Adam Vaughan

[Criminal Code, October 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I begin my comments by complimenting the member who brought this private member's bill before us. All of us who are seized with this issue recognize the extreme sorrow and difficult personal circumstances that many members of this House bring to this issue. I recognize that speaking to this issue with a great deal of sensitivity is required. In particular, as these events are televised, there are members of our larger community who are also watching the debate tonight, hoping that some of the tragedies in their personal lives have meaning.

I would also reflect upon this issue as it has presented itself to me in my political life. Many in this House may not know that I was a member of the Toronto Police Services Board, which is seized with this issue of impaired driving, drunk driving, in large part because it is the canary in the coal mine. It is quite often members of the service who get into trouble while driving under the influence of alcohol who are starting to show signs of significant other issues which are impairing not only their ability to operate a vehicle in their private life, but to fulfill their duties in their public life as well.

I can recall going case by case through the process as a member of the Toronto Police Services Board, monitoring and listening to some of the professional standards cases and sometimes appeals. I had to adjudicate to make sure that we eradicated not only drunk driving, but also the additional problems that accompany it from the service.

Personal stories were related to us, not by the victims' families, but the families of individuals who were convicted, who were caught drinking and driving. Those stories are the ones that stick with me. I have heard as a journalist, as a member of the community, and as a citizen of this country the horrible stories of the victims' families and those who have survived these terrible incidents, but the people struggling with alcohol have an equally compelling story to tell and it is something which we also must consider as we look at the bill. Those stories are part of a larger problem that we are not addressing.

One of the reasons we do not have a handle on this issue is that criminal behaviour though it may be, sometimes it is not eradicated through the Criminal Code and the courts. Sometimes we need to treat the underlying issues that are creating the situation.

What concerns us on this side of the House about this piece of legislation is that it is part of a pattern that we are starting to see in the approach to the Criminal Code.

First, this is a private member's bill that is changing it. That creates a patchwork of ad hoc changes to the Criminal Code. The Criminal Code is a very complex document which is interwoven and needs to be sustained as a comprehensive document. When we start amending it with one-off private members' bills, we start to unravel a comprehensive system of criminal justice in this country. We are concerned about that, even though we support the general intent of this private member's bill.

The other issue is we know that punishment for this crime alone has not stopped it. While this bill proposes increased sentences, while we support the notion that exceptionally high levels of blood alcohol content should carry a stronger sentence, and that repeat offenders are the most likely to be the most lethal offenders, and while we share that there needs to be graduated and increased progressive punishment on this issue, we know that increasing the sentences in provinces like Prince Edward Island and others has not been a deterrent nor impacted the rate of offence. While it is an important way to deal with this criminal behaviour, it does not necessarily eliminate the behaviour. The reason is that alcohol addiction which may lead to drunk driving is not just a criminal issue; it is fundamentally a medical issue. The addiction is a medical phenomenon as much as anything else.

This is a private member's bill, and therefore, it stands out by itself. We do not see accompanying it an increase in treatment centres. This concerns us. I would hope that in committee or perhaps in consideration of these remarks the government across the way would consider a different approach on this issue. We do not see anything dealing with the regulatory requirements around alcohol acquisition. We do not see accompanying this bill things which would prevent this disease from taking hold of people's lives which puts them in a situation where, through impairment, they may make the horrible decision to drink and drive. Therefore, we think a more comprehensive approach is a more appropriate way to move forward on this bill.

However, we have seen the cases of highly intoxicated people with a pattern of repeat offence, and public safety and justice require us to take these exceptional steps to safeguard our streets and the innocent people on them, protecting people from those who, through their disease and high level of intoxication, are incapable of protecting themselves let alone anybody else. As a result, we will be supporting the bill.

To return again to the notion that mandatory minimum sentences and stronger sentences act as deterrents, we are very skeptical as to whether that will be the impact of the bill. We have heard the conversations and debates on the other side of the House suggesting that a stiffer penalty is all that is required to eliminate certain forms of crime, but it just simply is not true. There is no evidence to support this argument.

We also know that the best way to deal with alcohol addiction, the disease of alcoholism, is not to criminalize the behaviour but to treat it medically. I can tell members that in the city and province I represent, treatment beds are as scarce as scarce can be. They are as scarce as a national housing program.

Part of what we need here are those housing programs, which would provide support as people get out of jail and out of shelters and out of addiction. We need to treat those issues so that we do not end up with impaired people operating vehicles or committing any other crime. We need that second piece in this legislation to give us confidence that the government is truly serious about dealing with the tragedy of operating a vehicle while impaired.

I started my comments by talking about the situation faced by police service boards across this country and how people with extraordinary complications in their lives find themselves behind the wheel drinking and driving. The stories we heard were quite clear: the lack of treatment is fundamentally what is in front of us.

If we really want to prevent impaired people from getting behind the wheel, the answer is not the sentence that lies behind being caught and convicted. It is stopping them from being alcoholics to begin with. It is stopping that level of impairment from taking hold in their lives to begin with. It is this proactive approach that saves not only the lives of the innocent people who might be killed through impaired driving, but also the lives of the people who are seized by alcoholism.

However, we just do not see a comprehensive approach nationally that would support some of the provincial and local efforts. This private member's bill, as a single gesture, is important, and we support it, but unless it becomes part of a comprehensive approach that is proactive in nature and medical in essence, we are not going to solve this problem, and there will be more tragedies.

With those remarks and that analysis, I will resume my seat. I will support this private member's bill, but I do so with reservations.

[Rouge National Urban Park Act, October 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am not aware of a member of any party or any organization suggesting that we close down farms or even shrink the size of them. However, if I recall my history correctly, Bill Davis, who was a Conservative premier of the province, was one of the people who led the fight to expropriate the farms and close them down in favour of the Pickering airport.

Is that yet another reason why the member is skeptical of the Conservative Party's real commitment on this file to preserve these farms?

[Rouge National Urban Park Act, October 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member's speech very carefully and heard her several times suggest skepticism in trusting the government to protect the natural state of this park.

As I mentioned in my earlier question, I was a member of city council. It spent $17 million to add a substantial amount of land to this park. Is she aware that some of the most prominent Conservatives on that city council, people with the last names of Ford, Holyday, who went on to represent the Conservatives in the provincial legislature, Denzil Minnan-Wong, and David Shiner, another Conservative candidate, all voted not only to refuse to protect the land from being converted from a naturalized state into something else but also actually refused to acquire this piece of property to add to the park?

Is that perhaps one of the reasons she is skeptical of the Conservatives, whose members, when they have a chance to add land, to protect the naturalized state, actually vote against the interests of the park, the interests of Scarborough, and the interests of the city of Toronto on this? Is that one of the reasons the member might have some skepticism about the authenticity of the Conservative position?

[Rouge National Urban Park Act, October 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member would care to comment on the proposal that is often put in front of the Toronto City Council vis-à-vis the Toronto Zoo, which is one of the major pieces of property contained within this park.

The proposal comes from people who are not seeking to conserve, and I would use the word “conserve” as in conservative. There are members of council who are not in support of conserving this piece of public property in the hands of city government but rather want to privatize it and send it out the door. In other words, they want to sell the Toronto Zoo, sell a piece of this park, because they do not believe it should be under public ownership or public operation.

Perhaps this is one of the concerns the province also has about the agricultural lands. If we do not protect the agricultural lands from being sold out from the park and do not protect them as part of the park, these too so-called conservatives will not conserve the park and in fact will simply transact it to private sector partners for development.

[Rouge National Urban Park Act, October 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, rather than dwell on past struggles and rather than focus on what is not in the legislation, let us talk about what we can do. My question for the hon. member is this.

I was a member of a city council that voted on about $17 million to put that land into the park. It is great to see it coming to fruition. However, there is this perpetual notion that somehow farmers are about to be evicted. I am unaware of any level of government that wants to evict the farmers or do anything other than protect the park from being sold off at a future date.

Could the member explain to me if he knows of any plan by anybody to evict any farmer on the land in question?

[Rouge National Urban Park Act, October 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, putting aside the very strange comment we just heard from the opposite side, my question is not about whether the Conservatives do or do not support hunting and do or do not support logging. Apparently they do not anymore. That is news, I guess, to many of their party followers.

The issue that I think concerns us all is the environmental standards that have to do with the quality of water, the quality of soil, and the quality of the natural infrastructure.

Does the member share the concern of our party that the federal standards do not speak to water quality and the quality of the biosphere and to whether some of the runoff from local farms may in fact damage the quality of the natural environment we seek to protect with the park designation?

[Military Contribution Against ISIL, October 7th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, as a party, we have supported the need to get military intelligence and the need to train on-the-ground indigenous militia to defend both the refugee camps and national interests, as has been eloquently expressed by the member opposite.

The concern, and the reason that my party is standing in opposition to air strikes, is that we do not know how to measure their success and we do not know their exact mission.

I appreciate that the government cannot define targets and cannot define in debate exactly what the nature of the mission is. However, I think it is a fair question and Canadians deserve an answer on exactly how the success of that mission will be measured. It is the success of that mission that will allow those service personnel and aircraft to return to this country to be deployed elsewhere if needed.

How is the government prepared to measure success and how will it report that success back to the House of Commons? More importantly, what will define that success on an ongoing basis?

[Military Contribution Against ISIL, October 7th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will preface my question with the same remarks. We share the concerns that the member's party has spoken to around the effectiveness of air strikes and also the damage that air strikes can do. As a result, we are taking a position in opposition to using air strikes as a way to resolve the significant challenges in this part of the world.

I am asking the question again through the Speaker. The NDP amendment to the motion says it wishes to transport and supply weapons to people on the ground in the area. The previous member from the same party said they are going to transport those weapons and arm people they met in Turkey over the summer.

That still does not define exactly which forces the NDP seeks to arm, what weapons it seeks to ship, how those weapons would be used, or what accountability there is to make sure we do not just dump more weapons into a troubled area and find them in the wrong hands.

Which groups does the NDP want to arm in this part of the world?

[Military Contribution Against ISIL, October 7th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will repeat a question I asked of another member who rose in the House today.

We share the member's apprehension about bombing. We have clearly seen that bombing one's way to a solution in that part of the world has not led to problems resolving themselves.

We are onside with the call for a much stronger response on the refugee issue both inside the area of conflict and in neighbouring countries, as well as bringing refugees to this country.

The amendment that the NDP has moved raises the issue of transporting weapons. I asked the question earlier and I am looking for an answer. To whom would these weapons be transported? How would these weapons be used? What accountability would be put in place to make sure these weapons do not fall into the hands of yet another group that then causes even more trouble in that part of the world? How would transporting more weapons to that part of the world solve this problem? If that party is opposed to military action, how would those weapons be used in a non-military way?

[Military Contribution Against ISIL, October 7th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, our party and the member's party share a perspective on the urgency and the need for a much more substantial humanitarian gesture and engagement in protecting in particular the refugee camps along the Turkish border. We also share that party's apprehension and worry that the bombings will not result in either an immediate peace, a lasting peace, or a situation stabilized to the point where human rights are respected.

The amendment that the NDP moved calls for the shipment of arms. I am curious as to what arms would be shipped, to whom they would be shipped, if not shipped to some depot, who would they be intended for and how would they be expected to be used?