Roy Cullen

[An Act to amend certain Acts in relation to DNA Identification, October 3rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it actually cost more than $2 million to set up the gun registry. I believe the member meant a figure beyond $2 million but the figure of $2 billion that has been bandied about is totally fallacious. However, it is true that it was pushing $1 billion to build the gun registry data bank over a five or six year period.

I worked in the private sector and I have seen mega information technology projects, where the business requirements and the policies were changing. I have seen a lot of badly derailed IT projects in the private sector as well. It is not just government that can blow IT projects. This was a blown project. There were many reasons for it, which we will not get into today. I do not know if the member, who has an economic background, was listening or just did not hear, but there is a concept of some cost.

We, as a government when we were in power, took the measures necessary to rearrange the governance of the firearms centre. Some management changes were made. The question before us today is the gun registry which is costing now around $20 million a year to operate. The police are making 6,000 plus inquiries per day. At a cost of $22 million a year, if that can save one life, if it can save two lives, it is well worth it. The other ironic thing that the member did not mention is that it is supported by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and by the rank and file police officers who passed a resolution at their last convention supporting the gun registry.

The Conservative government is on the wrong footing by dismantling the long gun registry. I stand by my point that we should be retaining that important tool.

[An Act to amend certain Acts in relation to DNA Identification, October 3rd, 2006]

Yes, it is overdue. We should be reviewing it because it is an act of Parliament. I would support a move in that direction.

As I was the parliamentary secretary at the time, I know there was extensive consultation on Bill C-13 but that does not replace a parliamentary review. I think the point is well taken.

I was quite involved with respect to the missing persons index and the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands was the person promoting it. He has, of course, had to pass it on to someone else now. At that point in time the federal government supported the missing persons index. However, the issue involved jurisdiction. In other words, the impetus really had to come from the provinces and territories because it fit within their constitutional jurisdictions.

However, extensive consultations were held across Canada with the provinces and territories to sort that out and to see what sort of support would be provided by them. I think it was put on the justice minister's agenda with his or her colleagues across Canada. There were some issues around privacy but the general view was that those issues were surmountable.

I certainly support the missing persons index. However, it is critical that we have the provinces onside and the modus operandi laid out very clearly as to how it will work, how the information will be fed into the DNA data bank and how it will be used.

[An Act to amend certain Acts in relation to DNA Identification, October 3rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I understand the act came into force in 2000 and there was to be a review in five years but the review has not taken place.

[An Act to Amend Certain Acts in Relation to DNA Identification, October 3rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-18, An Act to amend certain Acts in relation to DNA identification.

Bill C-18 is largely a technical bill but it builds on some initiatives from the last Parliament before it was dissolved when Parliament passed Bill C-13, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the DNA Identification Act and the National Defence Act. This was the Liberal government's original DNA data bank legislation. There was some keen interest to have this legislation passed quickly and efficiently for a couple of reasons.

There were a number of high profile people being detained in penitentiaries who were about to be released, and without this legislation in place they would have been able to have left the penitentiary without giving a DNA sample.

DNA samples are very helpful to law enforcement to solve crimes and to prevent crimes. That was one of the imperatives that led to a very speedy passage with all-party agreement in the House and I think all-party agreement in the other place and royal assent in the last Parliament. It was done very quickly.

There were amendments made at the committee level that were quite complicated. I think in the rush to get the bill through, there were some slip-ups in some of the language in the bill. This bill is designed to correct some of those technical problems with original BillC-13.

Bill C-13 in the last Parliament was a very good example of how parliamentarians of all stripes in the committee worked together. The Liberal government had a minority government at the time, but at committee we worked together to make changes to the bill, which I think improved the bill and helped its speedy passage through the House of Commons and the other place.

To give some background, before the bill came to Parliament and to committee, the RCMP were reporting that only about 50% of the DNA samples that were meant to be going to the RCMP DNA data bank were actually getting into the data bank. This was a cause for concern by myself and others. At the time I happened to have the honour to serve as parliamentary secretary to the minister of public safety and emergency preparedness, so it was an issue that I took up with the justice department and others. I could not quite understand why only 50% of the DNA samples were finding their way into the DNA data bank.

It turns out that the way the law was written, the judges had discretion as to what DNA would be passed on to the DNA data bank and what DNA would not be passed on to the DNA data bank. I found this quite puzzling because I could not ascertain under what circumstances the judge in his or her wisdom would decide that it was not in the public interest to pass the DNA of a convicted person to the DNA data bank.

In fairness to all concerned, following the establishment of the DNA data bank, there was some confusion among the crown prosecutors and judges. The DNA order has to be an order that is presented to the trial judge asking the judge to order that the DNA sample be taken and passed to the DNA data bank and there was a lack of communication or a lack of education on what DNA had to be passed over to the RCMP DNA data bank.

As I recall, the Department of Public Safety and the Department of Justice mounted a program to get the word out to the judiciary and to the prosecutors that this order had to be prepared by the crown prosecutors and presented to the judge before the DNA could be taken and submitted to the DNA data bank.

When the bill was sent to committee, these questions were asked. As a result of a lot of collaboration among all parties, the Bloc Québécois, the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party and the NDP, we made some significant amendments to the bill.

We started out with a very long list of crimes where the judge would not have any discretion, where the DNA would automatically have to be taken and sent to the DNA data bank. There was much discussion around this point with the Department of Justice. The view was that there was a possibility if we included all crimes, this would be challenged under the charter and the good parts of the bill would be tossed out with the parts that would be turfed out in any sort of challenge under the charter.

At committee we put a little water in our wine and we said that for the most heinous of crimes there had to be no discretion, in the judgment of the committee members. For acts such as murder and rape, what the bill did when it was amended was it removed any judicial discretion so that the DNA automatically had to go to the DNA data bank.

That was a very proud moment for me. It really pointed out that even though there was a lot of discussion that the minority Parliament was not working at a certain level, I felt that at the committee level, certainly at the justice subcommittee level, there was a lot of good cooperation. I think we improved the legislation in front of the committee. We did some other work with respect to child pornography. Subsequently Parliament was dissolved and we had an election. But for Canadians this committee was working very well.

I was very proud that we were able to pass Bill C-13 which received royal assent. There were some technical matters which came to light through the Department of Justice later and that is what the current bill is meant to reflect. Bill C-13 was a follow-up on our Liberal government's commitment to law and order to give the police the tools they need to fight crime.

That is why I am sorely disappointed that the Conservative government is seeking the scrapping of the gun registry. We know the gun registry is working very efficiently, very effectively. Yes it is true that it cost too much to develop, but those are sunk costs. Anyone who knows anything about economics or finance knows that once there is a sunk cost there is not really much point in going back and analyzing what to do about that cost because it is historic. The question before us is whether the gun registry performing today a useful purpose, and the answer is a resounding yes.

For example, law enforcement officers are making something in the order of 6,000 inquiries per day on the gun registry data bank. Do law enforcement officers have the time to sit around and tinker away on the computer if it is not relevant information for them? They are very busy people. They have many different competing priorities. They have to decide which call to take. They have to rationalize that. Do we think they sit at a computer keyboard and tinker around for the fun of it? Of course not. We know for sure that especially in domestic violence situations the police find this to be a very useful tool.

Does it mean if they go to the gun registry and the registry shows that there are no guns registered at a particular residence that they can stroll in and be happy campers and not worry? Of course not. Police officers across Canada are not so naive, but by the same token, if they go to the gun registry data bank and discover there are guns in that residence, it helps them establish their modus operandi of how they are going to approach that situation.

I will give another example of why DNA and the gun registry are so important in terms of law enforcement. The gun registry supports something in the order of 7,000 or 8,000 affidavits to date that they have signed which has helped crown prosecutors obtain convictions. The gun licensing component of the Firearms Centre screens out many individuals who would otherwise like to have a gun but because of certain instabilities or criminal records in their past, they are precluded from owning a gun. In fairness to the Conservative government, it is not suggesting that we ban or do away with gun licensing, but it is making a serious mistake with respect to the long gun registry.

The other myth I would like to focus on again today is that some would argue that long guns are not involved so much in criminality, that they are owned by people in rural parts of Canada. The facts are just the opposite. Long guns are involved in more homicides and suicides in Canada, or in just as many as are handguns. Handguns are more of a problem in the urban centres and long guns are a problem in the rural parts of Canada.

I certainly will be supporting the DNA bill because Bill C-13 was very important in terms of law enforcement and law and order in Canada. This bill tidies up some of the language, some very important language, so that the bill can be that much more effective.

I will expand a bit on Bill C-13 and the list of those offences which the committee and ultimately Parliament and the other place approved in this legislation. The offences that were put on the list of those where a judge would have no discretion with respect to the DNA that would have to go into the DNA data bank, we included crimes like murder, manslaughter and aggravated assault. Internet luring of children, child pornography and organized crime offences were also added to the list of designated offences for a data bank order. This is absolutely necessary so that the DNA can be used by law enforcement agencies to either solve crimes or prevent crimes.

I was very proud of the work of that committee. Now I am very happy to speak in support of this bill because it makes the technical changes that are needed to make the original bill even more efficient and more effective.

By way of example, Bill C-18 makes it an offence to fail to appear for DNA sampling. It is an important part. The court can order a DNA sample, but if the individual does not appear, how could one possibly get a DNA sample? There are sanctions for not appearing for a DNA sample.

The Conservative government, and frankly I support what it is doing here, has also added some additional heinous crimes to the list where a judge would have no discretion but to send the DNA sample to the DNA data bank. Those offences include attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Those also are covered by the retroactive provisions which apply to offenders convicted of a single murder, sexual offence or manslaughter prior to June 30, 2000 when the legislation that enabled the creation of the national DNA data bank came into force.

It sounds like a lot of gobbledygook, but in fact these are very important technical changes and I am hoping the House will support them. The purpose of the bill is that the government is trying to capture as much DNA as possible to get into the data bank so that law enforcement can use that DNA to fight crime and to prevent crime.

Another example of one of the technical fixes to the legislation is that it ensures information provided by the national DNA data bank can be used to investigate all criminal offences. It may sound somewhat obvious, but if it is not written in the legislation, then someone will argue that the DNA could be used to investigate certain offences but not other offences. It makes this particular point crystal clear.

I will go back for a moment to the list of crimes where the judge has no discretion. The committee at the time had somewhat of a debate on that issue. Frankly, I support a certain level of judicial discretion but if, for whatever reason, the Parliament of Canada believes judicial discretion is not being exercised in a way that is appropriate in the judgment of parliamentarians, then I think it is quite appropriate for Parliament to remove that judicial discretion.

This is not for petty crime where the DNA must go to the data bank. This is not for shoplifting, nor is it for someone who is caught speeding. This is for murder, rape, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder and a whole list of other heinous crimes. I think it is quite appropriate that judges are required without discretion to ensure the DNA goes to the DNA data bank.

Another example of one of the technical amendments to this bill that is before us today is to simplify the procedure to destroy samples taken from those convicted of an offence not intended to be included in the DNA data bank. Again, it is somewhat a procedural but an important procedure so that samples can be destroyed if they are not intended to be included in the data bank.

When we get into DNA there is often this debate, a debate we had in committee as well, about the privacy issues of Canadians. Privacy is an important aspect that we need to consider as parliamentarians.

I do not pretend to reflect the views of all Canadians on this point, but if someone wants to take a follicle of my hair and put it into a DNA data bank, frankly, I say go to it. However, I understand and respect that some people might see this as impacting their privacy, which is why the legislation that we bring before Parliament needs to be mindful of those considerations. We need to ensure that only DNA that is required by legislation and that meets certain tests of Parliament is actually proceeded with.

Another example of one of the technical changes in this bill is to help to ensure that the DNA data bank orders can be carried out even when, for logistical reasons, it may not be possible to take the sample at the precise time set out in the order. Again, this is somewhat procedural. Unfortunately, there is a whole body of jurisprudence and lawyers who will try to find reasons why their client should not be required to submit a DNA sample. They might say that they could not comply with the order in the timelines provided in the order.

This provision makes it clear that even though it is not at the precise time that is laid out in the order, the DNA must be presented.

It also clarifies definitions in procedures for obtaining a DNA data bank order and for sharing information with international law enforcement partners. There is a whole range of sharing of information that goes on between Interpol and other law enforcement agencies around the world and one has to be mindful of the privacy concerns of Canadians. This amendment makes it clear what the rules are for the sharing of that sort of information.

I hope the House passes this bill. It would be helpful to our law and order agencies to prosecute and prevent crimes. I am sure our party will work with all sides of the House to ensure the speedy passage of this bill. I will be supporting the bill and I hope others will as well.

[September 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, while the government hides behind reviews, studies and platitudes, Canadian workers and the industry are suffering.

We have heard a lot about this Conservative government's “made in Canada” approach to our greenhouse gas and climate change problems, but to date the government has not given us anything concrete, only promises and hot air.

While the Prime Minister talks of Canada's energy resources to his friends in the Republican Party, his government is squandering and choking off a burgeoning energy industry by refusing to commit to the renewal and expansion of the wind power production incentive.

Does the parliamentary secretary have the courage to look up from his prepared text and commit to the House tonight that his backward and hypocritical government will do the right thing for a change and unfreeze and expand the wind power production incentive?

[September 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I was listening to the member for Red Deer talk about the importance of wind energy at a time when the government has cancelled or frozen the program.

The Canadian wind energy sector is emerging as one of the key components in our energy mix for the next 20 years. As traditional sources of fuels and energies peak and dwindle, wind energy will remain strong and viable as there is nearly a limitless supply. The Liberal Party and the Liberal government recognized this. That is why in budget 2005 we committed to an expanded wind energy incentive by quadrupling the previous program and committing $200 million over five years.

Unfortunately, it would seem that this is not as clear to the Conservatives as it is to us. Perhaps some data will help them understand better.

The Canadian wind energy industry has shown impressive growth with an average annual increase of over 30% for the last five years. A recent report shows that wind energy firms are optimistic about future growth.

Globally, wind energy capacity increased from 18,000 megawatts to 59,000 megawatts between 2000 and 2005, and now produces enough power to meet the needs of more than 17 million homes. By 2010, global installed wind energy capacity is expected to be 149,000 megawatts.

As an example, wind energy met 20% of electricity demand in Denmark, 8% in Spain, 5% in Germany and 4% in Portugal and Ireland. Wind energy could easily meet 15% to 20% of Canada's total electricity needs based on an initial target of 10,000 megawatts by 2010, which would take us to about 4% of Canada's total electricity needs. Experience in other countries is clearly demonstrating that wind energy can make substantive and significant contributions to total electricity supplied.

Further, the wind energy industry can create jobs. Every one megawatt of installed wind energy capacity in Canada generates $1.5 million in investment and creates 2.5 direct and 8 indirect person years of employment. If 5% of Canada's electricity was generated by wind energy in 2015, such development would produce $19.5 billion in investment and create 32,500 direct and 104,000 indirect person years of employment.

In the last session, the Minister of Natural Resources claimed that the Conservative government did not scrap funding for the wind power production incentive program, but what he later admitted was that funding had been frozen, effectively paralyzing the program and creating uncertainty for this industry.

In a May 26 letter from Mr. Robert Hornung, the president of the Canadian Wind Energy Association, to the Minister of Natural Resources, Mr. Hornung made it clear that the freezing of funds within the wind power production incentive program has had a serious negative effect on the industry. He said:

The fact that WPPI [wind power production incentive program] funds are frozen has made it difficult for the Federal Government to continue to work with projects currently in the process to obtain funds under the WPPI program. For example, projects must work with the Federal Government on a federal environmental assessment in order to have access to WPPI [the wind power production incentive program]. These processes have slowed down significantly or halted. As a result, valuable time is being lost for projects who are working to be in a position to access WPPI if the expansion proceeds. This means delay in ultimately getting these projects into the ground where they can provide significant economic benefits to local communities across Canada.

This is proof that the Conservative government cutbacks are hurting the industry and costing jobs for Canadians. As we have seen with the scrapping of the popular one tonne challenge and other programs, these are ideologically driven. I would ask the government to reinstate this very important program.

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, September 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if my colleague would comment on the issue of raw log exports. I know this is a big deal in his part of the world.

I had the great pleasure to do some work up in Stewart, British Columbia on the issue of raw log exports. It is an important and sensitive issue. Why should we be exporting raw logs when we can process them here in Canada where there are very strict rules about how that operates?

It was in the third countervailing duty battle that the U.S. imputed a figure of something like 6.8% or 6.9% of a total countervailing duty claim of around 15%. The U.S. argued that restricting the export of raw logs was an effective subsidy because it had an effect on domestic log prices and deflated them, et cetera. If that were adopted, we could not really set our own forest policy in Canada and say that we want more value added In Canada.

More recently, a Chapter 11 lawsuit has been filed by a big U.S. company that has some private land in British Columbia. It wants to export its raw logs into its sawmills in the United States. That has been denied so it is suing under Chapter 11.

Could the member comment on raw log exports in the context of this deal, particularly the anti-circumvention clause that might allow the Americans to say that we now need to export raw logs to the U.S., raw logs in British Columbia that are feeding U.S. sawmills in Washington state and Oregon state? I am not talking about a few logs. I am talking about maybe enough logs to feed three or four sawmills in Washington state and in Oregon.

What does the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley feel about this deal in that particular context?

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, September 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Simcoe—Grey is right about one thing. We did not capitulate during the 13 years. We tried to take the process through to completion.

I find it interesting that she talks about the administrative review. This is where the Prime Minister went down to Washington or Cancun and at that point in time President Bush had the opportunity to waive the administrative review; in other words to use his special powers to overturn the appeal request. So he was down there, they were all buddy buddies, “Steve” and George Bush. What did the government get? It gets this contrived agreement which sells out the industry and sells out Canada's sovereignty and foreign policy. What does the government get? It gets assurances about military cooperation and so on. President Bush looked pretty good.

The problem is that this government said it would not support the industry. The reality is that if we leave $1 billion on the table, and contrary to the challenge of the Byrd amendment which says we cannot take that money and send it back to the U.S. producers, and again the U.S. has totally ignored that, that money goes back to the U.S. producers. Yet, the Canadian producers are sitting there trying to fight the softwood lumber deal. The Canadian government said I think they were bluffing because they could not have actually lived through that because the industry would have had to have support from the government to fight the softwood lumber deal. Therefore, this was a contrived deal and the industry was coerced into agreeing to it.

I have just a final point. I know it is hard to imagine that we could outlast the U.S. on this, but the reality is that some of the big producers like Georgia-Pacific and International Paper were actually bailing out of this coalition in the United States. They were the people with the big bank roll. They were financing the coalition to challenge this agreement.

If the government had stuck to its guns the way it had said it was going to do when it was in opposition and said $5.3 billion, no money to the U.S., then we may have found that the U.S. coalition might have started to tire of this.

I know it is hard to conceive that we would tire them out, but they are just as tired of this as we are and we are winning in every single way. I think the government should have done its intelligence and its strategic thinking a little better and I think there was an option there to say that we were going to outlast them. I think the deal is a bad one and should be rejected by the government.

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, September 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in the debate on the softwood lumber deal.

I feel for those members who have sawmills in their ridings and the companies tell them it is a rotten deal, but they have on to sign it. The reality is the industry has been coerced and pressured into supporting this deal. They have been coerced because the Conservative government has said that it would cut off support to the lumber industry. What kind of a deal is that? What kind of support is that for the lumber industry?

There are two issues here. First, why would we cut a deal? Second, if we have cut a deal, is this a good deal? I will deal with the first question.

When the Conservative Party was in opposition, how many times did we hear it ask why we would cut a deal when we had been winning all the objective panels under the NAFTA. Now the Conservatives are saying that we have to cut a deal because it is in our best interests.

First, it is contrary to the NAFTA. NAFTA is meant to provide free and fair trade. Does it do that? Of course it does not. Also, the most important thing is that it perpetuates a lie. This point was made very clearly and very well by the Free Trade Lumber Council. The lie is that we subsidize softwood lumber in Canada. That has been shown time and time again by lumber one, two, three and four. Every objective panel, panels which have Americans sitting on them, have said that we are not subsidizing lumber in Canada.

Also, we have prevailed in every NAFTA panel, an objective review, and these panels have concluded consistently that we do not subsidize our lumber in Canada. Canada has followed the dispute settlement mechanisms that are laid out between Canada, the United States and Mexico.

The other thing that is terrible about this deal is that it sets a horrible precedent. That is where we as parliamentarians, notwithstanding what the industry or communities might say, are charged to deal with the national interests of Canada. If the U.S. can win this dispute, where we have consistently shown there is no subsidy, what does that mean for other products, for other sectors? The Americans will look upon this and say that if they can cut a deal on softwood lumber, they can cut a deal on plastics or on steel because with lumber the Canadians were well ahead. They have proved the case time and time again.

This is a horrible precedent. This is a sad day for Canada. It is another way in which the Conservative government has capitulated to the U.S. interests and to their love affair with the Republicans south of the border.

If we cut a deal, which it looks like the government has and it is the wrong approach to take, how good is it or how bad is it? First, how often did we hear the Conservative Party, when in opposition, ask us why would we not fight for $5.3 billion in the tariffs to be recovered by the Canadian producers. Conservatives would argue that we should not leave anything on the table. Now they are leaving $1 billion on the table.

I do not know how the Conservative members can now argue that the industry minister at the time knew the deal and conclude that this is a better deal. The minister then would have been sworn to cabinet confidentiality, so I am not sure they would know the details of the deal. Even if it is a slightly better deal, who knows, it is still a bad deal because there was no deal concluded by our Liberal government. There were discussions, but the Conservative government is proceeding with this.

The deal is of short duration. Within two years, the deal can be abrogated by the U.S. producers and by the U.S. government. They can say that they do not like it and that it is not working very well. In the meantime Canadian producers will have backed away from their lawsuits. How do we get that back? We cannot restart those lawsuits. It works very well for the U.S. producers and the U.S. government.

Another point is that the export tax increases as lumber prices decline. Does that really work to the best interests of Canadian producers? I do not think so. It might work for the best interests of the U.S. producers, but the prices have tanked already, from about $450 U.S. per thousand board feet to around $270 U.S. per thousand board feet today and the export taxes are going up. We have the compounded problem of low lumber prices and increased export taxes. Is this in the best interests of Canadian producers? I hardly see that. When lumber prices are low that is when Canadian producers need all the help they can get.

The member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley alluded to another reason why this is a bad deal and that is the anti-circumvention article. In a nutshell, this clause robs Canadians, within their federal government and their provinces, of sovereignty when it comes to forest policy. The U.S. is basically saying that if Canada does not do things the way it does things, then clearly Canada is subsidizing. I know for a fact that the auctioning of timber in the United States is not exactly a perfect market. Companies have bid on federal forestry timber and have been let off the hook later when pricing did not quite work to their advantage.

I have worked in the forest products industry. If a forest company wants to set up a lumber mill, an OSB bill, an MDF mill, or a pulp mill in Tennessee or Mississippi, the American government will put all sorts of incentives into its hands, whether they be sales tax abatements, property tax abatements, subsidized cogeneration energy, tax holidays of various descriptions, a whole range of things. Under our process, we cannot look at U.S. subsidies. We can only respond to the process in place, and that is fair enough because we agreed to that. However, the Americans should at least respect the process that is in place.

Is it too much to concede or believe that Canada might have a comparative advantage in softwood lumber? Our U.S. friends and neighbours to the south cannot seem to get a grip on this. I am prepared to say to the United States that perhaps it has a comparative advantage in IT or in other industries. However, Canada has a comparative advantage in softwood lumber.

A study done a few years ago showed that, in terms of total factor productivity, Canada's forest industry was 40% more productive than the U.S. forest industry. The problem the United States has is with the little sawmill in Portland or in Montana. What does it do with the workers if they are getting over blown by a very competitive industry in Canada. That is a U.S. problem and it has to deal with that.

There are other examples such as in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which was a big commodity steel player. Steel companies could not compete with commodity steel because of the Asian producers. They became niche players and higher value-added players. Then Pittsburgh became a huge IT economy.

This is not our problem and it should not be laid at our feet. There are sawmills in the United States which cannot compete with our highly efficient mills. I have been to many mills in Canada and many mills in the United States. We should pride ourselves on the fact that we have some of the best sawmills in the world. The United States is now telling us that we are going to pay for this because of the softwood lumber deal.

We should never have cut a deal. This is a bad deal, and we should reject it on behalf of all Canadians.

[Youth Internship Program, September 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, since 1997 the YMCA has been providing a great service to young people with the federal public sector youth internship program.

Delivered in partnership with the Government of Canada, the YMCA is creating the opportunity for thousands of young people to gain valuable employment skills, training and internship experiences.

This program targets the people who need it most: young dropouts and people transitioning from school—either high school or university—to the labour market.

Ten young people from Etobicoke benefited from this program and can see the path to a more secure future for themselves and their families. Without this program, they might still be struggling to find their way.

The Minister of Human Resources and Social Development must renew this program today so the YMCA can continue to provide this opportunity to our young people for years to come.