House of Commons photoWon her last election, in 2006, with 46% of the vote.
National Security Committee of Parliamentarians Act May 18th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions and I believe if you seek it you would find unanimous consent for the following motion, “That this House officially apologize for the injustice of the 1914 Komagata Maru incident, and that this House further call on the Government of Canada to honour this apology by creating a permanent memorial in British Columbia to remember this incident”.
Criminal Code May 17th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, I am not sure if I totally understand the question. I think that a murder committed with a handgun or any firearm is a heinous crime. I think it is somewhat less likely that people are carrying long guns as they are going about the kind of criminal activity that I see in my community, but obviously any murder is serious and any murder committed with a gun is serious.
Criminal Code May 17th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, I would be pleased to do that. There are many pieces to this, but it goes back in part to the fact that appropriate supports need to be in place much earlier. I know that the member is very familiar with this and he knows this. Those kinds of appropriate supports for people with FASD, FASE and autism need to be in place much earlier.
I am still waiting for the autism strategy from the government and I am still waiting for a FASD strategy from the government, but surely we do not wait until those folks find themselves in a position of having picked up a gun. That is where those prevention programs are so critical.
That is why without those prevention programs this will not be a successful initiative. We must have those in place.
It does not mean that I will not support this bill, but I am very vocal in saying that we need those supports in place early on. We should never even find ourselves in the position of having someone with a severe mental disability, or with FASD or any of the other disabilities we could name, in front of a judge, with the judge having to think about sentencing for somebody who indeed may not be able to reason that out.
Criminal Code May 17th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, as probably many members in this House do, I see a variety of people who have been affected by gun crime. I must admit that I also talk to parents who, for a variety of reasons, have not even recognized that their sons or daughters are moving into that area. It is not a matter of blame. That is not a lack of caring or love or appreciation of their children. Sometimes it is simply circumstances. They cannot be with their children or their teenagers on a continual basis, as none of us can, of course, in order to always be aware of what is happening.
I have talked with those parents who blame themselves. They wonder where they have gone wrong. They wonder what they can do to help other parents so that other young people do not find themselves in the position of actually being the perpetrator.
For the most part, the people I see who are victims of gun crimes are younger people. I have talked with the parents of a young person who is in a wheelchair. He is quadriplegic and therefore will require full-day assistance, for the most part, for probably the remainder of his life. It was a random shooting. He was not even involved in what was going on. He just happened to be present somewhere.
As well, I have talked with those people whose family members have been, very deliberately, victims of gun crime. They have been murdered. Those parents and those families as well look to what could be done differently. They want to know that there is an appropriate sentencing mechanism that appropriately reflects the severity of the crime.
Nobody has said to me, “Put somebody away forever”. But people do want to know and the parents I talk with want to know that this life that was lost or the critical injury sustained is not simply something to be brushed aside, with no mark or legacy left other than in the hearts and minds of that family. They worry very much about that.
Those are some of the victims that I have talked to. By the way, I do not have a chance to do this very often, and I am very glad I do not, but as well I talk with the victims who are police officers. Every day in our communities, RCMP or local police go out. They respond to a call and we know that certain calls are more likely to be dangerous. They actually have been victims of a shooting. Sometimes it is because there was not enough staff. Sometimes they did not know that there was a gun there. There is a variety of reasons.
However, I have talked to law enforcement people. We are telling people to please enter law enforcement because we need more people and we need them to be more diverse, including women, so that our police forces reflect our community. These police need to feel that they are backed up by the community, by the public and by the system.
These are some of the victims who have done me the honour of sharing with me or disclosing their experiences to me.
Criminal Code May 17th, 2007
My colleague said that I would remember. I am absolutely certain that I would remember and perhaps many things that were the opposite of that.
However, as I talked to the parents of a young teenager who was shot, is in hospital critically injured and no one knows what the outcome will be, they do not think this is a draconian measure.
There are some things I would say about it that I find interesting, some things we should do and some things we should acknowledge about the public. What does the public see and feel? There is a difference between what the public sees and what it feels. There is a difference between being safe in our community and feeling safe in our community. They are two quite different things.
I have read the statistics that homicides may not be up. Well, homicides actually are up in some of the groupings of people I am talking about, but the incidents of gun crimes are certainly up. People read about gun crimes in the newspaper about where, in a perfectly ordinary kind of community, a bullet suddenly comes through the living room window and lodges in the living room wall or a bullet comes through a bedroom window and lodges just above the crib of a child. That is random. This is not gang violence. The people in those houses were not even the intended victims. Those were random shootings at the wrong houses, and that is not all that unusual. Those people actually are unsafe.
However, people also need to feel safe and therefore they need to see their governments, municipal, provincial and federal, doing something so they will feel safe in their communities. The member who just spoke actually talked about this.
In the last 13 years, 40 to 45 mandatory minimum sentences were created by the Liberal government so I do not think this is somehow a great step off the path the Liberals followed, which was, as I say, 45 more mandatory minimum sentences in the length of time the Liberals were in government.
I also heard earlier today from a number of parties about sloganeering, about people changing their minds because they were influenced by politics and not by what they believe.
Since I entered politics, I have been very clear on what I believe about crime. I talked about mandatory minimums in the last campaign, as did our leader, because we understand the devastating effect it has on our communities. This is not sloganeering and it is not pandering, and to suggest that we are sloganeering to a parent who is crying because of the loss of a family member is actually quite shameful.
We hear a lot about the conclusions that have been drawn in the United States about whether mandatory minimums work. As I said, some of the amendments we put forward at committee were accepted and now some of those mandatory minimums are not what they were when they were first proposed. Our justice critic worked very hard to get these amendments through and agreed to.
However, I think in the United States, it is missing a piece that I actually think the Conservative Party opposite is missing as well in some ways, because in any of the literature I have read which has concluded that it does not work, it has used the single-pronged approach, which is simply raising the mandatory minimums, sending people off to jail and then going back and saying that our prisons are about to explode and that they are hot spots.
I can understand how many prisons in the United States would be hot spots because many of them are quite appalling, but we cannot solve a problem with one single prong. Work still needs to be done in that area and I look forward to the government bringing forward what I would hope would be the second part of what needs to happen here.
People often say that mandatory minimums do not work and that there is no history of them working at all but that is not true. I want to take people back to when drunk driving became a much more top of mind issue in our country and to the early work by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The flaw in the United States' studies and what the Conservative government still needs to do is to look into other things that we need to do to ensure this becomes successful.
I will use the drunk driving issue as an example. Yes, after a certain number of offences there is a mandatory minimum jail time, and people knew that, but that was not all they did. They increased the police resources to deal with drunk driving. In my province we called them BAT mobiles. I do not know what they were called in other places, but police set up to stop cars to see if the drivers had been drinking alcohol while driving. Many of those have been discontinued because the police do not have the additional resources to keep doing that.
It takes intensives awareness and education, not just doing it once in grade six or grade 10, but continuous awareness all though school about the seriousness of it and the consequences of it.
Often when I talk to 16, 17 or 18 year olds they know people in gangs who are using guns. Many of them have heard of a mom, a dad or a grandma and sometimes it is themselves who have been left quadriplegic and in a wheelchair as a result of either a deliberate or a random shooting, and when they tell their stories I can see people starting to think differently about the consequences.
We need to continue to inform and educate people but somehow we think that if we inform one group of people our work is done. Well, it is not. It does not matter whether we are talking about racism or something else, we must do it continuously. It is like putting a pamphlet on the dangers of alcohol in a doctor's office. If we do not keep putting them there for more people to read then we are not finished doing our jobs.
The job we have in front of us today is a continuous job. This is not just about passing the legislation. This is a continuous piece of work that involves additional police resources, intensive education and, yes, jail time when necessary. However, I would say, as others have, that this is not a blanket answer, which is why I talked about the other things that were not done in most of the U.S. jurisdictions, where they came to the conclusion that it did not work, and that have yet to come forward from the government.
I wait with baited breath to see those initiatives come forward because this is not a blanket answer. It is something that should be used sparingly, appropriately and in a focused fashion.
I will now move on to the part that is critical to all of this. We often wait until somebody gets involved with a gang before we begin worrying and trying to figure out how to get them out of the gang, which, by the way, is using guns. Our leader has talked about things like safe houses because it is very hard for a gang member to get out of the gang safely and to ensure his or her family is safe.
Let us look at the new baby that comes home wrapped in a blue or pink blanket. I unwrapped the blanket when I brought mine home and there were no instructions. By simply bringing the baby home did not automatically mean that I knew how to parent. It did not mean that I knew how to do all of those things to ensure that my youngster, in the zero to five years, would have the kind of support, education, choices, boundaries and all of those things that we do so that when children start school at five or six they are ready in all of the five areas that they are supposed to be ready in.
From the longitudinal research on this, we know that those children are far less likely to ever be involved in the criminal system. That is the work that is not here. That is the work that is missing. If that work does not come into place then we will have a problem having this be successful. We need to put into place good child care programs, which we had but which the government slashed, to teach parents how to parent.
I do not assume that just giving birth makes one a good parent. Those programs have been cut by the provincial government in my province. The provincial government's child care was cut so it just downloaded it and cut the programs that support parents, those parents who are either in the workforce or parents who are parenting at home, who have no place to go for expert advice and resources on just about all those challenges that any of us face as a mom or dad in raising children. Without that, and without those kinds of additional multi-prong initiatives, this has far less chance of being successful.
However, I can support the bill because: first, I understand that our amendments are there; second, I know what people in my community have been telling me for a long time; and third, because I do have hope that the government will bring forward other initiatives to support this.
There is no such thing as a single piece of legislation that is narrow and does not have other issues to support it--
Criminal Code May 17th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, the debate I have heard today is an interesting one. We are involved in a very serious and complex discussion.
The New Democratic Party is supporting the bill, with the amendments that our justice critic, the member for Windsor—Tecumseh, brought forward.
I realize the Liberals and the Bloc are not supporting it. I heard an earlier comment by the member of the government that it must mean the people approve of criminals. In fairness, I do not think anyone who sits in the House approves of criminals, whether they support the legislation or not. It is not a matter of supporting criminals. However, I do think it is a matter of how we approach it.
First, I have asked myself some questions. How do I, as the member for Surrey North and as a member of the House of Commons, ensure that the public can have faith in our justice system? I can assure the House that much of the public with whom I speak do not have faith in the justice system. These people have not necessarily found that because someone comes before a judge on a firearms offence, that they are not released on bail. We would have many examples where this was not the case.
Second, we have to look at what is the appropriate use of this legislation on crimes committed with a gun. In all the debate this morning, if people were sitting at home listening, they would fail to recognize that we are not talking about a general discussion on mandatory minimums. It is a discussion about crimes committed with a firearm. By the way, firearms today are much more technical, much more deadly and much more powerful than the image people might have of firearms that may come from a different place.
Third, I have to ask myself is what are we doing, other than the sentencing, to reduce gun crime. I have heard many people say either one is tough on crime or soft on crime, depending on where one stands on the bill. I do not think that is the case at all. We talk very much about being smart on crime. It is not hard or soft on crime. It is being smart in the way we approach crime.
Think about this. When someone picks up a gun to commit a crime, they automatically know there is a risk of someone being killed or critically injured. There is not a question in anyone's mind that this is what a gun will do, unless we are talking about a child picking up a gun. Anyone who is going to commit a criminal act with a gun knows there is an extreme risk to the person who will be the victim of that crime, not that any crime is acceptable.
I come from the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, from Surrey. Many of the things I have experienced around gun crime do not fit some of the things that I have heard about in the House. I hear people talking a lot about gun crime in inner cities. The gun crime I have seen, some of it certainly is inner city, but much of it has nothing to do with youth raised in inner cities. Some of it has to do with youth raised in affluence.
We must be careful not to stereotype this by saying that it is only inner city people who are vulnerable to being involved in a gun crime.
Over the last 10 or 11 years, 100 young men in the lower mainland and some in Surrey have been killed in a gun crime, which is not an insubstantial number. Is anyone behind bars? No. Was it the person's first offence? I do not know for sure, but I know with some it certainly was not their first offence.
We must remember that what we are doing is being smart on crime.
Although I am in support of the bill, with the NDP amendments, and having talked to the parents whose daughters and sons have been killed in a gun crime or critically injured, I do not feel that I have turned into a neo-Conservative. I do not know if anybody has ever called me a neo-Conservative before.
Criminal Code May 17th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, given that the purpose is over time to ensure that we have fewer people facing the criminal system and in the position of being incarcerated and given that we know what happens in the early years is the single biggest determinant about whether youth and then adults will be involved in crime, other than the $100 a month for families, could the member tell me why slashing child care programs and programs that support parents to do a good job at raising their children will be of assistance in this way?
Criminal Code May 17th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, when we track criminals and their histories, research has shown that if we support parents and their newborns and young children from say the ages of five, six and seven, this can prevent them from ending up in the criminal justice system to a much lesser degree.
What can we do in those early years so we do not end up having this same discussion five or ten years from now? I am interested in the member's comments on the early prevention side.
Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the sentiments that the parliamentary secretary has put forward, but I am back in the same position I was in five minutes ago. Let us focus on the what the real issue is here. The real issue is that there is a private clinic charging for medically necessary services. The Canada Health Act says that one may not charge for a medically necessary service.
My other point, on which I am not much further ahead either, is that the minister promised to look into the private MRIs being sold by St. Paul's Hospital and to report back. I am still looking for a timetable to hear that report.
This is not about general opting out. This is a private clinic charging for medically necessary services, which is in contradiction to the Canada Health Act. I expect the federal government to uphold the Canada Health Act.
Mr. Speaker, on April 16, I asked the Minister of Health a question about the False Creek clinic in Vancouver. I will connect the dots a bit.
The False Creek clinic in Vancouver is charging patients hundreds of dollar for urgent care. Urgent care, as it describes it, is emergency like care, which is exactly what the Americans call emergency services.
I asked the minister whether he saw this American-like clinic in Vancouver as being a problem. We have seen many private clinics open across the country in the last number of years, not only under the current federal government but under the previous one. From time to time fines are levied, depending on which province it happens to be. I think B.C. and Ontario have had some fines. I am not aware that Quebec has had any fines.
When I asked my question at that time, the minister told me that he did not see any double standard at all in charging for what were medically necessary services. It seems to me that if an organization is charging for medically necessary services it is in breach of the Canada Health Act. To me that seems to be a problem. At that time, the Minister of Health assured the House that his department was reviewing the situation at False Creek.
I am very concerned about what is happening at that clinic. I am very concerned that we continue to slide down this slippery slope toward an American style health care with the opening of more private clinics and now private clinics charging for medically necessary services, which is absolutely what the Canada Health Act says we cannot do.
I am hoping that perhaps the parliamentary secretary could help me understand, in the next four minutes, two questions. First, why does the minister not think False Creek charging for medically necessary services is a problem. Second, why is that not in conflict with the Canada Health Act?
Perhaps he could spend the other two minutes explaining to me when we will hear back about the things that the ministry is looking into, things that have been raised in the House that are not a problem but are being looked into. I am not quite sure why, if it is not a problem, people are looking into it.
I am also looking for a timetable. When will we hear back about False Creek? When will we hear back from people looking into St. Paul's Hospital selling MRIs to people in off hours? When will we see a report come back to the House about those issues that are not a problem but which the ministry is looking into.
I am very concerned about the proliferation of private clinics and I look forward to the parliamentary secretary's answers to my two questions.