Ted White

[Committee Of The Whole, October 28th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, today's debate arose from a situation the government created. It was the straw that broke the camel's back when the government failed to give the customary 48 hours notice of the motion it brought forward regarding the junior chair. If the government had not done that today, we would probably not have had this opportunity to talk about the broken promise that we have on the other side.

I would reiterate that this is definitely not an attack on the member for Kingston and the Islands, although by his own admission in this House he does not read the bills. Perhaps if he were the Speaker it would be an opportunity for him to read the bills, to follow every debate in great detail and to assist us with his knowledge of the rules.

If it had not been for the fact that the government had failed to keep a promise and then exacerbated the situation by not giving 48 hours notice, we would not be discussing this situation today.

The plain fact is it is a real mystery to the majority of Canadians why this government continually supports or seems to act in ways that support the official opposition instead of recognizing the contribution that is made by the Reform Party of Canada which represents a greater number of provinces and a greater number of interests across the country. There is a good case to be made for having a member from the Reform Party as one of the deputy speakers. It would be a good idea to put it to a vote in this House.

I know it is not the motion before us, but support seems to be gathering as we go through this debate today to have an election as we did for the Speaker. Because it was done by a secret ballot, whoever was elected through that process would have no idea who cast the ballots that elected him or her and it would be guaranteed to be impartial. Because of that, he or she would rely upon a good relationship with the members in this House to retain that position in to the future. I strongly support the idea of an election and I hope we will move to that, if not in the short term, certainly in the long term.

I refer to the report "Reviving Parliamentary Democracy: The Liberal Plan for House of Commons and Electoral Reform". In fact, the member for Kingston and the Islands was one of the authors of the report. I have it here and I know I cannot use props so I cannot hold it up. I quote from a passage on page 9 which is headed "The Independence of the Chair":

1. In order to enhance the independence of the Chair and in an effort to reduce the level of partisanship, when the Speaker is from the government party, two of the junior Chair officers should be from the opposition, so that the four presiding officer positions are shared equally by government and opposition.

That position is actually supported by the member for Kingston and the Islands.

It is a shame that this government has not put itself in the position of keeping this promise. It is very disturbing and if the government had not irritated us by failing to keep this promise, we would not be in this debate today.

Perhaps in the long run it will turn out for the best because it has brought attention to the issue. The government side has been unable to put up any speakers to counter the arguments. It has been incapable of defending its position and it has now done the disgusting thing of moving notice of closure on this discussion. The government is going to close us down so that we cannot have a decent debate on the issue. Frankly, the government members do not want to discuss it.

We have heard about the terrible reputation of the Mulroney government in moving closure and closing down debate in this place. This government that talked about more free votes, talked about appointing junior chairs from the opposition, has moved

closure four times as often as the Mulroney government. It is striking out for new records in that respect.

The Prime Minister loves to claim during question period that he is only adhering to the well established traditions of parliamentary democracy. Maybe he has not bothered to take a look at what is happening in other parliamentary democracies in the 30 years he has been here. He is still working under the same rules he learned 30 years ago.

If he had bothered to take a little look when he was on one of his trips to the U.K., he would have noticed that it is quite common in the mother of Parliaments for members to vote with members on the opposite side. It happens a couple of hundred times a year. There are no penalties for that. People do not get tossed out of caucus. It is one of those things that has developed as Parliament matured.

Unfortunately the Canadian Parliament is mired in the old ways of doing things. It has not caught up with the information age. It really is one of the most backward institutions in the world today.

As many members know, I am from New Zealand and there have been dramatic changes there in the parliamentary system. It would not be faced with a debate about filling junior chair positions from the opposition benches. In New Zealand the government introduced the initiative and referendum. It has a mixed member proportional system of electing members and it has really shown creativity in adapting the parliamentary system to the information age.

Meanwhile, here in Canada we remain mired in the ways of the past, in what the Prime Minister likes to call tradition. "More free votes" he said. I guess if we had one he could say that he had fulfilled his promise of more free votes. I do not think that is what the Canadian people thought he meant by more free votes. Certainly it has been a major disappointment.

I write a weekly column for a newspaper in my riding, the North Shore News . I had already put together the material for next week's report. It is just by pure coincidence that it dealt with promises that had been made by this government. It is very appropriate that I raise it today.

The promise that has been broken today by refusing to allow the appointment of a junior chair from the opposition benches is just one of a long list of broken promises. My colleague for Kootenay East actually put together a list of the top 10 broken promises. I think it is probably appropriate that there be some exposure of those right here in this Chamber.

Obviously number one on the top of the list would be the jobs, jobs, jobs promise which is in chapter 1 of the red book. Instead of jobs, jobs, jobs we are stuck with 1.4 million unemployed, 500,000 Canadians looking for work, youth unemployment at 18 per cent or higher, and polls showing one in four Canadians to be worried about the security of their jobs.

Second on the list from the member for Kootenay East is preserving and protecting medicare. We have already heard some discussion in the debate today about the tremendous cutbacks there have been in the transfers in support of medicare across the country. Meanwhile, members of the government stride around the country saying what a wonderful job they have done, paying lip service to the protection of medicare while they busily cut the funding, creating longer wait lists, probably creating the possibility that people die while on those waiting lists.

If we look at the figures, by the 1998-99 fiscal year the present government will have cut $7 billion from social transfers to the provinces, completely contradictory to the promises made on page 74 of the red book.

It is just like the promise made about appointing deputy or junior chairs-broken promises. As much as the Liberals try to say they have kept their promises, even the ones we can kind of give them some credit for keeping, are only kept in a sort of halfway manner.

When they talk about keeping their promises on the debt and deficit, if we really look deeply we would find that they have cut the heart out of some programs in order to give the appearance of making progress, while at the same time increasing our total debt by almost $100 billion in three years.

[Committee Of The Whole, October 28th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I wanted to double check with the member for Swift Current-Maple Creek-Assiniboia to make certain that he agrees this debate is not about the qualifications or the standing of the member for Kingston and the Islands. This debate is not about his ability to fill the chair in place of the Speaker. We all know he is a very decent chap.

During the summertime, he took a ride on the Rocky Mountaineer Railway on the west coast from Vancouver to Kamloops and beyond. He probably thinks he understands the west now as a result of that trip. We all know he is a very decent chap. He gives wonderfully enthralling speeches here in the House. We really do like him.

I would like the member to actually confirm that this is not an attack on that member but that this is really a strike-out for the fulfilment of a promise made by the government and a strike-out for democracy.

[Committee Of The Whole, October 28th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to the member's speech. I heard him mention the sort of related topic of when the budget is balanced the promise that Reform had made to restore funding that the Liberal government has cut for medical programs, medicare. I know that is a major concern to Canadians. It is slightly related to what we are talking about today. I would really like to get a clarification on that from the member. It is something important that Canadians want to hear.

I know they are disappointed and upset with the long waiting lists in medical centres today. It is very difficult to get an operation. I have a friend who waited about 18 months for an operation. This all stems from a failure to keep a promise to protect an industry that is very important to Canadians, just as is the failure to keep this promise today regarding the junior chairs.

I ask the member if he could expand a little on this aspect of restoring faith in a system that has been destroyed by broken promises from the other side.

[Canada Elections Act, October 28th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, that is North Vancouver. My constituents get quite upset when they hear it come out the wrong way.

This bill does attempt to address the irritation felt by western voters when they learn from the Ontario and Quebec results which party will form the new government. In that respect I guess C-307 has a lot of appeal.

Of course, irritation when the election results come out is really only a small part of the overall irritation felt in the west in connection with what happens here in Ottawa, or what is run from Ottawa, symptomatic of terrible things to come starting with election night.

Election night is the night when Canadians gather together in front of the television in order to watch the results to see what party will be the next government. Frankly, it is extremely frustrating to be in front of the television, to have the end of the media

blackout and see the 7 p.m. results being announced from Ontario naming the next government barely before our polls even close.

In any case, political junkies, if we can call them that, all have friends in Ontario, Quebec and further east and by about five o'clock B.C. time they are busy calling their friends to find out the first results. Quite often in B.C., if we are honest about it, we really do know what is happening before the media blackout comes off.

Whether or not this spreading of the message by word of month has an effect on the voting patterns is impossible to tell. Obviously we cannot rerun an election to test it under different conditions. Therefore it is impossible to tell whether changing voting hours or some leakage of results have any impact whatsoever.

The remedies proposed in Bill C-307 do go some way forward in dealing with the problem of western voter frustration of the release of election results. However, like all of the other proposals suggested over the last few years, Bill C-307 is not really the perfect answer. For example, although some eastern Canadian results will still be available prior to the closing of the polls in B.C. the rest will be delayed. This leads me to the conclusion that one form of frustration presently felt in the west will simply be transformed into a different form of frustration for eastern voters who will now have to wait up until quite late to begin seeing the meaningful results.

Perhaps it would be easier to critique this bill indirectly by referring to the various solutions that have been suggested over the years by past commissions and study groups. These are not in any particular order but I will number them just for reference. The first suggestion is that all of the polls across Canada open at the same local time of, say, 8 a.m. and close at the same local time of 7 p.m., with the counting of the votes deferred until all the polls are closed.

The problems identified with that sort of solution are that the scrutineers, the returning officers and their staff would probably have to remain in a lock-up for several hours, particularly in eastern Canada, in order to wait for the polls to close everywhere before they could begin counting and releasing the votes. It could possibly be in the wee small hours of the next morning in eastern Canada before that could happen. The average voters in those areas would probably start to complain that they could not wait up so late and would not find out who the government was until they got up in the morning. That would be a legitimate complaint with that suggestion.

The second suggestion uses the same opening and closing hours as the first, but with all of the vote counting deferred until the beginning of the next day in the west. Counting would then take place and the results would be released simultaneously all across the country.

The problem with that is that one has to ask whether the scrutineers and other staff would have to be retained in a lock-up

overnight. Would the ballot boxes have to be removed to somewhere secure in order to make sure there was no ballot tampering before the next day? Either way, this method would probably cause major disruption to commerce throughout the country for the next day because all the those people who are trying to watch the results or who are working within the system to count votes or deal with the other aspects of the election would not be at work. Frankly, it would appear to be a major disruption.

The third suggestion proposes staggered hours across the country so that the polls open and close simultaneously. That is similar to what was proposed in Bill C-307. Frankly, we do not know whether the convenience factor of the polls being opened at certain hours encourages or discourages people from voting. We are well aware that there is legislation requiring employers to give employees time to go and vote but in practice we all know that a lot of people wait until after work. For example, in B.C. they do not go to the polls until 5.30 p.m., 6 p.m. or 7 p.m.

In addition, on the problems mentioned earlier regarding that it would probably then be the wee small hours before eastern Canadians would know the results, it would just transfer the frustration from the west coast to the east coast and so it is not really a solution.

The 1991 royal commission on electoral reform and the 1993 special committee on electoral reform both recommended staggered opening and closing hours at the polls as the best way to address the issue. I am sure they spent a bundle of money coming to their conclusions.

It is almost a shame we are not discussing royal commissions and special committees today because we could probably get in some good shots about the amount of taxpayer money wasted on some of these projects. More often they appear to be simply a way of postponing decisions rather than actually finding sensible solutions.

In addition to the taxpayer funded political commissions that have worked on this in the past, the Chief Electoral Officer has also proposed a solution. That solution would involve the bridging of time zone differences by combining modified staggered polling hours, which sounds complicated but is not too complicated, with special provisions for the counting and deferral of the release of results after closing of the polls. I sense from the speech made by the member for Vancouver East that these solutions could be amendments to this bill.

Under this system, the results from eastern Canada would still be available prior to the close of the polls in B.C. but only by about half an hour. It would involve about 36 seats and would not have a

major impact on the results, and so it is probably not a bad compromise.

There would be a significant alleviation of the time zone effect, with the results in eastern Canada still being available right before 11 p.m.

I support this bill's going to committee following today's debate. It appears to be a non-partisan issue. We are all prepared to talk about it to see if we can find meaningful ways to make this legislation work, which I certainly support.

However, I would like to bring one point forward. It is a very large unanswered question which we did not have to deal with in the past. I will illustrate with an example. On October 12 an election was held in New Zealand. The official results were released poll by poll on the Internet. Anybody could dial up from anywhere in the world to see them, as I did.

I discovered that along with the official results, some unofficial results were being posted presumably by the various riding associations. This will become a major problem-if we call it a problem-in the future. All the media blackouts in the world will not mean a thing if various riding associations, unofficial or not, can just put results on the Internet. There is the potential for hoax results to be put on the Internet in an attempt to affect election results.

That is an issue we will have to deal with eventually. It may well be that the only way we can deal with that is to simply not release any results until a set time. I am not presupposing what the answer would be but I suggest the issue should be looked at in committee.

One way of reducing the effects of counting delays, which would allow for closing of polls more closely together, would be to encourage the use of electronic voting methods. I will be introducing a private member's bill to the House on Wednesday regarding initiative and referendum. There is a provision in that bill to permit electronic voting methods to be used.

For example, touch tone technology is well researched now and has been proven to work. One way we could reduce the counting time is with instant tallies done electronically. I hope the government side will recognize the inevitably of having to move with technology by moving toward those solutions in the long run.

In the long run new technology may actually come to the rescue. It may help us to overcome this problem. Just as one portion of technology is interfering with our ability to block results, another set of technology may help us to overcome the problems.

Although many different proposals have been put forward over the years, like those identified in Bill C-307, none of them has been perfect and none of them has been adopted. Bill C-307 also suffers from the problem of not being perfect but we could hardly expect it to be perfect considering all the problems involved in getting it to work.

On balance, it is probably the best opportunity we will have during this Parliament to at least go part way in addressing the existing concerns. For that reason I am supportive and I would urge other members to support this bill's going to committee before second reading.

The issue crosses partisan lines. There is every reason to believe we can work together to put it into an enactable form. I urge members to support the bill.

[Question Passed As Order For Return, October 22nd, 1996]

What was the total number of full time employees at each job classification in the respective federal departments for fiscal year 1995?

(Return tabled.)

[Questions Passed As Orders For Returns, October 21st, 1996]

With respect to the Squamish Indian Band in North Vancouver, what has the Federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development determined to be ( a ) the total number of Band members living on the Reserve, ( b ) the total amount of funding provided to the Band in each of the years from 1990 through 1995 from all federal govermnent sources including, but not limited to, transfers and grants for any purpose, government leases of land from the Band, housing costs, education and training, special purpose funding, and ( c ) income from the Park Royal South Shopping Centre lease collected on behalf of the Band?

Return tabled.

[Criminal Code, October 4th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, in case the hon. member has not noticed I do talk funny and that is because I come from New Zealand. I am an immigrant myself and so I think I am in a very good position to comment about immigration.

I know what it is like to work to come to Canada. It took my wife and me two years to get permission to come here. We had to apply three times. We had good backgrounds, no criminal records, we had money to bring here to purchase a house and we had jobs to come to as well. So I do not think there is anything wrong with setting a high standard.

I am also not going to apologize for saying it like it is. I have never said in this House, though, that all immigrants or all refugees are criminals. They are not, but if we do not recognize there is a problem we will reap what we sow.

I remind the hon. member that three years ago when Reformers in the Vancouver area were saying that there was a problem with astronaut families who were not paying taxes and were leaving their families here, we were called racists. Today the member for Richmond admits there is a problem with astronaut families.

If the hon. member would like to get the Vancouver papers for the last week she will see it is a major problem that affects real estate agents, accountants and the entire community because we did not talk about it and deal with it when it was a problem at the beginning.

There is a lesson to be learned from all that. We had better start talking in this House about the things that they do not want to talk about over there or things will get worse and worse. They are afraid to talk about them. They hold themselves up behind the flag and claim all sorts of compassion and tolerance, but they should stand aside a little from that ideology for a moment and just look at what is really happening out there.

Nobody is opposed to a good immigration policy for Canada but let us set some decent standards for God's sake. Let us make it so that a person entering this country feels like they want to be Canadian instead of feeling like they want to rip off Canadians, because that is what some of these people do.

The member should go to Pearson airport, as my colleague from Wild Rose has done, to see the plane loads arriving everyday where bogus refugee claimants come through, 100 a day. The immigration people are forced to let them free on their own recognisance if someone is there to meet them. Mr. Speaker, have you ever heard of a refugee who had someone to meet them at the airport?

The trouble is they will not look at the facts. They stand there accusing us of all sorts of things, but if they would just look at the facts they would see there are major problems to deal with. I actually think the move on Bill C-55 is an indication that they are finally starting to get the message. They know the Canadian people want to get tough on crime.

[Criminal Code, October 4th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to talk a little about Bill C-55 today.

When I was on my feet about two days ago speaking on Bill C-45, I was talking about the member for Kingston and the Islands who was very worried about how he gets hoodwinked by the bills in this place. I think he will be hoodwinked again by this one. He has said publicly that he does not read all the bills but he really should read this one.

I think he is about to be hoodwinked not in the way the Canadian people are going to be hoodwinked by this, thinking that it is actually a good bill. He is going to be hoodwinked because he thinks we are getting too tough on criminals. He actually voted against Bill C-45 because he was worried we were getting too tough. It absolutely amazes me. It may be very disappointing for him that the Reform Party is having such an effect on the government side of the House that we are beginning to make some progress in the area of justice reforms.

Getting tough on criminals works. I know the member for Kingston and the Islands feels he gets hoodwinked by these things but getting tough on criminals really does work.

I used some statistics the other day which are worth repeating in connection with this bill. It reinforces the idea that if we get tough on these people they stop using the system. That is a very good argument also why we should not have this six-month window which is built into this bill for determining whether or not someone is a dangerous offender.

They are going to use that. They are going to use the system. They study the law books while they are locked up in the clink. They are going to look at the law books and say that they only have to be good for the six-month period and then all hell breaks loose but it is okay, because they got past that dangerous offender window.

I would like to present some statistics that support the view that getting tough on crime works very well. In 1989 the bureau for justice statistics issued some estimates of how many crimes were prevented in the United States while criminals were locked up rather than walking on the streets. This was studied between 1973 and 1989, a 16-year period which is an extensive study.

Analyst Patrick Langan of the bureau for justice statistics said that between 1973 and 1989 locking criminals up instead of allowing them to go free cut the number of rapes by 66,000, robberies by 323,000, assaults by 380,000, and burglaries by 3.3 million. The conclusion of the report was that imprisonment clearly contributes to major cuts in the number and cost of violent crimes. That does not take into account the physical cost in injury and the monetary cost that comes from having had these people out destroying people's property.

In 1995 another study was done at Princeton. Criminologists John DiIulio and Anne Morrison Piehl wrote a report. They estimated the actual cost savings to society when felons were locked in prison as opposed to walking the streets. They studied 100 convicted felons who offended at the median rate, that is, some of them reoffended when they were let out and some of them did not. They found that the average cost to society for a felon who was released was $4.6 million but the average cost of keeping them locked up was $2.5 million. It was half the cost to society in

monetary terms to keep these people locked up. As I mentioned earlier, that does not even take into account all the physical damage that is done which really destroys people's lives.

There is an additional study which was published on August 29, 1995 in the Investors' Business Daily . There was a full page of justice information headed: ``Does crime pay? Not if criminals do hard time''. Mr. Barnes wrote that in 1994, University of Arizona economist Michael Block and researcher Steven Twist compared crime victimization rates with imprisonment rates from 1960 to 1992. That is a 32-year study. They found that the 10 states which had the highest imprisonment rates experienced an 8 per cent drop in violent crime over the period, while the 10 states with the lowest imprisonment rates saw their violent crime rates jump by 51 per cent over the same period.

How much proof do we need to see that keeping these bad guys locked up actually saves damage, saves costs and it really helps society? Surely those on the other side of the House who are always arguing for women's rights, for rights for the less fortunate in society, should be interested in those statistics which indicated that 66,000 rapes and 323,000 assaults were prevented by having people locked up.

I do not have any statistics for Canada but it stands to reason that we could transpose them at least at a 10 per cent level. We would see the enormous amount of money, the enormous amount of physical damage, the enormous amount of suffering we would be saving if we had a get tough approach to crime.

As my colleagues have said, there are provisions in this bill that are a good step forward. We are very proud in the Reform Party that we have been able to push the justice minister this far. I really do wish that the bill also dealt with habitual repeat offenders who are only using our justice system for their own ends. I will give a couple of examples of the sorts of things I mean.

The headline of an article in yesterday's Vancouver Sun reads: Drug trafficker allowed to remain in Canada''. The piece reads:The federal court has stayed a deportation order for an Iranian convicted of cocaine trafficking and assault. The order for Abdul Nasser Taher Azar was put on hold Tuesday pending the outcome of further legal proceedings in his case. Taher Azar is fighting deportation claiming he could face a death sentence if sent back to Iran''.

I probably have the largest Iranian community in the whole of Canada in my riding. The first words that come out of the mouths of refugee claimants, usually bogus, who call my office for assistance are: "I'll be killed if I get sent back to Iran". It is the very first sentence.

So this guy claimed he would be killed if he were sent back to Iran. Immigration authorities consider him a risk to Canadian society. What happened? The federal court let him stay here.

He has a wife and three children who live in Victoria. He said that he has changed his habits and will become a productive member of Canadian society. I cannot say how many times I have heard that nonsense. It is absolute nonsense.

I could stand here the whole afternoon and give case after case in my riding of these people who use the system because they know how it works. They come in as bogus refugees, get married all of a sudden and have children. We know what that does. Then they can separate and spend years in court tying it up over custody battles while we pay them welfare to stay here and they keep saying that they are going to be killed if they get shipped out.

Then what happens at the end of it? Two people in my riding went back to Iran of their own accord after arguing for four years that they would be killed. It is the most ridiculous nonsense and it goes on and on in cases like this.

These are habitual repeat offenders, not dangerous offenders as dealt with in this bill. But I wish we had something in the bill to deal with the type of person who is really just using our system.

I have a case in my riding right now that is typical of this, which I have been trying to get the immigration minister to act on. This person first came to Canada in the late 1970s, in the days when we actually had teeth in some of our laws, when we treated criminals like criminals. Very quickly it was discovered that he was a criminal. So he was deported.

They actually deported people back then, but not today. We have 1,300 people in Vancouver alone awaiting deportation, 906 of whom are from mainland China.

So what did he do? The first chance he got after he was deported to Iran he raced over to Paris. Tell me how he could afford that when he claimed he had no money. A couple of years later he went to the Canadian embassy and applied again. Did he tell the officials that he had been previously deported from Canada? Not a chance. The next minute he was back here.

About four years went by and the police were tailing him because he was forging passports so that other criminal friends of his could come in from Iran. I got a call in my office from a lady in the community who said: "Everybody in Iran knew he was criminal. Why did you let him in?"

I contacted the police and discovered they were investigating him for passport fraud. They picked him up for passport forgery on the day he was sworn in as a Canadian citizen. The interesting part of this story is that he had sent someone else to stand in for him at

the swearing in ceremony. So it was not actually him who was sworn in. He only went to watch. It is amazing what these people do.

His case for the passport forgery was dragged out and went on for a year and a half before the judge finally sentenced him to three months at home on probation. I would think that passport forgery goes to the very heart of our being as Canadians. He helps criminals come here and what does he get? Three months at home. That is where he did his business. It was a home based business. He did not pay any taxes or GST and here he was working at home.

Then finally he was under another deportation order, so he appealed, if members can believe it, under the charter of rights. In the 1970s when he was first deported he did not have an interpreter present and therefore his human rights were infringed on.

Now that case is tied up in the courts. The first hearing is next March. I am willing to bet he will be here for another eight years before we finally get rid of him. And the time we are paying him welfare and he is driving brand new cars. Now how does he buy those on welfare? I would like a little investigation into the source of his income.

These are typical of the sorts of things that happen under our weak kneed, bleeding heart government. It will not see the problems. It continues on and on about the terrible childhood these people have had and that there is really no bad in the world at all. The only bad in the world is that we actually lock some people up occasionally. We really should not lock them up at all. We should just let them walk around, take them to counselling occasionally and they will completely mend their ways. And put a bracelet on them, as my colleague says.

I have been digressing a little from Bill C-55, but I think members get the point. This expands out to being more than just Bill C-55. It is an entire rot that goes right through the system.

One thing I did today in the House was to introduce during routine proceedings a new private member's bill which I hope eventually will be drawn from the barrel. We know it is a bit of lottery. There is a bit of a move afoot now to actually get some of these private members' bills votable. It would be wonderful if they all were. My submission to the commission, incidentally, is that all of these bills should be votable. I would like my bill to be votable because it deals with this very problem. If passed by the House it would actually allow provincial judges to deport criminals in lieu of sentence so that we could get rid of them right away. As soon as these bogus refugees commit a crime, let us get them right out of the country.

I know the minister of immigration has argued they really should serve their time here so it will be in Canada. However, that is just a crock. What happens is that they get out on parole and parole is considered to be part of the sentence. They are wandering around free in society and the immigration people cannot deport them.

The first thing they do when they are coming near the end of their parole and the immigration people are standing behind them with the bracelets ready to go is just grab a brick and toss it through the nearest jeweller's window or hit somebody in the mouth and that starts the case all over again. They can go back to jail for another little while and another probation.

I could give literally dozens of examples from my riding alone. When we think that there are 1,300 just in the Vancouver area, we do not have to work too hard to see how many there are in each riding. When we also work out that certain groups tend to use the system a little more, it does not take long to work out how bad the problem really is.

They are probably all asking for a free flag. It would not surprise me a bit if the thousand free flags in the Fraser Valley East riding were all ordered by these people so they can walk around waving them as if they were Canadians.

The only thing that bothered me during question period today was when the Deputy Prime Minister stood up and said that the member for Fraser Valley East had used taxpayer money to fax for some free flags. It is a shame he did not take a $10 bill out of his pocket and say: "Mr. Speaker, I will pay for the faxes if she will pay for the flags". That would have been justice.

I digress again, but it really is related to this whole problem of the justice issues in Canada. I think I will wind up here because I would like my colleagues to have an opportunity to also speak to this. However, I do want to mention a few kind words to members on the other side because I know they do not like to be spoken to harshly.

There are indeed some good provisions in this bill. They do not go quite far enough. I do not think we are going to stall the passage of the bill. We will work with the government, hopefully to try to improve it a little. I hope the people on the other side of the House, who cannot deny the phone calls and letters they have been getting from their constituents on a get tougher approach to crime, will get behind a few amendments to this bill to tighten it up a little.

[Petitions, October 4th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to present a petition on behalf of Mr. Bob Hackett and 32 other residents of North Vancouver who point out that currently Canadian law does not prohibit convicted criminals from profiting financially by writing books, setting up 1-900 numbers, producing videos and so on.

The petitioners ask that Parliament enact Bill C-205, introduced by the hon. member for Scarborough West, at the earliest opportunity, to provide in Canadian law that no criminal profits from committing a crime.

[Immigration Act, October 4th, 1996]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-333, an act to amend the Immigration Act and the Criminal Code (refugee or immigrant applicants convicted of an offence on indictment).

Mr. Speaker, this is a very important bill which was developed with the assistance of a Liberal supporting lawyer in my riding. If passed and accepted by this government, it would give the power to provincial judges to deport criminal refugees in lieu of sentence.

It is supported by some crown prosecutors in the Vancouver area. I think it is a great bill and I look forward to debating it in the House.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)