Ken Epp

[Sex Offender Information Registration Act, March 31st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, we need to read the bill. I urge the member to read it. It says, “A sex offender shall report for the first time under an order, in person, to the registration centre within 15 days”. Then there are different items listed and one of them, part (d) says after “they are released from custody after serving the custodial portion of a sentence”.

I looked for the part about actually making an initial registry while they are incarcerated and I cannot find it. If he knows it is there, that is great but I would like to see it. I cannot find it and I do not believe it is there. That is why I was so very much opposed to this.

Furthermore, it says in paragraph 6(2), “Notification shall be by registered mail or any means authorized by the lieutenant governor in council of the province”. Then it says, “a sex offender may not be required to provide notification in person”.

Therefore, the bill even states that the provinces cannot pass a law that states that the offender must physically, personally show up. That is wrong.

[Sex Offender Information Registration Act, March 31st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I was on a roll about all the things that are wrong with this bill and I am not even a critic in this area. I just walked in here, asked a page to give me a copy of the bill so that I could speak intelligently on it and got as far as page two in my speech. I would like to have the opportunity to go right to the end of the bill, there are so many things that are so offensive in it. I do not understand how this member, who generally stands up for the family, for marriage and for the protection of citizens, at least in words, would even contemplate being in favour of this bill.

One of the most absurd things in the bill is that the offender is required to show up 15 days after he is released to tell things like his name, his aliases, if there are any, and any distinguishing marks on his body. He has to tell them. This is not rocket science. They have the guy in custody. Surely they know his name. Surely if he has some distinguishing marks on his body, they could detect them. Why not have a bill which provides that the police, the officials at the prison where he is being kept or the institution enter this information? Why do we have say he has to register it?

There is also a deal about penalties if the offenders do not register: We have to go find them again. Generally these are people who commit crime after crime of this nature. How many more offences will this person commit before he ever registers and how is that going to help the police to conduct an investigation on those new crimes after he is released?

[Sex Offender Information Registration Act, March 31st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to see in the principles a statement that the primary purpose of the bill is to protect innocent people, to protect the citizens of our country from sexual predators. I would like to see the bill have a clause in it that says that any known sexual offenders in our country, and there are many of them who are known, would automatically go into the registry.

What is the point of having a registry if all of the present offenders are not in it? That is the purpose of it, is it not, to identify people who have offended before? If we break it down to just the bare bones purpose stated in this bill it is to help the police do their investigation. How does it help them if it is an empty registry, until it slowly grows over the next years?

I have many more. Could I have another minute? Mr. Speaker, could you ask for unanimous consent?

[Sex Offender Information Registration Act, March 31st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, of course, if there are amendments, and there will be amendments from our party, if those amendments are taken seriously and are accepted as being reasonable amendments to improve the legislation, if sufficient work is done on it to improve the bill to make it palatable, I do not have a closed mind on this. I like to look at bills and motions and evaluate them for what they are.

Where the bill is right now, I cannot support it, anymore than when I was in trucking and my boss would pay me to go from here to a place 400 miles away and return with the same empty truck. We were paid to pick up a load, not just to drive there and back. This is what the bill does. It has the label and the pages but the words on the pages do not do what they should be doing. Consequently, yes, I am forced on principle to vote against the bill because it does not do anything. It only has the labels.

I would like to encourage the member and other members in the Liberal Party, when they work on the bill in committee, to put partisanship aside and if amendments come across from our party or other opposition parties, as well as their own backbenchers, that they will listen to them. The member in particular knows how open the government is to seriously considering amendments that are made in committee. He has learned that very well in Bill C-13 in the last little while.

I am not very hopeful. It just does not happen around here. It should but it does not. However that is my answer to the question.

[Sex Offender Information Registration Act, March 31st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, this is a topic where the rights of Canadians are at stake and until we get it right we need to keep on pushing the government. I will quickly reiterate the main points that some of my colleagues have indicated. One of them is the importance of such legislation and also the tardiness of the government in bringing it forward.

For a long time, our policy has been that there should be such a registry for the protection of society, which is the main goal of our justice system. We would to ensure that the registry is used to prevent the criminal from reoffending which in the case of sexual offences, unfortunately, is one of the higher rates or recidivism. It is important that these people be held to account for the safety of our society.

Our party moved this motion on a supply day a little over two years ago and the House voted in favour of it. The motion said that such a registry be established by January 30, 2002 and it is now March 31, 2003. We really need to wonder when a government is that slow on such a relatively simple bill that it would first of all take so long to do it and then do such a colossally bad job of it.

When I was an instructor, if my students asked for an extension of time it was because they wanted to do a better job on their assignment. The government has taken an extension of over a year and it still fails the assignment because it does not accomplish what it was intended to do.

I will not reiterate all of the points that my colleagues have made. The bill is not that large. Sometimes we get bills which are a couple of inches thick. This one is relatively short.

I would like to make a few comments from the bill as I read it. First of all I am struck by the fact that the principle in the bill is not to protect society, innocent victims, or women and children who are usually victims of sexual offences. It states in clause 2(1):

The purpose of this Act is to help police services investigate crimes of a sexual nature by requiring the registration of certain information relating to sex offenders.

The purpose is not to protect society; it is to help the police investigate after it has happened. The government has it backwards. We must work to prevent these crimes. We must protect our women, children, and young boys who are sometimes the object of sexual predators. Instead, what the government does is introduce a bill and make it like it is a big deal when its purpose is only to investigate after the crime has occurred. The government has a failing grade on this particular bill.

Just as an aside, and I hate to accuse the Liberals, the justice minister and others of improper motives. I hate to do that, but I see politics written all over the bill. The Liberals have introduced a bill entitled “An act respecting the registration of information relating to sex offenders...” Therefore, it would be a sex offenders registry.

At the next election I can see the Liberal candidate in my riding running around and telling people not to vote for me because I voted against the sex registry. Saying so does not make it so. This legislation has the label, but the contents are devoid of any effectiveness in solving the problem. I would be remiss to vote in favour of the bill because it has serious flaws. Yet, because it has the label this is how the government is going to use it. Can members imagine using an issue like this for political purposes? I object to that very strenuously.

If the next part were not true it would be funny. The bill begins by requiring that there be a registration of accurate information. We know how accurate the government's registration system is with the gun registry. I sure wish the government more success here.

The bill goes on to say that the privacy interests of sex offenders would be protected. I have a small amount of sympathy for that. I do not believe in making a public spectacle of a person who has wronged society, but I sure believe in ensuring that the public is aware of who is in their midst. It is an error in the bill to put the privacy rights of the offender at such a high level without balancing it with the important rights of a community to know who is living there.

There is another serious flaw in this legislation and it reminds me of a story I heard. A man took his young boy to the post office where there were pictures of individuals who were wanted. These posters indicated that if anybody had information on the whereabouts of these individuals the police should be called so they could be arrested. This little boy, who was probably four or five years old, asked his dad why these men were not kept by the police when their picture was taken. That is funny in a way. Obviously, the police had the individuals because they had their pictures.

Bill C-23 would not require police officers to report into the database anything they know. Instead, it would require offenders to report. In other words, the bill says that when offenders are convicted of a crime and when those individuals are released they must show up at a registration centre within 15 days and provide accurate information. That is wonderful. It is in the bill. Hansard does not record cynicism or sarcasm, and I must say here in brackets that the member “was dripping with sarcasm” when he said that offenders had so much regard for the law when they forced other persons into a sexual act against their will at gun point or at knife point.

That is a very serious crime. That is how much respect those individuals have for the law. We now expect them to show up within 15 days to register and tell the registry person everything in order to have accurate information. This begs the question: Will the persons show up at all? Will they give accurate information? We certainly hope so.

I must draw the House's attention to another clause. As a mathematician and one who plays a bit with logic games, clause 3.(2) blows me away. It says:

For the purposes of this Act, a crime is of a sexual nature if it consists of one or more acts that (a) are either sexual in nature...

That is a circular argument; it is a circular definition. It is like saying that a circle is round because a circle is round. One cannot engage in that type of flippant definition in a bill that is so serious and be taken seriously by Canadians.

[Canada Transportation Act, March 28th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I believe there was a previous decision that if we came to the vote collapsing that the vote was already asked for and deferred until next week.

[Canada Transportation Act, March 28th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, the reason I said that is that there are so many attacks on our children in these days in our society. Every time we try to do something about it what we get from the other side, and now even from the member speaking on behalf of the PCs in the corner, are all the reasons why we cannot do it.

I would just love to see that attitude changed. I would like to see the people on the government side say, yes, our children are important, as she said, and yes, we want to take measures to protect them, as she said, but then, instead of saying “we cannot do it, we cannot do it”, I would like them to say, “And we will leave no stone unturned until it is done. We will work on it to find a way that will work instead of making excuses as to why it cannot”.

I want to be rather specific here on some of the reasons given for not supporting the legislation. One of the things both speakers talked about was that it was unenforceable. That is just not true. The member from the PCs just said that someone could just get into a car and drive into the States and then go to another country. Lots of luck: Getting across the border into the United States these days is not that easy.

For a number of years already, people have been required, if going on an international trip by airplane or across the border into the States at the border by car, to prove that they have legal custody and that their possession, if we want to use that term, of the child is valid. That is done right now, so why is it so difficult to say that if people are boarding an airplane they will have to show some documentation to prove that they are the legal custodial parent or legally entitled to have the custody of this child?

For example, I might get on an airplane with my little grandson. There is nothing wrong at all with me having a certificate or a letter or something that says, “Yes, grampa can take his grandson to Vancouver”. That is fine. There is nothing wrong with that. I have to do that if I want to take the kid to Seattle, so why not to Vancouver? It is not that big a deal. Instead, we get a bunch of excuses that the government will not do it. We get the same thing with the sex registry. The government says it is going to have a big sex offender registry but it is not going to put anybody on it. This is stupid. What is a computer going to do? It is a giant paperweight if it is not used for a reasonable purpose.

We always are given all of these reasons for why we cannot implement procedures to protect our children from attack. This is doubly important nowadays because of the fact that we have such an intrusion into our lives and into our homes by things like television and the Internet, which are very, very evil, and I am going to use that word. They are evil. We have totally lost the moral perspective on how we deal with each other with regard to sexuality and now we are getting it with children. I cannot believe it. Adults who want to have sex with children are getting onto the Internet. It is being used to lure these children.

It is so easy because children are so trusting. The other day I was standing with other people milling around and suddenly I felt something on my leg. It was a little toddler, probably about two years old, who did not realize that he had grabbed my leg instead of his dad's. How trusting. Those two year old and three year old children totally trust the adults in their life. When they get to be five or six they start generating a little bit of the self-protective mechanisms, but in that interval it is our responsibility as adults and as parents and as legal custodians to protect them from people who would betray that trust.

We are not doing it in this country. We are not doing it with our legislation. We are not doing it and we are not serving those children and their protection when a member like the one from Lethbridge brings forward a step, just one, that is going to improve the protection of children and all we can do is stand up and say that we cannot do it. What a pathetic response. I am really totally disgusted with it.

Because it cannot fix everything the government will do nothing. I admit that if this were implemented there would probably still be some abductions. There would still be some people who would engage in forgery and other things that are illegal, but at least two things would happen. First, it would reduce them and we would save some children. Second, there would be a serious breach against persons who broke the rules in order to abduct a child. There would then be another thing on them and they could have the book thrown at them.

We do not need these people in our society, the ones who would steal our children, and use and abuse them. It is time to clamp down on them hard, not continue to say we cannot do anything, let them be and that is okay.

I am not speaking just about my own children and my precious five grandchildren. I am speaking of millions of children in Canada who are looking to us for protection. It is time that we give it. If I were the Liberal government I would not wait for the next election. I would resign. I would say that I am so inadequate at my job that I am quitting to let someone do it who can do it. It is time for it to happen.

I would like to say with respect to the Internet that, unfortunately, I am aware of at least one person who was lured by the Internet. I wish I did not know it but I do. The results are totally devastating to that family. In this particular case it was not a child who was lured, it was an adult. A mother was lured through the Internet to go and meet a guy. What a sad thing that was. If it can happen to an adult, one can bet it can happen to children.

We had better start thinking of all sorts of ways to prevent these predators from getting onto an airplane and moving that trusting child to another location, even within Canada. These excuses we got are lame. The procedures are already in place for international flights. All we have to do is apply them to domestic flights. To say it cannot be done is just the lamest of lame excuses. The fact is that it is very necessary.

I know that some of the members present who have heard my speech have recoiled against it and I apologize. I was very hard on members opposite, but I am challenging them. I am saying to them, for the sake of our children, to vote in favour of this. If it is not good enough let us get it into committee. Let the committee improve it and make it better but let us do something. Let us not just say that this is no good and we will not do it. We will betray our children, let them down, and we will say that here is another success to put on the wall for the predators.

We are on the wrong side of this issue if we say that in debate. Yet, this is exactly what is happening. I appeal to all the Liberal members over on the other side, about 170 of them. They are the ones who have the numbers to control the outcome of these votes.

[Canada Transportation Act, March 28th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I want to begin my speech on this topic with a confession. I want to confess that I had a bad thought when I heard the parliamentary secretary speak to the bill.

This was the awful thought that I had. I hope not, but could it be that the people who are writing these speeches are somehow involved in these crimes and that is why they want to protect them? That is such a bad thought that I have to apologize for even thinking it, but it occurred to me.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2003, March 28th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I am delighted to be able to add critique to the budget that the Liberals are pushing upon us.

We know, of course, that the legislative process, the parliamentary democratic process in the House, is severely limited. It is very unlikely that my speech today is going to change any of the minds of the Liberals. I just wonder how carefully they are listening over there and whether or not my appeal to their reason is going to say, yes, we should change this.

As a matter of fact, it came to me very early in my elected career why we have had such fiscal disasters in this country. Soon after my first election in 1990-93, I was asked by a member of my constituency how come, with all the best economic and accounting minds in the country available to the Department of Finance, we had sunk into such an extremely low level of economic prosperity and such a huge debt.

You will remember, Madam Speaker, that in 1993 it was a great issue. We had so many people who were really concerned that our annual deficits were severely hampering the ability of the government to deliver programs when one dollar out of every four was being spent just on interest. That continues to be so, despite what the government tries to spin in our direction.

I would like to emphasize that the call for deficit reduction and elimination came from us. As a matter of fact, if one were to check the record, one would see that when we first arrived here as Reformers in 1993 and in the next few years while the government continued to add to the debt, it regularly made all sorts of scurrilous comments to us because we had the gall to suggest that there should be balanced budgets.

Now, having done it, the government endlessly gloats about it. I am glad for it. I am glad that we are no longer adding to the debt of our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I am very glad and--in a way I do this often in the House--I give the government a sort of reluctant compliment for having resisted the temptation to spend it all, because that is what Liberals do. It is just part of their nature. I do give them reluctant congratulations for at least not being able to figure out how to spend the billions of dollars coming their way, mostly because of the issues they were against.

We will recall that in 1993, 10 years ago, the Liberals ran that election on two big issues. One was that they were going to kill the crazy free trade agreement. Today it at bigger risk due to the Liberals right now because of their way of engineering the deteriorating relationship with the Americans. One billion dollars a day of our economy depends on that trade. They were against the policy in 1993, but it did work, and now it has brought such prosperity to the country that even the Liberals could not figure out how to spend the money that came our way because of it. Yet they were against it philosophically.

The other issue they ran on in the election was the GST, saying, “We will kill it. We will nullify it. We do not want that tax”. Well, Madam Speaker, we still have it. It is still there. And it is bringing in a lot of money. In my view, it is a huge brake on our economy. I would like to see it reduced. In fact, that is what we have been saying all along. We would like it reduced in stages until it is zero, because it is a huge administrative nightmare for every employer in the country and for every business person. It is a drain on the economy on that account but it does bring in a lot of net revenue to the government, which has used it in order to stop borrowing. That is okay. The government is not borrowing anymore.

However, the Liberals also like to say--and I believe the parliamentary secretary over there can hardly resist heckling and I appreciate that he is so good at resisting--that the government has brought the debt down. The parliamentary secretary himself likes to say, “We have brought the debt down”.

It is curious when we look at the numbers. Despite the fact that revenues are way up, the amount by which the Liberals have reduced the debt is actually less than two of the thefts it has been involved in. I use that word advisedly, but generally when one takes money to which one is not entitled we call it theft, so that is the word I am using. The government took money to which it was not entitled. It took over $40 billion from the EI fund. That is how much it has taken out.

Has it reduced the debt by $40 billion? As a matter of fact, the debt increased from, as I recall, around $508 billion to $583 billion after the Liberals came to power. They reduced the debt, all right, but not by the amounts they took from the EI fund and the civil servants' pension fund.

As a little aside, if you will indulge me, Madam Speaker, I read in the paper the other day that the ex-finance minister, now seeking to become the prime minister, is divesting himself of his shares in his shipping company. I read a little article that said before it happens he wants to get back his pension fund surplus there and have it paid to him as a cash payout. I forget the amount. I think it was around $80 million or something. It is chump change for him, but for most ordinary Canadians it is an astronomical amount of money.

This was done to the federal civil servants while he was the finance minister. The government unilaterally said, “We have a surplus of $30 billion there and we will just take it”. I searched in vain to see where that entered into the public accounts and how it was used to pay the debt. There was no direct connection. Yet between the EI overpayments and the theft of the civil servants' pension surplus, we had $72 billion. If it had all been applied to the debt, then the debt now would be close to where it was when the Liberals took office. Instead, it is still considerably higher. I am disappointed in the budget and in the implementation act we are debating today because of the fact that there is no specific plan to reduce the debt.

I recently read about what happens in this intergenerational transfer. It is very embarrassing to us in our generation. Let us say that I am taking my children and grandchildren out for a picnic. We are on the way to the picnic with my son driving the car while I am in the back with the grandkids. While they are not watching, I reach into their little lunch buckets and eat their sandwiches and take their chocolates and things like that, so that by the time we get to the picnic their baskets are empty. If I were to do that, everybody would say, “What a nasty grandfather that is. Two weeks ago he was bragging about his new grandson and now he is eating out of their lunch and leaving them nothing”.

Collectively, we in our generation, with the government continuing it, by having this huge debt, this is what are we doing to our children and our grandchildren: We are eating their lunch. We are saying that we will enjoy the benefits of all these programs and we will let them pay for it for generations to come, plus interest. I think that is unconscionable.

The fact is that this government, being given huge amounts of money as a surprise, could not figure out how to spend those amounts and therefore had to apply it to the debt. And now it is gloating because it reduced the debt, the debt that it had allowed to grow to such a hugely astronomical amount.

That is one thing, but for it not to have a plan to reduce and eliminate the debt is a tremendous failure on its part. It is the biggest failure because the servicing of the debt is still the biggest expenditure of our government and it is saddled onto the next generations.

[Employment Insurance Act, March 28th, 2003]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-423, an act to amend the Employment Insurance Act.

Madam Speaker, the bill I am introducing today is one of great importance to a number of different people.

First, bills do not stop coming because one loses one's job. My bill would eliminate that two week waiting period. It is a very important issue.

The second thing the bill would do is that if people are denied benefits because they were disqualified, they would get a rebate, as would the employer, of the premiums paid. This is particularly valuable to students.

I have other issues as well but I do not think I should give my whole speech at this time. I will be pleased to do that when 196 comes up on the list.

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