Roy Cullen

[Criminal Code, June 6th, 2006]

The thing the member should remember is that the Constitution was repatriated some years ago with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The only option available to Parliament then would be to override that and use the notwithstanding clause, something I would not support. I do not think it was designed for the federal government to override the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

[Criminal Code, June 6th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I know the member for Wild Rose has been in the House for a while. It is true that I was elected in 1996 and at that time the gun law had already been passed, but I supported it nonetheless.

The member makes the same classic mistake or deliberately tries to mislead Canadians by saying that the gun registry was positioned as something that was going to solve gun crime. I am sure the minister at the time, Mr. Rock, never said that. If the member for Wild Rose has copies of Hansard he would like to produce that show the former Minister of Justice at the time saying that the gun registry was going to solve the problem of gun crime, I would very much like to see it because he did not say that, I am sure.

The second question the member asked surprised me as he has been around here for a while. With regard to the issue of whether the penalty fits the crime, ultimately if Parliament passes certain laws and are challenged in the courts, perhaps up to the Supreme Court of Canada, it will be the courts that decide whether the punishment fits the crime.

[Criminal Code, June 6th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in this discussion on mandatory minimum sentences.

It was our Liberal government that tabled a number of changes to the laws to deal with the recent increase in gun related crime. My riding of Etobicoke North has been faced with a lot of that type of activity. Unfortunately, we have had a lot of drug related and gang related crime. A little over 100 people were arrested in a police bust in Rexdale in my riding recently. They were allegedly involved with guns, drugs and trafficking and many other horrendous crimes. I was pleased to see them arrested. The justice system will now have to process those individuals and determine their guilt or innocence.

There has been far too much gun related crime in Toronto. That is why I supported our government's tabling of an increase in mandatory minimum sentences and a whole package of measures designed to deal with the increase in gun violence.

My colleague on this side of the House made a very interesting point. We are dealing with gun violence here, but in many other cities in Canada a gun is not the weapon of choice. I am told that in cities like Regina knives seem to be the weapon of choice. Nonetheless, I am certainly prepared to support in the first instance some measures to counteract gun violence.

What members opposite have not been taking into account significantly enough in my judgment is that we need to deal with this issue with a broadly based holistic approach. Our approach included putting more money into our national crime prevention program which works very well.

There are a number of community based programs in my riding where the objective is to try to reach young people. Many of them are from dysfunctional families, homes where one parent is working, homes where there is a history of abuse and violence. The programs provide them with an outlet after school where they can get involved in things like learning how to use a computer, basketball, arts and crafts, programs like that. The idea is to keep them away from the malls where they go after school and get involved with their peers in gangs and drugs and violence. They end up taking the wrong path instead of trying to become constructive members of our society. That is something we have stressed. Let me give the House an example.

In addition to the national crime prevention program that is under way in my riding, there is another program, Breaking the Cycle, which is funded by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. It works with young men and women who want to get out of a gang. It provides them with the support they need. It is very difficult to exit a gang because of the peer pressure. Besides trying to leave a gang, the young people may not have finished their schooling and may not be able to get a job.

The program is working very successfully. A graduation ceremony was held in January when 15 or so young people graduated. They are now taking the message out to their peers that they do not need to become members of a gang, that they can live productive and happy lives.

That is part and parcel of the integrated approach that our Liberal government proposed. It is not just a matter of locking up people and throwing away the key. We have to get tougher and I am supportive of tougher measures, but the measures have to align themselves with the charter. A provision in the charter says that the penalty must match the crime.

I will certainly be studying the bill before us today. I know the committee will be studying it, as will my colleagues who are more intimately involved with the review. I have to wonder if the provisions that have been tabled will meet the charter test because without that, we are wasting our time. We can pass all the laws we want, but they will be rejected when they are challenged under the charter, because the penalty will not match the crime.

Our former Liberal government introduced measures and indicated we would introduce measures before the opposition parties brought on the election. We could have had these laws passed today if there had not been an election. The legislation had been tabled and the policies announced to improve our witness protection programs.

I recall talking to the Chief of Police in Toronto, Mr. Blair, who is doing a fine job of trying to deal with some of the criminality in Toronto. He said, “We do not need programs to ship a whole number of people down to South America for plastic surgery and the like. We have some of those programs. We need programs to help people testify anonymously with the protection of the court”. We had worked with the various judicial authorities to bring that into play.

In my riding of Etobicoke North crimes are being committed but people are not coming forward with information. The police know there are witnesses. The police know that people know who committed the crimes but the police cannot get them to volunteer the information. In some cases we understand why they cannot. People are petrified of coming forward. Even though there are anonymous toll-free numbers, people will not come forward. I am glad to see that in the last while more people are coming forward.

We had proposed some enhanced witness protection programs. We also had proposed the reverse onus on bail.

What I hear in my riding of Etobicoke North is that when young people are arrested for dealing in drugs and maybe having an illegal gun, they go to the courts and they are released on bail and in some cases they reoffend.

We had proposed a reverse onus and it had some support. If a person committed a gun crime, the burden of proof would be on the individual who has been arrested to demonstrate to the court that he or she should be released on bail. It would not be the other way, where the burden of proof is on the court to show that the person should not be released on bail. That is something else that we had proposed. I do not know where that is in terms of the Conservative government proposals.

I was very proud that the prime minister at the time, the member for LaSalle—Émard, came to my riding of Etobicoke North and announced that we were going to ban handguns. In the political context of Canada at the time, that was a courageous move. I am sure he knew that the announcement of a ban on handguns might not reverberate very well in parts of rural Canada where guns have become a religion in some cases. He did that and I was very pleased. I can say that it reverberated very well in my riding of Etobicoke North where handguns have become a very big problem.

Some argue that this is the Liberal approach to dealing with gun violence, to ban handguns. Unfortunately that is how the media portrayed it. They conveniently forgot, as did the opposition parties, that the ban on handguns was a part of a whole package of policy initiatives, some of which I have just described: mandatory minimums; looking at witness protection; looking at reverse onus; looking at enhancing our community based programming. The media and the opposition parties said this was the Liberal approach, banning handguns, and they said that the contribution would be minimal.

I would have to admit that banning handguns would provide only a marginal benefit. I would concede that point. But when we are talking about human beings being gunned down in our streets, if we are able to save one life or two lives, then it is worthwhile.

I do know that banning handguns would have had a negative impact on gun collectors. Those people were the primary group who would have been disadvantaged, and it would have been unfortunate. I do not think the Conservative government is going to bring in a ban on handguns, so I am talking about it in the past tense. I think that is a fair assumption to work on.

However, some of the collectors who have purchased handguns totally legally have registered them, totally legally have been licensed to own a gun, and they have stored them in the legal way that they are supposed to. The reality is that in Toronto and perhaps in other municipal centres these criminals know where the guns are. They go in and use dynamite or whatever it takes to get these guns.

We know from statements made by Mayor David Miller and Police Chief Blair in Toronto that many of those handguns were used and have been used in violent crimes in the city of Toronto. So, is it not worthwhile to deal with that particular issue?

We know that handguns that are being used for crime are not registered by criminals. I think this is the point that really frustrates me. It fits within the Conservative Party's set of values to attack the Liberal Party in the sense that the gun registry was supposed to solve the problems with violent crime and gun crimes. The Liberal government never made such a claim. It would be laughable to make that claim.

What we do know for sure is that the police chiefs support the gun registry. Some of the rank and file police officers do not like it but on balance the Canadian Professional Police Association passed a resolution and it supports the gun registry. It supports the gun registry because there are about 5,000 enquiries each and every day from law enforcement people across this great country to the gun registry. Police officers find it a useful tool.

Is it the tool that is going to end gun violence in Canada? Let us be serious. Of course, we know that it is not going to eliminate gun violence in Canada but it is a useful tool.

We would think that the Conservatives would understand economics but they do not. There is a concept in economics called sunk cost. It did cost more than it should have to build the gun registry system. Over a number of years, the total if we add it all up over many years, the development costs are pushing a billion dollars. It could have cost less. There are reasons for that which most Canadians understand now and that is the way that the project was conceived and designed.

We think that cost overruns on major systems development projects are something unique to the Canada Firearms Centre or to the federal government in terms of the gun registry. Believe me, I have seen in the private sector more megasystems projects blown in terms of their budgets that we can shake a stick at.

Does it make it right? Of course not. When we get into a megasystems development project, we can have problems. We can have problems because we do not define the business processes clearly enough, we do not lock into place the policy quickly enough, and we may have a moving target which starts to escalate into cost overruns.

We also know that there are many gun users in Canada who deliberately tried to subvert the gun registry by submitting forms which they knew were wrong and then getting them back and forth, so they had to recorrect them and recorrect them. This was a deliberate step to overburden the Canada Firearms Centre with a lot of extra work. We know that this was a mischievous thing that was done.

That does not explain the whole issue of the cost overruns in the gun registry but the point I am getting at is that it is a sunk cost. Whatever has been spent to build the gun registry, the money is gone. We cannot bring it back.

Therefore the question is this. Is the gun registry serving any useful purpose today? Is it being managed in a fiscally responsible way? The answer to both those questions, and I hear my colleagues who have the right answer, is yes. It is because the costs have been managed down now to an annual operating cost of around $20 million a year. That is the cost of operating the gun registry.

The members opposite often get mixed up or deliberately try to confuse Canadians about gun licensing. I know that they are not thinking about disbanding the gun licensing. I hope they are not talking about that because individuals who want to buy a gun must go through a police check, determine if they are stable enough to own a gun, and then they get a licence if they are successful in that.

The Canadian Firearms Centre has rejected about 8,000 applications over the last few years because the people had some record of criminality or violence in the past, so presumably we should not get rid of licensing.

If we look at the total cost of the Canadian Firearms Centre, the annual cost of operating it is around $80 million, of which $20 million is for the gun registry. The other $60 million is for the licensing. There are 5,000 enquiries per day from law enforcement officers. Where they find it useful, and I know the members opposite know this, is particularly on domestic violence calls. They go onto the gun registry and it helps them because they know that if there are guns registered then they have a different problem if they are going to that domestic violence call.

Of course some would say that some people have not registered their guns. They should give police the benefit of the doubt. They are intelligent people. They know that if they go onto the gun registry and they do not see any guns registered at that home, it is not a slam dunk case that there are no guns there because the guns could be there illegally and not registered. This is not rocket science.

The point is that it is a tool and it is a useful tool. The police, rather than these armchair quarterbacks, are in the trenches day in and day out. They know what works. They know what is of value to them. How can these armchair quarterbacks decide what is a useful tool for the police and what is not? The police support the gun registry.

Conveniently, the Conservatives are saying that they will only eliminate the long gun registry. Well that is convenient because long guns happen to fit into the profile of the people who support them in their constituencies.

They say they will still register the handguns, but here is an interesting fact. I think I heard a misquote in this House earlier that long guns are responsible for more murder and suicides in Canada than handguns. One might say that does not sound right. Intuitively that sounds wrong, that handguns are the problem.

The point is that we know that in rural parts of Canada there are a lot of long guns around. Some of them are needed for hunting or whatever, and in many cases they could be registered, but the point is that in cases of domestic violence or suicides, people use these long guns to commit these crimes.

For the Conservative Party to conveniently say it is not going to register long guns, which we know politically is a very beneficial position for it to take, ignores the fact that long guns are involved in a lot of crime and criminality in Canada as well, so it is not a very good solution.

The point I want to make is that we must ensure that laws meet the test of the charter. We must deal with mandatory minimums, but we must deal with a whole suite of solutions. That includes local people and communities taking responsibility.

I am glad to see that in my riding of Etobicoke North, the local churches and community groups are saying that they have to take some personal responsibility and get involved in gun-related violence. We are seeing that happen. It cannot all be government. It has to be the people and their families. It has to start in the churches, in the gurdwaras, in the temples, in the mosques and in the synagogues. It has to start in the schools and in the homes.

We incarcerate people for a long period of time and when they come out, they are criminals again, so let us look at this in a sensible way and an intelligent way. I will certainly be interested to see if what is proposed today meets the test of the charter and whether it is going to get people off the streets who are using guns, who are involved in drugs and committing these violent crimes.

[EnerGuide, June 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the recent cancellation of the popular and effective EnerGuide for houses programs has taken many by surprise and has left experts and ordinary Canadians alike scratching their heads.

Clifford Maynes, executive director of Green Communities Canada, has said that the cancellation of the EnerGuide program “has the potential to set back the cause of residential energy efficiency in this country by a decade or more”.

Geoff Lorentz, a councillor on Kitchener's environmental advisory committee, agrees that the EnerGuide program achieves energy savings of up to 30% and asks, “Why would you cut a program like that? This is a valued program. It is great for the community and great for the country”.

We know that the EnerGuide programs were working. The experts know it. Everyday Canadians know it. I guess the only people who don't get it are in the Conservative Party.

[Business of Supply, June 1st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would say to the member for Shefford that I agree that gas prices are an important issue for all Canadians. However, we must compare gas prices in Canada with those in Europe, for example.

What members of our caucus said was that we wanted some additional teeth put into the competition act. The government responded and tabled the legislation to change the burden of proof from a criminal one to a civil one. I hope the Conservative government moves forward with that initiative.

We need to protect consumers but we also need to understand that there is a real world out there and we can only protect citizens from things that are logically under our control.

[Business of Supply, June 1st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I greatly appreciate the comment of the hon. member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup.

As I said previously, some aspects of the motion before the House today fall within the jurisdiction of the federal government. However, the motion also contains aspects that provincial governments can do something about, for instance when it comes to setting gasoline prices at the retail outlets.

As I have also said, our government has set up an agency to track gas prices and ensure a follow-up, so as to keep the public informed.

I come back to the point that the Conservative government has options it can exercise, which I would agree with, but I think the motion is fundamentally flawed the way it is presented to the House today.

[Business of Supply, June 1st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, in the short time remaining I will summarize what I said earlier and perhaps add a point or two. The motion before the House is flawed. There are resolutions to this issue through the provincial governments by regulating prices at the pumps, and there are solutions available from the Conservative Party based on its own pledges and its own position while it was in opposition.

I was getting to the point of talking about how I think energy costs are inexorably on the rise. It is a matter of supply and demand. There are some who are saying that we are entering a point of what we call peak oil. In other words, the oil supply has peaked. There are other professionals who debate that. Nonetheless, we know that more demand and less supply moves the price upward.

I think that what we need to do, as I was mentioning earlier, is look at alternatives to conventional petroleum products. We need to look at biofuels, hybrids and fuel cells. That is why the Liberal government supported the research and development being undertaken by Ballard fuel systems. We need to look at solutions like hydrogen and a whole range of other technologies to help bring forward different types of fuels that will reduce the demand for the typical hydrocarbon solutions.

Finally, in conclusion, I would like to point out that with respect to a monitoring agency, in October 2005 our Liberal government introduced measures to strengthen transparency by announcing an office of energy price information to monitor energy price fluctuations and to provide clear information to the Canadian public. Also, funds were allocated to Industry Canada to beef up the Competition Bureau in its examination of questions that come up from time to time with respect to gasoline pricing.

I hope the government follows through with those initiatives because I think they will help, but I think the motion before the House today is flawed and I certainly will be voting against it.

[Business of Supply, June 1st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the discussion on the motion by the Bloc Québécois. I find the motion to be strangely ironic for a party that is always very sensitive around provincial and federal jurisdiction. Those members know full well that it is within the jurisdiction of the province to regulate prices at the pumps. In fact there are a couple of provinces that have tried that, not with very much success. If the Parti Québécois in Quebec City wants to deal with gas prices and regulate the price at the pump, it is a matter within provincial jurisdiction.

The part that is in the federal jurisdiction has to do with the competition policy and the Competition Bureau. The bureau monitors the activities within the retail gasoline sector. There have been many investigations. The industry is an oligopoly. There are a small number of participants. Clearly they do not sit around at Tim Hortons and decide what the price of gasoline is going to be every morning. It is fair to say there is some regional pricing that is set through price leading and price following.

Our caucus, under the leadership of my colleague from Pickering--Scarborough East, did a major review of gasoline pricing some years ago. One of the things we had suggested was to change the burden of proof under the Competition Act from a standard of criminal performance test to one of civil, so if there was any collusion or price fixing, then the burden of proof would be somewhat less onerous as a civil test rather than a criminal test. That legislation was tabled by our government. I am hoping that the Conservative Party will follow through on that.

The other thing I find strangely ironic is that the Conservative Party, when it was in opposition, was making this fine distinction between what was in the last platform and the platform before, and what was said four years ago versus what was said three years ago. It is a fine point that does not really resonate with me and I do not think it really resonates with Canadians. The reality is that the Conservative Party said it would cap the GST on prices above 85¢ and it has not done that. I have not seen any legislation to launch that initiative.

The Conservatives have also said in the past that they would eliminate the 1.5¢ a litre that was brought in by our government to deal with the deficit. Of course we know that the deficit has been eliminated because of the good financial management of the Liberal government. There is an argument to eliminate the 1.5¢ a litre that was brought in to eliminate the deficit, but I have not seen any proposals from the Conservative Party to do that, even though in opposition the Conservatives thought this was a very good idea.

We in our party, on the other hand, thought that a 1.5¢ reduction would be gobbled up at the pumps in one afternoon by the oil companies. We were not convinced by any stretch of the imagination that the 1.5¢ would go back to the gasoline buying public. In lieu of that, we brought in an energy rebate that dealt with all energy products. It provided rebates to Canadians, especially low income and middle income Canadians. We know they benefited from that. As I said, we were convinced that a 1.5¢ reduction at the pumps would be gobbled up in one afternoon.

The other thing the Conservative Party has proposed is to eliminate the tax on the tax, the GST on the GST. Unless I have missed something, I have not seen any proposals in the House along those lines either. That is something for which the Conservatives argued very strenuously in opposition.

What I am saying is that the Conservative Party has ways to respond to this motion. The Bloc Québécois is proposing solutions when the solutions actually lie right within the government in Quebec City. The Liberal government right now could do this under pressure from the Parti Québécois; it actually regulates gas prices. Personally I do not think it is a viable alternative but I have not heard in any of the Bloc members' remarks that they have looked at this in any detail.

Certainly the question of a surtax on the oil companies is misguided. We often hear profit numbers from the oil industry, but to be reasonable, we have to equate profits to investment and we know that the oil industry in Canada is highly capital intensive. Huge amounts of capital have been invested. The companies are right to have a return, as are their shareholders. Before implementing any surtax on oil companies, I think we need to do a little more homework on what the profits are in relation to the assets deployed. It takes a huge amount of capital to invest in refineries, to invest in exploration activities and to invest in oil extraction operations.

I think this surtax is somewhat misguided as well, so certainly I will be voting against the motion, but I believe that what we need to be doing is facing reality. While I can empathize with people paying these higher gasoline prices at the pump--and I am one of them--we need to understand that the days of low energy prices are over, regrettably. We have to look at the situation in Canada as well. We have to realize and appreciate that gasoline prices in Canada do not even come close to what one would pay at the pumps in Europe. We are blessed in that sense.

Of course the pricing is highly volatile, and I think that is what makes Canadians angry. They see the volatility and the pricing change over the long weekends. That is a function of supply and demand. Of course we know that over the long weekends there is going to be more demand for gasoline. The supply constraint is there, so prices go up. It is not exactly rocket science. It is economics 101.

We should be looking at alternative energy and alternative fuels. The government announced something with respect to methanol, biodiesel and biofuels, which is a start, but it was announced in the context of reducing greenhouse gases, and we know that the contribution to greenhouse gas reduction from biofuels is very minimal. It is true that the output from a car or a truck that uses ethanol is cleaner, but with all the technology today in cars and trucks it really is a marginal improvement in the noxious emissions. Biofuels are good in terms of agricultural policy, but in terms of greenhouse gases I think the benefit is minimal. In terms of clean air, I think the benefits are minimal as well.

We should be looking at alternative energy like hybrid fuels. I hope the government brings in an incentive to bridge the gap between the price of a hybrid vehicle and the price of a conventional vehicle. We know there is quite a spread in the prices. For many Canadian citizens it is hard to come up with $8,000 or $10,000 more to get a cleaner fuel in their vehicle. That is where I think the federal government could play a role in providing either a bridging grant or a tax credit to help Canadians move to hybrids. There are many other technologies.

I see that my time is up temporarily, until after question period, and I will continue after that.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, May 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Burnaby—Douglas questioned the funding in the budget for work in Afghanistan.

We had a vote in the House last night. I respect the point of view of many of my colleagues and others in the House who voted against the motion. I supported the motion for two basic reasons.

First, I think it is important for Canada to be in Afghanistan. Second, it is important for our government to play a role in the world. I supported our government when we did not go into Iraq, but I believe we have a role to play in Afghanistan.

The Afghani people are asking for our help. If we look at other aspects as well, we know that in Afghanistan there are the poppy fields and the drug trade that comes out of there is enormous. We have to deal with that issue. We know that terrorists are embedded in that country and Canada cannot claim immunity from terrorism. We know we are on al-Qaeda's list. Canada has a contribution to make. Being in Afghanistan is a contribution that we can make.

I supported the motion last night because it is important that Canada be in Afghanistan. If we are realistic, we have to understand that this mission could go beyond two more years. For me, it was that kind of fundamental question. However, because of the process of putting this before the House with such short notice, I can appreciate why many of my colleagues voted against it.

Would the member for Burnaby--Douglas comment on why he would object to Canada spending money in Afghanistan, which is uplifting the lives of women, giving people more human rights and freedom, giving them the opportunity to build democratic institutions and dealing with terrorism? The Afghani government has asked for our help. Why would he deny them that help?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, May 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary mentioned the tax reductions in the budget as being larger tax cuts than what were in the last two budgets of the Liberal government.

She failed to mention that in 2000 the Liberal government introduced and implemented the largest tax cut in Canadian history of $100 billion. That was focused at income tax reductions which every serious economist in this country has said is the way that we should proceed, that if we are going to reduce taxes, we should reduce income taxes. The Conservative government has decided to reduce the GST because it is politically expedient.

The member also failed to acknowledge the economic performance under the Liberal government. She was not very gracious in her remarks about that. I wonder if she would reflect upon that and recall that during our Liberal government tenure we had consistent economic growth of 3% per year. We introduced and implemented the largest tax cut in Canadian history. We paid down $55 billion in debt. We eliminated a $42 billion deficit. The economy produced the lowest level of unemployment in Canada's history in the last 40 or 50 years.

I am wondering if the member has forgotten those particular elements because we hear often about the last 12 or 13 years of the Liberal mandate.

Maybe the member could acknowledge those in her remarks when she replies, but if she does not, I wonder if she would comment on the two year horizon that the government is working on in terms of its fiscal plan. Is that because the Conservatives do not really want to outline for Canadians what their plan is beyond that? Certainly the press and very good analysts are speculating that another $20 billion in cuts are coming from the government. I am wondering where those cuts are going to come from and is that the reason the current government is on a two year horizon instead of a five year planning horizon?