Myron Thompson

[Criminal Code, May 3rd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I will ask the member a question from my perspective as a principal of a school from grades K to 12 for a number of years and from grades 7 to 12 for another 10 years.

On a number of occasions I had to deal with a situation involving a 14 or 15 year old leaving home. The parents and the authorities were unable to remove that young person from a consensual situation. Has the member ever taken into consideration the impact of that kind of decision when it is allowed to be made by a 14 or 15 year old? These are kids. Like he said, he was thinking about playing ball when he was 14, nothing else.

I cannot understand why we have always neglected to discuss in full the major impact that kind of decision has on families. Parents are unable to do anything about it. The authorities are unable to do anything about it. If the parents try, they are arrested for trespassing, or interference, or whatever. It is always against the parents.

Bill C-22 would have corrected that even back in the days when earlier bills were rejected, and recently when the bill put forward by the member for Lethbridge was rejected.

Why have those members not put a lot of emphasis on that kind of thing? Do they not understand the importance of family and how strong a family needs to be? This bill in its present form, unless we change it, is a hindrance to that healthy family style.

[Criminal Code, April 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his little talk this morning. I do appreciate that during the campaign what I heard from the NDP members is pretty well what I am hearing in the House of Commons. They did stick with what they said they would do during the election and that is commendable.

The Liberals have turned a complete about face. I heard the same thing on the campaign trail that they heard about what they were going to do with mandatory minimums, particularly on the use of guns. What a change has come about since that time.

I cannot recall what riding in New Brunswick the member of the Liberal Party is from, but he said that I do not really care about numbers and all of that. I do not put a focus on the numbers. I have said many times that when somebody is killed through the use of a gun, or when some child is raped and murdered, that one victim is too many and we must take measures to ensure things like that do not happen again. I heard his talk about focus on certain aspects, but I did not hear a focus on the victims.

In my hometown a bank was held up and there was a devastating effect on the lives of the victims, the tellers, workers and patrons. That was just from that incident when the bank was held up by someone with a gun. There were shootings in a mall on Boxing Day. There were numerous victims. A young girl was killed in warfare between gangs. This has an impact on people who are caught in those situations. I can only imagine how the survivors at Virginia Tech feel--

[Business of Supply, April 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, because there are so many people who want to ask questions, I will try to be quick. However, because I am quite emotional about this issue, I may not be too quick.

The member said today was a sad day for him to rise in the House. Let me tell the member what a sad day was for me. It was when I walked into the House the other day and had to vote on a motion from the Liberal Party.

There is a saying that evil thrives when good men do nothing, which is so true. This place is full of good men and good women who want to see evil defeated.

I do not want anybody to forget 9/11 when the great towers came down and a number of Canadians lost their lives with thousands of others because of the evil jihad by the Taliban and al-Qaeda, which had a mission to destroy.

What I want to see happen in Afghanistan is called victory. Victory is possible as long as good men and good women do their—

[Business of Supply, April 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, on 9/11 my wife and I sat and watched TV, as did probably the member and many others. We saw the mighty towers come down in New York City killing thousands of people, including many Canadians. It was then that most people recognized there was an evil that was existing, referred to as jihad, that wanted to kill and destroy. That became quite obvious. Many things have happened since 9/11 in other areas of the world which have indicated that this evil has been making an effort to prevail.

The only way to fight evil is with good. What we have in Afghanistan today is good men and women who are prepared to fight evil so that it never encroaches our land and our communities ever again. I commend them for that. I love every one of them for doing it. I will pray every day that they return safely from the mission.

How can any party in the House be party to an idea that we can schedule when a war will end. It is a war. It is a war against evil, and evil against the atrocities in that country which is spreading out to others. It has to be stopped.

I am proud that 36 nations are engaged in this process. I am really proud that this country has recognized the importance of that and has joined in this effort to fight evil.

To make a motion--

[Criminal Code, April 25th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I encourage the House to support getting Bill S-213 to the committee.

I need to get a couple of items down that I was getting to before my time ran out the last time I was speaking to this.

First, I want to remind the House of the 110,000-plus signatures I tabled in the form of a petition. They are calling for harsher penalties for individuals who abuse, just for the heck of it, animals for whatever motive they may have. The petitioners want animals to be protected.

On these petitions, a great majority of people were opposed to Bill S-213. Because of that and because of the fact that numerous other individuals have contacted me by way of email and other sources and are highly supportive of Bill S-213, it is necessary to move the bill forward to committee to have a close look at it to see if there are things that can be done to make it better and that will satisfy all parties that are concerned.

In regard to the number of signatures on the petition, two young ladies from my riding worked hard to get these signatures. I appreciate their efforts. They did that in memory of a dog in Didsbury, Alberta, called Daisy Duke. The dog died a horrific death for whatever reason. At this point we are not too certain because it is still before the courts.

Because a great chunk of the petition was formulated in my riding, I was able to talk to a great number of people who signed the petition. They really are not aware of the intent of Bill S-213. This is why it is so important, if this is going to go before the public, if we are going to have a debate, that we have witnesses, like the two young ladies who started this bill and the idea, before the committee to give them an opportunity to express their opposition to the bill and where they feel it can be altered, or amended and fixed.

I also believe we need the opportunity to hear from others who are quite concerned about our treatment of animals. They want a good bill. They want to make certain that ranchers, farmers, hunters, trappers and those people who have legitimate animal businesses are protected from arrest for normal practices that deal with animals.

I think of rodeos, which are be big events in my part of the country. Thousands of people participate. It would be a great opportunity at committee to take a close look at the bill and decide what we can do with it in terms of amending it or making it better, if that is possible.

I want to once again commend the people who signed the petition, who got the petition together. It is not often that we table petitions with that many signatures, and I was pleased to do so. However, we need to be very cautious about where we move on this. Whatever we decide could have an impact on a great number of people who deal with animals in one way or another.

Thousands of people in my riding have horses, dogs, pets and anything we can name. Unfortunately, the very few decide that they want to do something really stupid when it comes to the abuse of animals, and I will not tolerate that. I do not think any of us should, but at the same time I do not want to see what I saw with one farmer in my riding. He took a cow that had cancer eye to auction and he was charged by the SPCA. The only reason he took the cow in was to cull it out. Nothing can be done for cancer eye. It is due to normal causes, yet he was fined for abuse to an animal.

That kind of thing happened to my friend, Dave, and the cost to him was very unfortunate. We have to make certain that we look after people who I know love what they do and will do their utmost to look after the care and welfare of their animals.

[Business of Supply, April 19th, 2007]

Destroy the enemy. That's what war is all about.

[Business of Supply, April 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the hon. member, as well as myself and others, had an opportunity to talk to a lot of veterans or people from the military who have been in Afghanistan, who know what is going on and have been on the front lines. There is one person I talk to extensively about it. He spent over a year there. He is a pretty close member of my family.

In 2006 there was a vote in the House that said we would stay in Afghanistan till 2009. The first question I had from some of the people who had been there was, “Whatever makes people in the House of Commons think that by 2009 it would be the time to move out? Whatever put it in their heads that would be the time to leave Afghanistan?”

One person was seriously aggravated, asking if we were saying that we should pull out of Afghanistan at a specific time, that we should give the enemy enough time to survive until then and let them rebuild and become very strong so maybe they could bring the battle to the soil of Canada, to the North American continent. He asked if we did not realize that the Taliban and al-Qaeda were trying to destroy western civilization. He wondered why we were saying there would be an end when we would have to pull back. He said that they would be on our soil and that we would have to defend our people on our land. If that was the case, why were we not going after them?

[Criminal Code, February 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I will cut my speech short today and try to cover a couple of points that I think were missed in the discussion this morning.

First, in response to my Liberal friend who just spoke, we have a history of owners of operations such as puppy mills who pay a $2,000 fine, relocate their operations and continue on with their mills.

There are two things I like about the bill. First, it increases the penalty for those kinds of operations. The second is the prohibition. They are ordered never to engage in that activity again. The ownership of animals should not be any part of their privileges.

The bill has a lot of good things in it that need to be moved forward. Is there room for improvement? Possibly so, but in order to get the improvement, this needs to pass second reading and get to committee. We need to listen to the witnesses and testimonies before committee, and if it can be improved, that is the time to do it.

The NDP would simply reject the bill and say that the status quo is good enough. However, the status quo is not good enough for Canadian people, of whom I am aware. They want to see some serious changes. If we reject Bill S-213, then the status quo will remain in effect for quite some time.

The bills that were previously mentioned would be forever getting to the House. We are operating under a minority government, never knowing when an election is going to be called and whether a bill is going to die. I would like to see this bill passed before any election occurs, and not have it die on the order paper. We have to show society that we are serious about doing something on these issues.

The one major thing we missed in all the speeches is the fact that studies have shown that a high majority of individuals sitting in penitentiaries today because they have violently attacked human beings, young children in particular, have a background of animal abuse prior to their convictions for these kinds of other violent crimes. There seems to be a connection.

If we keep that in mind, maybe we can realize the importance of getting the bill through the House and getting it approved as quickly as possible so we can try our very best to break that connection with increased penalties, more severe punishment and prohibition.

Any individual who mistreats an animal, as in some of the cases of which I have most recently been made aware, should not be allowed to own another animal for the rest of his or her life. We do that for many other kinds of crimes. In particular, I think of guns. If people misuse guns, there is a very good chance they will never own another one. It should be the same thing for pets or other animals.

There is also a myth out there that this will not cover wildlife and stray animals. They are already fully protected in the Criminal Code. However, we need are courts, adjudicators and Crown prosecutors who are willing to push the envelope when these things, these individuals, get to court. We need them to say loudly and clearly that the activities they have engaged in are unacceptable in this society and that they will pay dearly for their crimes.

I listened to the Bloc member who talked about the SPCA taking possession of animals when there was misuse. We have to be very careful. Not too long ago, I reported on a case in my riding of a farmer who took a culled cow to the market. He was charged because the cow had cancer eye. He spent $17,000 of his own money to fight it in court. He could have paid a $1,000 fine and not go to court, but on principle, he took it to court and won the case. Those kinds of incidents have to stop.

Let us get the bill to committee. We have to hear witnesses and have them testify as to what they would like to see in changes and amendments. Then we can move on with what I think is one of the most important issues of this year.

[Criminal Code, February 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the presentation by the hon. member. I would like to ask him one question and get his opinion.

It seems that in the past few years there have been many heinous crimes committed against animals. I am thinking in particular of the growing interest in cockfights. I also understand that now there are scheduled arena events between pit bulls. There are puppy mills. All of that is not to mention the individual convictions that have taken place over a number of years.

Does the member strongly believe that what it is going to take to shut down certain operations of that nature is more severe penalties?

[Petitions, February 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to present four petitions which all deal with the same subject matter.

This petition was spearheaded by Tamara Chaney from Didsbury, Alberta and it contains 111,896 signatures from all across Canada, but predominantly from my riding of Wild Rose.

The petitioners urge Parliament to update our current laws with regard to animal welfare, in other words, toughen up our current animal cruelty laws, and that it be known as the Daisy Duke bill in memory of a pup killed in my riding.