a number of things. It attempts to protect children from pedophiles. The mechanism by which it allows that responds to those many groups that have been mentioned by other speakers, the boys and girls clubs, the YMCA.

I was the president of the board of directors of the YMCA in my own community. We had to deal on an ongoing basis with hiring people, with volunteers who came in to work with children. We had to ensure that we were not submitting the children to any kind of risk.

I also recall in my own riding when an organization through no fault of its own did find itself subject to litigation. One of its volunteers was found to have abused children in the care of that organization. The community was concerned. That organization, which had good principles and laudable goals, was set back many years.

Those organizations will be pleased to see this legislation come before the House today.

It would be remiss if we did not say that for a long time in this society we did not recognize that children and vulnerable people could be the subject of criminal actions of a sexual nature. It is to the credit and strength of character of the many people who have come forward in the last few years. The Sheldon Kennedy organization has been mentioned. Children and adults have come forward to expose what has happened to them. Whether it was at Mount Cashel, residential schools, hockey rinks, it takes tremendous courage to come forward. Today, by the passage and examination of this legislation, I think we are responding to those needs in our society.

I echo the comments I made yesterday. It is important to recognize there has to be a balance. Where we have to be careful with this legislation is in the protection of human rights and the protection of privacy. This bill makes an effort and we will examine it very closely in committee to ensure that it meets all the qualifications so that privacy is protected.

One of the good things in the bill and one of the things we pushed for in the private member's bill was that the individuals who apply to work with children in an organization be notified. They have to give their consent to the searching of their records to see if they have been pardoned for any kind of sex offence against children. By ensuring they have to consent to that, we allow them to withdraw their names if that is the way they want to go, or to allow them to know this check is taking place.

The member for Calgary Centre spoke to this and raised some very good questions. I think they are questions we will examine in committee. I expect he, our party, the Bloc and the Progressive Conservative Party will bring forward amendments to the legislation to ensure that it meets both of those needs. The member made some good points but there are some other points I have to raise in response to what he said.

The hon. member discussed what pardons were and how many people receive pardons. It is important to note that 97% of those who receive pardons never reoffend. There is some indication that those who receive pardons are deserving. We are a human system. There are those who do reoffend and perhaps they ought not to have been granted a pardon. A 3% error rate is not perfect, but it does justify that the pardon is appropriate for the other 97% who have not reoffended.

Many pardons are granted for things other than sexual offences. It is important for people to understand that the vast majority are for shoplifting offences that occurred 20 years ago, or a disturbing the peace charge that happened when someone was in university. They may have been minor incidents but they provide those persons with criminal records for the rest of their lives. When they apply for a position where they have to be bonded, where they cannot have a criminal record, they may lose that job for that kind of thing. The pardon is there for a purpose.

My colleague from Calgary Centre talked about the recidivism rate of pedophiles. He is right. We are right to be concerned about that. When we talk about pardons, it is important to understand that in order to receive a pardon, one must have been clear of any reoffence for at least eight years. If there is a high rate of recidivism among pedophiles, one would hope they are not getting pardons. Clearly if that reoffence happens in four or five years, they are not going to receive that pardon. That being said, we can never be too cautious when it comes to protecting the innocent and the vulnerable.

Some of the sections of this proposed law we support strongly in the New Democratic Party. We think it is important there be measures to ensure that the criminal records of pardoned sex offenders seeking positions of trust are available for screening purposes by placing a flag on the records of the sex offender so that police can be alerted and that a sealed pardoned record exists and that the police can request that record and request from the solicitor general authorization to open it. It is important for those organizations and for the protection of the children that those amendments be made to the law.

As I have indicated, it is important that the individual be advised that that is going to happen. They can then disclose to the organization themselves that such a record exists, or they will know at least that it will be brought forward. If they have nothing to fear, then they have nothing to fear.

There are questions however and some of them were raised by other speakers. In the interests of time I will not go through all of them. There is some question as to discretion and why the discretion would be permitted to the police to notify the organization or not. I question why that discretion exists. As a member of the justice committee, it is one I look forward to debating at committee.

I am struck that perhaps that discretion ought to be there in case of an error, but I cannot imagine that this type of check would result in an error. One would hope it would not. Even if there were three John Smiths who applied for a position with an organization dealing with children and one of those John Smiths had been pardoned for a sexual offence, one would hope that there would be a way of distinguishing that person from the others.

These and other questions have to be raised in committee. They will be. I think there is broad based support for this legislation among all parties. I hope and expect at the justice committee that the amendments will be brought forward in the same way and accepted in the same way. I have to say that in my experience on the justice committee, for the most part that is what happens and it results in legislation like we had the other day.

If we can work together on this in an all-party fair manner in the interests of our children and those who are vulnerable, it may well bring forward in a timely fashion legislation to protect our children. We in the New Democratic Party are committed to that and that is the spirit in which we will approach this legislation.

[Criminal Code, April 20th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, my question is to the member who spoke eloquently and made some good points. There is one area in which I need some clarification.

He spoke compellingly about the head start program. We know that in the head start program there is discretion. He said that there is no financial cut-off. For example, one cannot turn away children from affluent communities because oftentimes they need guidance.

The hon. member spoke compellingly about his role as a physician, about three girls who came to see him, about his treatment of patients, which requires discretion, and certainly the discretion of a good physician to be able to examine his or her patients and come to a conclusion about what is the best treatment.

I think he would feel, as would most practitioners, that it would be wrong to legislate what a physician has to do. For example, when prescribing drugs, that they must or must not prescribe certain drugs, depending upon how they see the case.

The member talked about parole eligibility. I know that he wanted to be clear on this. He said that an individual who is sentenced to 12 years only serves two. I think what he meant was that they have eligibility for parole at the end of one-sixth of their sentence, which is different from saying that they would be released. They are eligible to apply to a board which would exercise its discretion in determining whether that offender has changed or met certain requirements; the same discretion that he would exercise as a physician or the same discretion that those who run the head start program would exercise.

Surely he agrees that the parole board should have that same discretion to make those judgment calls.

[Criminal Code, April 20th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I took note of the fact that the hon. member was in my home town recently. I share with him the concern. I know he was surprised to see a needle exchange program in my community. I can share with him the reflections of many of the community groups that I have met with on this issue.

I want to go back to the hon. member's comments on the issue before the House today, which is the legislation providing for the role of victims in the criminal justice system. In my comments I talked about what I thought each of the parties brought to the table, as well as the participants. One of the things I talked about was rights and the competing balance between the rights of the accused and the rights of the victim. We have to find that balance.

I ask this in all seriousness because I am curious. The member refers to a bill of rights for victims. As I see it, there is a charter of rights for all Canadians. I know his party has long said that Canadians are equal in every aspect. If we all have rights under the charter, would the member then propose special rights for victims in a bill of rights and then perhaps special rights for those accused and special rights for other groups? Or is he proposing that we do away with the charter of rights for all Canadians and have particular rights for different groups?

I ask this because I see competing rights and I see rights as something that we all share and we all have to preserve. It is perhaps a philosophical question, but I ask it.