Andrew Cash

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question for a Liberal member of the House. I am not going to pretend to imagine what was going on in the minds of the brain trust over there, but our party, and certainly under the leadership of Jack Layton, accepted the fact that rural Canadians had an issue with the gun registry. That is very clear.

I would like you to attempt to understand that when you weaken the framework of gun control in our country, it is seen as an attack on urban Canada. We need to work together to strengthen gun control and not have a $1 billion bonfire.

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise this afternoon and speak on behalf of the citizens of my riding of Davenport on this important element of public safety, justice and transparency. We cannot forget that we are also speaking about financial transparency.

I want to bring up one small element of the argument put forward by my hon. colleague from Don Valley West. That is the same member who last week moved a private member's bill in the House that would have criminalized retirees who were volunteers on boards of condos and apartment buildings if they followed the municipal code and told residents that they could not fly the Canadian flag on their balconies.

That member introduced a private member's bill that contained an element that would have necessitated people going to jail for that. Yet today he stood and essentially blew up an important piece of public safety legislation because his party's big bosses put a muzzle on him and on every GTA MP on the government side who voted for the bill. The legislation has absolutely nothing to do with public safety in the GTA. My hon. colleague knows very well that we have a serious issue around gun control in Toronto. To take one brick out of the foundation of gun control in the country weakens the entire framework of gun control.

There is no question that the gun registry had some significant problems. The fact that the Liberals blew $1 billion to set it up defies any kind of logic. It is one reason why they occupy that little corner over there today.

In the tabling of the legislation in the first place, the regions, aboriginal people, our hunters in the north were not properly brought into the process. That is another issue which our friends in that corner did not properly address.

I was swept up in the emotion of the debate, Mr. Speaker, and I forgot to apprise the House that I would be sharing my time with my hon. colleague from Alfred-Pellan.

Given what I just said about some of the flaws in how we arrived here, I want to remind the House that it was our late leader Jack Layton who took pains to build bridges in this debate. Anything the government wants to say about our members not following our understanding and beliefs about what is right in gun control legislation amazes me. Our late leader took pains to bring this debate to a sensible, mature place, when we spoke to the issues that were important to rural and urban Canadians, first nations and all those people in rural Canada who used long guns for sport.

We have to sit here day in and day out and listen to the bologna coming from the other side of the House. My hon. colleague from Don Valley West knows better than that. He knows that the preponderance of gun crimes in the city of Toronto are committed with guns that at one point were legal and were registered and yet those members want to blow up the registry. When police officers collect those guns, they will have no way of tracking where they came from.

The hon. member across the way knows that, as do all members from the GTA. They know that a large percentage of illegal activity with the use of guns involves guns that were stolen from legal gun owners. We have a huge problem with stolen guns, stolen guns that were, at one point, legal and were registered. This is a way in which police officers are able to track down criminals.

Canadians hear the government day in and day out talk about how tough it is on criminals and how great it is with victims. However, when we get right down to it, the government is allowing organized crime in big cities like Toronto to essentially carry on their activities with less oversight, with less concern that they will ever be caught. That is part of what is going on with the ending of the registry.

On our side, we tried to address some of the most egregious elements of the registry to satisfy those who had problems with it. That is why many of our members were able to work with their constituents around this issue.

However, from me perspective, representing the people of Davenport, I have two things to say about this.

We recognize that there are people in Canada who, due to their lifestyle, use long guns. They use long guns for sport. They use long guns to protect their property from bears and from other animals that may create some danger. They do some hunting and trapping. I think there are many of goodwill and understanding in urban Canada who accept that rural culture also includes the ownership and, at times, the use of guns.

What troubles me about the debate, and certainly listening to it today, is I am waiting to hear a sensible voice from somebody on the other side who recognizes that we have a problem with this in urban Canada. I would like to hear that. I was waiting for my hon. colleague from Don Valley West to actually speak to the fact that in urban Canada we are very concerned about gun control. Any party in the House that aspires to true national leadership is going to build bridges between those cultures instead of what we hear today, which is pitting one region against the other, sowing seeds of doubt and disunity in our country. That is not leadership. That is certainly not the kind of leadership that Canadians need and it certainly not the kind of leadership we are getting from the government.

The last element I want to address is this. On the one hand, we have the government talking about protecting the privacy of Canadians and therefore it is going to do a billion dollar burning of records. On the other hand, it is going to collect the personal digital identifiers of anyone on the Internet. I am talking about lawful access. In other words, we are collecting all this data on the one hand and we are burning it on the other. The government is utterly confused about where it is on privacy issues and on civil liberty issues.

I look forward to my hon. colleague from Alfred-Pellan to carry on this conversation and I look forward to questions.

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague from Vancouver East for her defence of a sensible approach to public safety and gun control in our country.

I want to underline one point my colleague made, that in order to find ways in which we can come together as a country over divisive issues, the way forward is not to make those issues more exaggerated but to find ways to bridge the gulf. That is what our party has been committed to do. Certainly our late leader, Jack Layton, showed that kind of leadership on this issue.

My hon. colleague is from Vancouver East and I am from the riding of Davenport on the west side of the downtown core of Toronto. Could she speak to the importance of making gun control, whether they are long guns, short guns, handguns, a vitally important piece of public safety in our urban centres?

[Petitions, February 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the residents in my riding wish to add their voice to the over 80,000 Canadians who have signed an OpenMedia.ca petition expressing serious and grave concerns that the Canadian government protect their privacy rights as they go forward with their so-called lawful access legislation.

Therefore, the petitioners call upon the government to respect privacy rights. These privacy rights include concerns around the requirement that telecommunications companies collect and store personal information about their users. This is the important point. They hand over that information at the request of law enforcement without a warrant. This is what my constituents are gravely concerned about, as are 80,000 other Canadians who have signed the OpenMedia.ca petition.

[Ending the Long-gun Registry Act, February 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the member for Yorkton--Melville, who is essentially a Trojan horse for the National Rifle Association, is having a happy day today.

The member talked about facts. On one hand, there is a registry on which a lot of money has been spent to gather a lot of important data that law enforcement agencies across the country use. On the other hand, the government is about to introduce lawful access legislation that is going to gather the private personal data on millions of Canadians. I am wondering if the member, in his apparent staunch defence of civil liberties and privacy, will be voting with our side to block the lawful access legislation.

[Copyright Modernization Act, February 10th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, we look at what is going on today with time allocation, and some of the other issues, for example, the dysfunctional behaviour of committees, the manoeuvres used in camera at committees, and the constant time allocation motions brought in by the government, and it tells us that we have debated the issues time and time again in the House. It leads me to wonder whether the members opposite are getting bored, but Canadians are not. They want their voices heard.

We are debating a very complex bill here, yet for the pooled retirement pension plan legislation we only had two members speak to the bill before the government moved a motion for time allocation.

These are very serious implications. I wonder if my hon. colleague could speak to the serious implications of the serial use of time allocation.

[Petitions, February 10th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, upwards of 80,000 Canadians have signed OpenMedia's stop online spying petition and the members of my riding in Davenport in Toronto wish to put their names forward here in the House of Commons to have their voices and concerns heard on this very issue.

Today, the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons said that one of Canada's greatest values is freedom of speech. I would extend that to include the protection civil liberties. This is why many people in my riding are concerned about what we are calling lawful access legislation, which we expect from the government soon. The people in my riding wish to speak to this issue.

The petitioners note that this legislation would require all telecommunications companies to collect and store personal information about their users and hand over that information at the request of law enforcement without a warrant. Internet and phone service providers would pass the cost of spying onto their consumers. Furthermore, Canadian authorities have not provided the public with evidence that they cannot perform their duties under current regulations. The petitioners also note that the Canadian Privacy Commissioner has stated that the legislation would substantially diminish the privacy rights of Canadians.

Therefore, the petitioners call on the Government of Canada to respect the privacy rights of Canadians by maintaining the need for law enforcement to secure judicial warrants before receiving personal information from telecom communications providers.

[The Economy, February 10th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, Toronto has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country and housing prices are skyrocketing. More and more families are finding it harder to buy or rent a home in Toronto.

The Conservatives are out of touch with Toronto but New Democrats know that we need a jobs creation plan and more affordable housing.

Are the Conservatives planning another do nothing budget that fails to get the job done for all places holy and decent like the great city of Toronto?

[Public Transit, February 9th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is very sad that Conservatives are not getting the job done for Toronto. Last night, Toronto city council committed to a practical light rail-based plan to fix its public transit. However, the good buddy of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance, Mayor Ford, said council should be ignored. It seems that there are a lot of dirty tricks that Mayor Ford is learning from his Conservative friends across the way. Will the government--

[Copyright Modernization Act, February 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt that copyright legislation is complex. In fact, the first time I came to Ottawa as a creator and I met with the minister of Canadian heritage and the industry minister, it was not the two individuals I see before me today.

We know that it has been discussed a lot and that it is complex. That speaks also to the reason it is important that we get this right. It speaks to the importance of members being able to weigh in on the bill.

What we are really talking about right now is the government's credibility on transparency, of which the Conservatives have absolutely none. I want to speak to one clear example of the hypocrisy of the government's moving time allocation. The pooled registered pension plan came before the House. The government moved time allocation on the first day of debate after only the second speaker from the opposition.

We have a serious problem around transparency with the government and once again time allocation. This is a blunt instrument of democracy and the government is using it way too often.