Alex Atamanenko

[March 4th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I would like some clarification. It is my understanding that as the law exists today, if somebody walks into a store and commits an offence, the shopkeeper is allowed to arrest that person. However, the difference with this bill is that this could now take place subsequent to the fact. According to our current law the person cannot wait for three or four hours and then when he sees that person on the street arrest him or her. That is my understanding of what happened to this poor gentleman in Toronto.

I would like my hon. colleague to clarify this. Is the difference in what is proposed in the law basically the time period? In other words, now there is no time period, so this person could be arrested subsequent to committing the act.

[Agriculture and Agri-Food, March 4th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, our fruit growing industry is indeed troubled. Apple growers are losing money and current farm support programs are just not working. Cheap subsidized U.S. apples are undercutting prices for farmers and more apples from China will soon be flooding our market.

Will the Conservatives commit to ensure that agristability actually works for fruit growers and that current trade agreements do not harm farmers trying to earn a decent living and provide us with good quality food?

[Students at Princeton Secondary School, March 4th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I recently received a letter from Miss Desiree Cosman, a grade 12 law student from Princeton Secondary School.

Des is concerned that young people under the age of 18 are not allowed to vote and, thus, do not have a say in their future.

As a follow-up to her letter, I visited her class and had a chance to discuss this with her and other students. I would like to thank her teacher, John Kitts, for allowing me this opportunity. We talked about related issues and decided that Des and her classmates would draft up some notes for a private member's bill that I could research, draft and present on their behalf.

I would like to thank the students, especially Des and Bobby Gibb who contributed to a lively and productive discussion. I look forward to working with them as we draft this piece of legislation.

In talking with these young students I am reassured that the future of our country is in excellent hands.

[Fruit Growing Industry, March 3rd, 2011]

Madam Speaker, our fruit growing industry is in deep in trouble. B.C. apple growers are making a return of 12¢ a pound while their cost of production is 22¢ per pound. Current farm support programs are too complicated even for accountants to understand and are not paying out. Many farmers have yet to receive program payments they applied for in 2008.

Our trade policies are taking a toll on our fruit growers. Cheap subsidized apples coming in from Washington State are undercutting prices for our farmers. The president of the B.C. Fruit Growers' Association is appalled that the CFIA has approved an import permit from yet another Chinese province. We simply cannot sustain any more apple imports from countries with low production costs, especially those whose standards do not exactly conform with ours.

I call upon the federal government to put Canadian farmers first and to ensure that any current or future trade agreements do not interfere with their ability to earn a decent living and to supply us with good quality food.

[Business of Supply, March 3rd, 2011]

Madam Speaker, as I had mentioned, it is inconceivable that one of the other political parties had over 900,000 votes and it is not represented here. A lot of the young people are members of that party. A lot of young people are members of the major parties. They see that they vote and work hard and not one of their MPs in their cities gets elected. There is something not quite right. We owe it to the future of Canada and our young people to improve our system and to have some kind of proportional representation system.

[Business of Supply, March 3rd, 2011]

Madam Speaker, on the surface is appears logical, but I submit that it is not quite logical. It is more complicated.

The question put in British Columbia on the system that was chosen by the group was a complicated system. Many people did not understand that there were other systems. Many people who advocate this, many in my riding, would like to see a proportional representation system perhaps based more on the mixed model, where voters elect certain people and then there is a list from parties. That might work better than the complicated system we had.

The system that was proposed in B.C. would have taken power away from parties. That is probably why the two major parties did not support it. They thought it would take away from their power base and give more power to people in the ridings. However, it was more complicated.

This may be the finding of the committee, but in my riding it was much more complicated than a system, for example, where we elect a certain amount of MPs, as we do now, and a certain amount are taken from a list reflecting the proportion.

I think if we were to tighten it up, we would have a much stronger system that would truly reflect what Canadians have voted.

[Business of Supply, March 3rd, 2011]

Madam Speaker, before I begin my speech, I would like to thank my colleague, the hon. member for Hamilton Centre for his work and his vision for our country. He was the one who proposed this motion to our caucus. I would like to thank him and offer my congratulations.

The time has come to discuss our electoral system. It is clear that major changes are needed in the Senate. For example, it is inexcusable that a group of unelected senators rejected Bill C-311 on the environment without any, yes any, discussion.

I would like to spend the rest of my time by sharing my thoughts on proportional representation.

We do not have a high voter turnout in Canada and there are many reasons for this. I would like to submit that one of them is that the representation in Parliament does not accurately reflect the percentage of votes received. For example, if we had some sort of proportional representation system in place prior to the last election, the results would have been as follows: the Conservatives would have wound up with 119 seats, Liberals 83, NDP 56, the Bloc 31 and the Green Party would have had 17 seats. Even though 941,097 people voted for the Green Party, it did not get one seat in the House of Commons.

The executive director of Fair Vote Canada says that:

Proportional voting would obviously help the NDP. Almost 80% of votes cast for the NDP don't help to elect anybody. But this is about what's good for all voters.

He goes on to say:

If you are a Conservative in Toronto or a Liberal in Calgary, the current system is not working for you. The plain fact is that most of us are 'represented' in Parliament by people we voted against. Canadians demand more viable political choices.

There are some myths floating around and Fair Vote Canada attempts to counteract those myths.

There are trade-offs between good democracy and good government. In his landmark study, “Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Democracies (1999)”, internationally renowned political scientist Arend Lijphart assessed and compared the performance of majoritarian democracies associated with winner take all voting systems and consensus democracies associated with proportional representation systems.

He concluded:

—the overall performance record of the consensus democracies is clearly superior to that of the majoritarian democracies” and “the good news is that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, there is no trade-off at all between governing effectiveness and high-quality democracy – and hence no difficult decisions to be made on giving priority to one or the other objective.

The other myth that he dispels and talks about is the fact that proportional representation means coalition governments and that is bad because it requires deal-making. Let us put this idea to rest today once and for all. Here are the facts. Governments formed under any voting system are coalitions of different groups that negotiate and make deals. That is the way democracy works. The two largest big tent parties are coalitions of factions, which are generally hidden from public view except during leadership races. These internal factions compete with one another and then negotiate and compromise on the party platform.

Do people think we do not have differences of opinion in our party? Of course we do. We come together, and that is how we should be coming together in Parliament.

The primary difference between this and the formation of multi-party coalition governments under fair voting systems is transparency. Coalition negotiations among parties are generally more visible to the public and the compromises are publicly known. Majority rule under fair voting systems, the resulting coalition or governing group represents a true majority of voters.

That is what Canadians want. That is probably one of the reasons why they are not voting or coming out in large numbers to vote.

Let us look at some facts to dispel the fact that once we get proportional representation, we will have chaos and bedlam. The examples often cited are Italy and Israel. Let us apply some perspective.

With more than 80 nations using proportional systems, critics can find only two examples, which I just stated, of a system that appears to be chaotic. Opponents of fair voting do not like to talk about long-term stability and the prosperity of Germany, Switzerland and Sweden, or about most of the other 81 countries using proportional systems. In the last half of the 20th century, many of the large European countries had about the same number of elections as we had in Canada.

Coalition governments created under fair voting systems tend to be stable and productive for two reasons.

First, the parties know that a fair voting system makes it highly unlikely any party will gain a majority of seats because seldom do a majority of voters support any one party. The parties understand that the only way they can ever govern is by creating constructive partnerships with other parties. What a revolutionary idea, creating constructive partnerships so we can govern for the people of Canada.

Second, because election results reflect the way people vote, the parties have no motivation to force frequent elections, or prorogation, because of small shifts in public opinion. With Canada's first past the post system, a small shift of votes can trigger a huge swing in seats, which is something that cannot happen with a fair voting system.

Far from creating chaos, Lijphart's study on effective government demonstrated the countries using fair voting systems readily matched and often exceeded the economic and social performance of nations run by single-party governments, which are usually, as he says, false majorities. As Dr. Lijphart concluded, there is no trade-off between good democracy and good government. In fact, it is good democracy that leads to good government.

I submit that the timing is right as we discuss the reforms of the Senate, which is not working, as we discuss the House of Commons, which often is dysfunctional as we are often accused of partisanship and going against each other. Is it not time to come together and have a sensible system of voting so we can co-operate and have the actual proportion of people who voted reflected in the House of Commons?

I would like to say that proportional representation is an important step towards a healthy and very strong government.

It is imperative that we have in the House of Commons a representation that truly reflects the votes that people have cast.

I am sure our motion will be supported by all members in the House of Commons. I am sure that each and every one of us wants to ensure what is reflected here truly reflects the votes that people have cast in the last election. This could be a major breakthrough for democracy in our country.

I am ready to take questions.

[Abolition of Early Parole Act, February 16th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, this is a debate about what prisons are and what the philosophy should be. The member rightly pointed out a number of areas. I would also like to refer to some statistics that my hon. colleague from Vancouver pointed out to us today.

The fact is it costs roughly $150,000 to keep a person in prison and roughly $185,000 to keep a female in prison today. The cost of parole, including halfway houses, is around $39,000.

In the past five years around 7,000 offenders were entitled to consideration for accelerated parole and roughly 4,800 were granted it. It had an 84% success rate. Those are not bad statistics. It means these people came out of jail and did not go back to crime.

Is this not what it is all about? Should our crime policy not only allow for punishment, but also ensure that it does not happen again?

Could he comment on that?

[Seeds Regulation Act, February 9th, 2011]

moved that the bill be concurred in at report stage.

[Agriculture, February 8th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I received over 12,700 letters of support for my private member's bill, Bill C-474. This bill would protect farmers from economic harm that could arise from GE crops of which our export markets want no part.

B.C. fruit growers in the Okanagan and Similkameen Valley are saying that they are dead against the release of a genetically modified non-browning apple. They are worried about cross-pollination, which could kill the organic apple industry.

Why is the government continuing to take farmers for granted and refusing to protect them against the release of genetically modified crops, like alfalfa, wheat and apples?