Ron MacDonald

[Young Offenders Act, February 24th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened with some interest to the speech of my hon. colleague.

She is from British Columbia. She would find from coast to coast and down on the Atlantic coast where I am from that there are similar sentiments with respect to safety in the community and a desire to ensure that the legislative tools we have at our

disposal such as the Young Offenders Act, are balanced. That balance periodically must be reviewed.

At least the bill is a step in the right direction. What I hear from my community is that there is a legitimate concern. Individuals want to feel safe in their community. However, Canadians are also very tolerant individuals and they are not harsh in how they deal with individuals that somehow find themselves at the opposite end of the law.

As a member of Parliament I have seen over the last few years a marked change in the way Canadians view the criminal justice system, the fairness of the system and whether they believe that the rights of the accused have priority over the rights of the abused. Many times this is the case.

Dealing specifically with the Young Offenders Act, some measures in this bill are supportable by most reasonable thinking people. Certainly the move to transfer 16 and 17 year olds who are accused of very serious crimes like first or second degree murder and other crimes like attempted murder, manslaughter, aggravated assault and aggravated sexual assault to adult court is very positive.

The people I represent understand that wherever possible we have to have a system that takes young people who happen to find themselves on the wrong side of the law and wherever possible work to rehabilitate them. We do not want just incarceration for the sake of vengeance. What we truly seek is rehabilitation.

There must be a recognition that there are some cases-I stress that it is the minority of cases with young offenders-where we have individuals who are 16 or 17, dangerous offenders, repeat offenders, who have carried out the most despicable and unspeakable crimes that are still protected by the act. They are protected as a young offender when their crimes are severe enough to be treated more seriously by the criminal justice system.

The move to adult court as a requirement under this bill, with the provision that the offender or the prosecutor or the counsel for the accused can argue before the court that the offender should not be transferred, is a proper one.

I also agree with the increased sentences for first and second degree murder. Canadians want to make sure that individuals who are convicted of these most serious crimes do not find themselves being convicted and sentenced and in a few years back out on the street, perhaps to commit such crimes again.

I also support with some qualification the provisions in the bill that deal with access to youth records, particularly for repeat offenders, and particularly for young offenders who seem to have a goal in life of continuing to wreak havoc in their communities.

It is essential in certain conditions, and these conditions are outlined quite well in the bill, that law enforcements officers and peace officers have access to those records during the course of investigations when dealing with serious crimes. It is also essential that the courts, in the case of young offenders who have a long criminal record under the Young Offenders Act and are once again before the courts as a result of further violations of criminal law, have access to these records. However, this section does not go far enough. I have to agree with my colleague opposite.

I live in a community of approximately 70,000 people. By and large it is a law-abiding community. People feel relatively safe travelling the streets. I have three children. The oldest will be 11 in a few weeks. I have an eight-year old and I have an three-year old. I want to see my children grow up in a safe community. I get concerned when I hear on the street-and I can never figure out whether it is simply hearsay-that there are some violent young offenders who go through the system who actually abuse the system and who use the protection under the act to remain anonymous.

At the school my daughter attends, if there is a 14, 15 or 16 year old who has been convicted under the act of a crime with violence or aggravated sexual assault who has been known to carry a weapon, the rights of the people of the community to live safely far outweigh the right of that young offender to anonymity for the crimes he or she has committed.

[Committees Of The House, February 8th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the second report of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans in relation to the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation.

The committee requests a response from the government pursuant to Standing Order 109. I have a very short comment.

The committee travelled to many points in western Canada including Edmonton, Hay River as well as places like Garden Hill. We heard from over 100 witnesses on this very important issue.

The committee report is an attempt to strike a balance between the conflicting needs of those who are served by the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation, in order to assure those who feel that their interests are not being best served. They actually can aspire to success and those who are successful can continue to be so.

It is with a great deal of pleasure that I make this report from the fisheries committee to Parliament.

[The Environment, December 12th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the necessity of continuing to educate Canadians, especially our youth, on environmental issues is crucial, not only for Canada's future but for the future of the entire planet. Together we must continue to think globally but act locally to address the many challenges we face in preserving the delicate balance of our environment.

At Cole Harbour High School in my riding of Dartmouth I recently had the privilege of unveiling along with the Minister of the Environment a new environmental information system established on the Internet by this government. It is called the Green Lane on the Information Highway and makes Canada's wealth of information on the environment available not only to Canadians but indeed to the entire world.

I ask this House to join with me in commending the Minister of the Environment and her department for taking the important step of establishing this green lane on the information highway. I look forward to the new ideas and creativity in dealing with environmental issues that will no doubt result from this global sharing of important environmental information.

[Violence Against Women, December 5th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow marks the anniversary of the Montreal massacre.

Today I will not talk of the increased incidents of violence against women reported, nor will I talk about how only 18 per cent of the guns used to kill women were illegally owned.

Instead today I would like us to take one minute to remember the women who were killed that day. We remember the killer's name, but the women are faceless to most of us and just a number, 14.

Tomorrow I would like us to take a minute to remember, Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Natalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Barbara Maria Klucznik, Maryse Laganiere, Maryse Leclaire, Anne Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte.

Violence against women is not just a women's issue. Violence against women affects all of us.

[Social Security Program, October 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say that I certainly enjoy working with the member for Gaspé on the fisheries committee. We share many of the same concerns. Our mother tongue may be different, but our regions are not that dissimilar and our interests are pretty similar.

I want to pick up on one thing. The member indicated that the federal government has the authority to provide equalization, to try to equalize the opportunities for Canadians. I would go one further. Since his party is very concerned about constitutions and constitutional status, I would like to inform him that it is not just the authority, it is a constitutional requirement. Whatever cuts are made to social policy as a result of the ballooning deficit, every cut must be looked at to see whether or not, in accordance with the Constitution, it has increased or decreased disparity in the country. That is one of the things that is a fall back for us. The Constitution provides for that.

With respect to the other question he asked dealing with UI, it is a major problem. One of the things we have to do is stop handing out the dough. It is a bit like a narcotic. If you have a pain in your arm and you do not treat the cause of the pain but keep giving the drug for the pain pretty soon you forget about the pain but you keep needing the drug.

We have to try to deal with diminishing dollars and address the real problem. We have to restructure the fishery so that the individuals left in the core fishery can make a decent living off it and never again see the fishery as a way, through licensing, to qualify for UIC. Unfortunately that is what has happened in the past. People who have a licence should be able to make a good

living at lobster, at groundfish, at whatever, but we have spread it far too thin.

In conclusion, I agree. I have those concerns. I look forward to reading the input from his town hall forums that he is going to be holding on social policy reform and what his people are saying on it. Perhaps we can sit down and see how close together both our communities are on the need for this type of restructuring.

[Social Security Program, October 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I could send him over a dictionary. That might be a quicker response.

To the member for Kootenay East, on university I think everything is on the table, to be quite honest. When I see that there are over 1.5 million Canadian children living in poverty that tells me that the dollars we are spending are not hitting the mark. When I see individuals who have to live below the poverty line, who have worked hard to build this country because the dollars have been spread too thin, then I do not think those are the types of programs I want to see continued.

When I see single parents, primarily women who cannot get out into the workforce because they have children at home, who cannot get a hand up because the money available to the programs we are maintaining keeps them down and ensures a cycle of poverty, of non-productivity both economically and at a complete destruction of self-worth, I am prepared to listen to anybody in this country who would go back to the basic principal of equalized opportunity.

Quite frankly, I would not be here today if it were not for those social programs. Maybe most members of the Reform Party would, but I do not think so. I know the backgrounds of some of those individuals. They have chosen public life. Many of them were not brought up with a silver spoon and many of them did get the benefit of a university education because of transfers to their home provinces for education. I know that. Does that mean that everything we have today has to stay the same? I would say no.

He asked me if I believe in universality. I do for some programs. There are some programs I do not think can be cut without damaging the fabric of the country. On health care, do I want a user pay system? No, I do not. I know the Reform Party does not either. We want to maintain that as an essential piece of the fabric of this country.

I am prepared to sit down on each and every program. I am not prepared to do what some on the other benches, most notably the Reform Party and the right wing would do, which is simply to do across the board cuts.

When we look at these things we have to use the ingenuity I know members of this Chamber have to develop vehicles that would allow for the majority of assistance that is available be targeted to those individuals who need it the most. We all know that it diminishes on a daily basis. However, does that mean we have to throw the baby out with the bath water? I think not. I think the baby has to do with a little less water in the tub.

[Social Security Program, October 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have looked forward to rising and speaking in this debate for quite a while. I was one who spent a lot of time on his feet in the last Parliament debating the very principles that are on the floor today: what should be the central tenets of the country and the underlying principles that have led us, albeit with our problems, to be one of the greatest nations on earth.

I come from a region that for far too long has perhaps not shared in the greatness of the country, particularly its wealth. We have wealth in other areas with our culture, our history, our music and our people; but when it comes down to the things that put bread and butter on the table I speak from the perspective of a regional representative who has tried his very best, as have many before me, to impact on the policies of national governments in recognition of the fact that we live in a country that is regional in its nature.

The whole concept of social policy reform perhaps causes shivers up the spine of many individuals out there, even some provincial premiers who have to rely on a generous, well thought, rational program of social spending by the federal government, the government that has the tax power, to be able to deliver services of a national standard to the individuals they represent.

We have to go back a bit and talk about the development of social policy. Nearly every major program we have today has been the result of dialogue in this place and in public. Nearly every piece of progressive social legislation that we currently have up for debate in our social policy review has been dealing with programs that have been brought about by Liberal government initiatives.

We have to be careful when we criticize the process if we are not willing to understand the history of the party that teaches how to reform social programs. When I look back on the great history of the Liberal Party it is very clear that the Liberal Party tried very much to ensure that the country was not the same as the United States.

We recognized that the free market system had to grow and flourish but we believed that there were broader principles which had to monitor, had to temper the influence of the private sector and market forces in Canada. We were not the same as the Americans and we were not the same as some of the countries that we sought our early immigration from which were smaller and more compact.

We are one of the largest nations on earth and we have an uneven distribution of population. We have ten provincial and two territorial governments at this point. Through all of this as our country grew and as the great resources that God gave us in this great land were exploited, it was Liberal thinking, small l and big L , that said there is a fundamental responsibility of governments to ensure that the great wealth that is Canada is shared as equally as possible by all Canadians no matter where they live.

How do we do that? Do we just say if you are living in Alberta and they find oil in the ground you are going to do well perhaps for this generation or maybe the next, or 100 ago when you lived in Atlantic Canada and cod was plentiful and there were all kinds of money flowing into those households that did not have to share it? No, we believed collectively that we had a responsibility as government-our party believed that then and believes it today-to try to ensure that the wealth of this country is redistributed wherever possible to those individuals who are less prosperous today.

We have done that through social programs. We came in with unemployment insurance. We decided that we had to find some vehicle to transfer funds on a regular basis with a standard program and we came up with established program financing, EPF. That is how the federal government through its taxation powers takes moneys in and sends moneys back to the provinces to try to ensure a certain level of quality in the delivery of service in health care and post-secondary education.

The unemployment insurance system was initially put in place to ensure that workers who found themselves temporarily without employment were not going to have the bank come in and foreclose on the farm. It was meant to be an income supplement during that period of time until the individual could either retrain or find another job in the labour market and pay his or her bills.

We have had further progressions in social policy right up to the Constitution Act in which one of the fundamental characteristics of this country was set down as equalization. One of the major factors that distinguishes this country from others around the world is the fact that our Constitution says that the government has a responsibility to ensure that the provinces have the ability to deliver services of national standards, national quality, no matter what the fiscal situation of that province is.

Our social programs through old age security, through veterans' pensions, all of those programs have been an attempt by past governments to meet that fundamental commitment, that characteristic of Canadian society of equalizing the opportunity for all Canadians.

In a province like Nova Scotia some would say we rely to heavily on that. Maybe we do. Some say that perhaps the amounts of dollars transferred down have not met with the successes that were waiting there for them. I am one of those individuals who would agree.

I think it is high time we sit down and examine the vehicles. These programs are merely vehicles to deliver certain principles. It is also a time for us as Canadians to reaffirm the principles.

I know there are some on the Liberal Party side, perhaps even who sit in this Chamber, who believe we have to fight tooth and nail to maintain the vehicle. I do not think we have to do that. What we have to do in this period of fiscal restraint is redefine what we try to accomplish as governments.

Is the principle of equalization going to be maintained as one of the fundamental strands in the fabric of this country? I think most of the people in this place would say yes. Are we still going to try to take the wealth of this great country and ensure that individuals like me, the son of a coal miner who saw more pay days than pay cheques down in Cape Breton, can go to university because I have not been tuitioned right out of the picture? Does it make sure that somebody who lives in northern Ontario or downtown Vancouver or in Bay d'Espoir Newfoundland, when they have a problem with their health, does not have to worry about the size of their bank account, that quality health care is there?

We are facing major challenges. I think as this debate goes forward Canadians will reaffirm the principles that this country has been founded on, principles of fairness, of equal sharing of the resource, of caring for one another and a free market system altogether, all in one.

This reform that we talk about is essential. It is essential that we grapple with the real economic problems that we have today. It is also essential that these reforms are not dictated by any one region of this country.

Atlantic Canada is not western Canada. Alberta is not Newfoundland. Quebec is not Ontario. This is a country that is as distinct because of the differences that it has been able to accommodate internally as it is distinct by its geography and its people.

During this reform of social policy, during the debate that takes place, we must ensure that those principles that have been established, that have made this country great from sea to sea to sea, are reinvented. We say that is the foundation and if there is a better way for us to deliver those principles of equalization, of allowing as a people, each and every individual in this country, to develop to the fullest of their potential I will be on board for that.

I am afraid of change. I am afraid when I see two systems of UI being put on the table for debate that it means some of my fishermen in Atlantic Canada or the Gaspe may find themselves on the short end of that stick and I worry about that. I am worried that talk of cutting back on transfers through EPS to universities will mean that people who grew up or are growing up as I did with not very much money coming in for food let alone to put away for their children's university may not be able to get a quality education.

I am equally convinced, and this balances my concern, that as this debate goes forward one single thing will come out of it if nothing else and it will be that we will come back as a people and we will re-endorse and reaffirm those principles of equalization of the government allowing the free market system to flourish but at the same time using the resources of this great state, of this great nation, to ensure as best we can as mere mortals that those resources are put to work for the people of this country no matter where they live.

The debate is important. My voice I hope will be heard. My voice will probably be a voice of dissent on many of the things that are put on the table but I am not going to sit back and be critical and not participate in the process. That is one way the people I represent will not be heard and I am quite prepared. My voice can be loud at times. I may be small but I was blessed with good vocal cords. My voice on behalf of the people not just in Atlantic Canada but people right across this country is heard and that the desires they have that their government will be able to respond to their needs are materialized in a brand new social policy reform package and the vehicles that we choose to deliver are vehicles that will be efficient, that will deliver to the people who need it the most, and more than anything else will ensure that the next generation of Canadians, far too many of whom are living in poverty, will be able to look forward to a bright future in this great country.

[Ultramar Canada, October 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Industry.

Ultramar Canada has begun the decommissioning of its eastern passage refinery in Nova Scotia even though its request to do so, which was filed with the Bureau of Competition Policy, is in legal limbo and even though it is refusing to negotiate seriously with a potential purchaser who could keep the plant open and maintain competition as well as nearly 150 jobs.

Since it is clear by the time the bureau may get to rule that this plant may be nothing but a pile of scrap metal, is there anything the minister can do to expedite this situation and if not, why not?

[Remembrance Day Act, October 18th, 1994]

moved that Bill C-251, an act to provide that Remembrance Day be included as a holiday in public service collective agreements, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, I know the hour is late and we have just been through a number of votes but I am hoping that the members who are still here, or those that are watching from their offices or on their way to their offices, could take a few minutes to pay some attention to the bill presently before the House.

This is actually the second time that I have brought the bill forward. I presented the bill in the last Parliament as Bill C-289. The title of the bill is the Remembrance Day Act.

One of the problems we have had in the past in dealing with Remembrance Day is that the farther we get from the time that we have actually had a conflict where loss of life has taken place, the more likely it is that we will forget the sacrifices that were made by the many men and now women of the Canadian Armed Forces in the pursuit of liberty and freedom for people all around the globe.

Remembrance Day goes back quite far. It used to be called Armistice Day and it was celebrated at Thanksgiving. Then around 1931, it became Remembrance Day. Everybody in the country believes that Remembrance Day is a holiday and I guess by definition that is what it is.

What exactly holiday means is quite another thing. Does holiday mean, as I used to think it meant, that it is a day set aside and nobody, unless they are deemed to be an essential employee, goes to work? Does holiday mean that it is time to go to the beach or to take a few hours off and relax?

The Remembrance Day holiday is quite different. It is different than any other holiday on the books. It is different because it is not meant as a time for people to take time off. It is meant as a time of solemn remembrance of those who fought for liberty, for freedom, for those who have given up their lives in pursuit of these very noble goals.

Every member in this Chamber represents veterans. In Canada today there are over 700,000 veterans, many of whom were wounded, many of whom have lost very good friends. They saw their best friend die in front of them far away in a foreign land with no shoulder to cry on. It was done in the pursuit of that tangible called freedom.

It seems the further we get away from the date of a conflict where lives are lost, we forget. It is far too easy for me as a 39-year-old and certainly for my children who are three, eight and ten to forget how important that contribution has been for us.

I introduced Bill C-289 in the last Parliament. The importance of that bill at the time was to make sure that at least in the area that we control as a government in the agreements that are entered into under the Public Service Staff Relations Act, we ensure that we honour the memory of those who have given their lives and of the veterans who are still are out there, many of whom have been wounded.

There are people like my father, Sharkey, as they called him because he was a good boxer in his day, who was shot twice. He fought in the Italian campaign after the liberation of Holland, and lost many of his friends. The bill will ensure that my children see the example set by the federal government in ensuring that every collective agreement that is entered into by the Government of Canada, that this holiday, this special time of remembrance, is not traded away.

Members are going to ask: "Is that not the way it is?" Yes, that is the way it is. The reason I introduced the bill two years ago and the reason I reintroduced it is that there seems to be a possibility-and if it is a possibility, it is a probability-the federal government negotiators through Treasury Board-it is no different even though the government has changed-with the same mandate who hammer out collective agreements may change the holiday. I support the collective bargaining process.

However there may come a time, because it always happens, that the federal government through its Treasury Board negotiators and a union of the Public Service of Canada through its negotiators will decide to trade away Remembrance Day for another holiday. It darned near happened two years ago at Canada Post.

That is when this came to my attention. My father who is a veteran, president of the Cape Breton Highlanders Association,

called me and said: "What am I reading in the paper? They are trying to trade Remembrance Day away, maybe for an extra benefit, maybe for a little bit more hospital coverage". That was never the purpose of the holiday in the first place.

I introduced the bill and it received an unusual amount of support, so much so that the Conservative government, even though Treasury Board told Tory members not to support it, rose above partisanship and supported the bill in sufficient numbers that even a lowly Liberal backbench opposition member's private member's motion passed at second reading.

It was one of the proudest days I have had as a member of Parliament. It showed that this place can work. If the principles are noble, the motives of members will be above reproach and they will support the right things. Unfortunately it did not get through committee.

Therefore I introduce it again today in honour of the 60,000 men who died serving our country in the first world war and all those who died during the second world war. Over 1.1 million Canadians served proudly, people like my father. During the Korean war over 300 Canadians gave their lives and hundreds, perhaps over 1,000, more were wounded. We must not forget those who served in the Persian gulf-thank goodness there was no loss of life-and our peacekeepers who are out there in some of the worst conditions in the world. They are down in the hell on earth that is Rwanda. They serve us proudly in Bosnia, where some have been injured and killed while serving our country abroad.

I reintroduce the bill and I seek support from members. This bill will not encumber Treasury Board. That is bogus. I heard that argument from Treasury Board officials. Tomorrow I will try to get some assurance from the minister that before decisions are made about what does and does not encumber Treasury Board that they at least consult with the members who put the bills forward.

The bill does nothing more than seek to entrench in law the current practice and that is to make sure that Remembrance Day is a holiday in federal collective agreements. It does not do anything to the business community. It does not do anything to collective agreements under the labour code. It simply says that for agreements entered into by the federal government with its own employees, under the Public Service Staff Relations Act, that unless one is a designated employee whose services are essential, one shall have Remembrance Day as a day of solemn remembrance for those men and now women who have been injured or killed defending peace, liberty and life abroad for our country, and that day will always be in federal public sector agreements as a day of solemn remembrance.

I ask the members who are prepared to speak to keep that in mind. When we last raised this in the House I could not believe the response from nearly every legion in Canada. The president of the Royal Canadian Legion came to see me. Letters were sent in. Veterans from the second world war feel as they are getting older that it is far too easy for their grandchildren and maybe their great grandchildren to forget the sacrifices that many of them have made.

I am seeking the support of the House to debate this bill. It will tell the veterans across Canada that the contribution that they made for this country and also what they gave up, is not going to be forgotten by the Parliament of Canada. It is a very small thing to do. Remembrance Day must always be held as a solemn day of remembrance for those who have gone before us in serving their country.

[Criminal Code, October 18th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased I arrived on time from my riding to speak in this debate. It is a very important one that raises some fundamental questions about who we are as a nation, the values we hold dear, whether or not we are compassionate or just seek vengeance when we are wronged. It also says a great deal about the type of society we are trying to build for our children who, after all, are the people for whom we are holding the country in trust.

Everybody has spoken about Bill C-41. They talked about all the major provisions of the bill. I am not going to attempt to go through them again. However there are a couple of provisions in the bill which I think the public in the riding of Dartmouth will be very pleased to hear about.

During the election campaign law and order, whatever that means or whatever was the definition of the day, seemed to be the thing most people were concerned about. I knocked on doors and received calls from people concerned that the criminal justice system simply was not working. These people were not rednecks, right wingers or crazy people; they were concerned about the safety of their communities.

Somewhere in the mix over the last number of years there has been a problem. The fundamental problem has come from the fact that when we came in with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was a very bold initiative of the government of the day that was applauded by nearly all Canadians, it switched the pendulum over to individual rights and away from community rights. Indeed at times there are community rights which must be taken into consideration.

How often have we heard individuals ask why it is always the rights of the individual who has broken the law, who has wronged the community, who has sought to injure an individual, steal their property or whatever, that are paramount and more heavily weighed than those of the victim?

The bill deals with sentencing. It starts to address some of the real concerns expressed by Canadians. I am not going to indicate that I have done a study and that I understand or I know that the concern of Canadians about rising crime is founded in fact or not, because that simply does not matter. Everyone can quote statistics. The most recently quoted ones are that we are not becoming a more violent society and that crime rates are actually down. As a legislator I am concerned about the perception in my community that people are less safe today than they were 3, 5, 10 or 15 years ago.

From time to time it is up to us as legislators to come forward to debate and try to figure out if the laws and the principles they were founded on, like the Young Offenders Act and some of the sentencing provisions in legislation, are actually attaining their goals and if they are not to try to change them. It does not mean we always have to respond to public opinion or that legislation should be a knee-jerk reaction. It should not be that at all. If members have their ears to the ground in their constituencies and if they strip away their partisan approach to public policy making, they can get a fairly good idea about what is in the public interest. Clearly some of the reforms in the bill are in the public interest.

The optics of the bill have to be seen to be fair as well. One thing that disturbs me a great deal is the focus of the public eye, through the media and through members of this place and others in public, on a very specific provision of the bill. I am saddened that the level of debate on sentencing has fallen to whether or not individuals should be subject to harsher sentencing, or if the crimes they have perpetrated were against persons and based on hate then the judge should look at that provision. The debate being about whether or not any group in society is being conferred special rights does a great disservice to the level of debate that has taken place in the Chamber since Confederation.

We are not here to respond to those who will slap us on the back when we make remarks either overtly or thinly veiled against minorities. The previous member who just spoke put it quite nicely. He referred to a tragic piece of history; he referred to the Holocaust and how in the minds of the people who supported the Nazi regime in Germany it was fine to discriminate based on a person's religion. It is not fine and if anybody thought it was, society has changed. It is not fine to discriminate against persons because of the colour of their skin.

I have the largest, oldest, indigenous black community in Canada. When I have an unemployment rate of 10 per cent in my riding, three miles away their unemployment rate is 48 per cent. I may not be able to prove it because there is systemic racism. I am sure if every employer were blind we would probably have a more even distribution of the unemployment load in my area.

Any type of act predicated by hatred for a group based on whatever factor-if they have two green eyes, if they have an arm or two arms or one is shorter than the other, or if it is sexual orientation-has to be recognized as something that is not supported by the legislators and is not supported by the people of Canada.

It has done a great disservice to the bill and to individuals who have been harmed far too often in the past by our refusal to discuss these issues as well as the issue of hate crimes in a full and unbiased atmosphere.

A couple of things are not in the bill. We are talking about Bill C-41 and its impact on sentencing. We have heard of all the great things in the bill. There are a few things I think should be in there, and if they are not they should find their way into legislation.

Unfortunately I live in an area that is now the pimping capital of Canada. In the riding of Dartmouth we lay claim-and we are not pleased with or proud of it-to probably the largest illegal pimping ring in Canada. It extends into the United States as well. That pimping ring has been going out and luring girls-and this is a victim crime-as young as 11 years of age into juvenile prostitution. They are luring them into illegal drug use and then into prostitution on the streets of New York, Niagara Falls, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, Halifax, Truro, and small towns near any of us.

All too often very few of these girls are ever rescued. They are children. They are not adults who choose to get into this way of life. They are children who are literally stolen from our schools and off the streets. If they ever get out of the cycle of prostitution they are like walking zombies. They have no self-worth left. They are usually addicted to drugs and alcohol. They have no life ahead of them. Their lives are destroyed; their families' lives are destroyed.

However, when we deal with sentencing in the law most of these guys get off with three to six months in jail. In Nova Scotia that means they go to a minimum security institution and three months later they walk out. They have not lost even one penny because one of their friends will have taken over their stable of young juvenile girls on the streets and they will still maintain the financial incentive to break the law.

This has to stop. This is murder of the worst kind because the soul and the spirit of the child, of the woman, or the young girl are being killed, but she is not being killed physically. They are hollow empty vessels after these low life scum are finished with them. In our laws we most often treat that type of crime less seriously than if somebody absconds with $100,000 or $10,000 from the Bank of Nova Scotia.

Crimes against children when the sentencing comes down from the judge in a court of law in many cases are dealt with less

harshly than crimes against property. That is simply wrong. For anyone who does not understand the full implication, there have been a number of articles written in Chatelaine and Reader's Digest in the last number of months. This is one of the worst crimes that happens in Canada because it happens to defenceless children.

I have spoken to the Minister of Justice a number of times and we could probably get support for one of the things I would have liked to have seen in the bill. If the government is not prepared at some point to deal with the issue then I am prepared to deal with the issue as a private member by putting a motion in the House.

I am not one of those right wingers who believes we should lock everybody up; I am the exact opposite. This is one of the few crimes, I am told, where the length of sentence will be a deterrent. For crimes against our children like sexual crimes against our children the legislation should indicate the revulsion of Canadians and of legislators. There has to be tough minimum sentences. In my view not one of those pimps who destroy the lives of young girls should get out of jail before a five-year minimum sentence is carried out. If I had my druthers it would be a 10-year minimum sentence, but they are out in three months.

For everybody who is out there watching and listening to these debates, if they have a young daughter or granddaughter, if their neighbour has a 10, 11, 12 or 13 year old and they think they are safe when they are going to school, they are not. There are predators out there, predators our sentencing law does not protect our children against.

Although I support this bill, I encourage members as I encourage the Minister of Justice, to be a little more bold. I ask the minister to bring legislation into the House as soon as he possibly can to deal with this most abhorrent crime of pimping juvenile women, juvenile girls, our children.