Bill Siksay

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, June 4th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I am glad to have this opportunity to participate in the third reading debate of Bill C-15, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

I come to this debate surprised, once again. I am surprised by this place and the kinds of things that happen here, and I am surprised by the basis on which sometimes the government acts and sometimes this place acts.

What surprises me most is the inability and the refusal of the government and the Minister of Justice to provide any shred of evidence that this piece of legislation will have any of the effects they claim it will. There was an absolute inability by the Minister of Justice to provide one study that backs up that mandatory minimum sentences have any positive effect whatsoever on the illegal drug trade, that they have any effect whatsoever on the security of our communities, that they make any difference to the illegal drug trade in Canada.

We have gone over this time and time again. Members from this side of the House, this corner of the House, the member for Vancouver East, have asked time and time again for any study, any evidence that would show the efficacy of mandatory minimum sentences, especially with regard to drug crimes, and nothing has been forthcoming.

This has not gone unnoticed. The media have reported on it. There have been editorials in newspapers across Canada that the government has not been able to provide this evidence and has not done its due diligence. It has not done the work, and it has done this piece of legislation solely for crass political reasons.

I find it very difficult to support legislation that has no basis in fact. There may be people out there who believe this is a good idea, but my job as a member of Parliament is to examine the facts and to make sure we spend the time in this institution to debate issues, that when we put forward legislation and make changes to our criminal law, that they will to the best of our knowledge accomplish the goals that are acclaimed for them. We have none of that with this bill. We do not have that ability, because there is absolutely no evidence.

When the justice committee was studying Bill C-15, the member for Vancouver East was our New Democrat representative. The first witness to appear before the committee in its study of Bill C-15 was the Minister of Justice. The member's very first question for the minister was on this issue of whether there was evidence to support the claim that mandatory minimum sentences were an effective tool.

I will quote from the record of that committee where she asked the minister the following:

One question I have for you is this. What evidence do you or the department or your government have that mandatory minimums will work for drug crimes, and will you table that evidence? I think we need to see what studies you rely on.

They discussed a couple of other issues, and the minister did not address that first request. She asked again:

I respect your opinion on that, but my question is what evidence do you have that mandatory minimums for these drug crimes will actually work, that they're actually deterrents? What evidence is there?

There was no answer from the minister in his response to that question, so the member for Vancouver East asked again:

Do you have evidence?

The minister said:

We have the evidence that Canadians have told us that.

That was his response.

The member for Vancouver East asked again, “Any studies?” And the minister did not respond to that again.

She went on. She did not give up. She was determined to find out if there was at least one study that the government was relying on. A minute later, she said:

I take it you have no evidence, though, about mandatory minimums.

The minister responded again in the same way he had before. The member for Vancouver East said again:

But you have no evidence to offer.

And the minister still did not provide anything.

This was a regular theme through that committee and through that meeting. It was also an issue for witnesses who appeared. We know that the majority of witnesses who appeared before the committee did not support this legislation. The three witnesses who did support the legislation also could not provide any evidence or any studies that mandatory minimum sentences were effective in dealing with drug crime.

We went through that whole process, and no one from the government, the minister, or the witnesses who supported the legislation could provide any evidence that it would be able to accomplish any of its purported goals.

This is very, very serious. This is a blatant dereliction of duty. I cannot imagine. I said at the beginning of my remarks that this place sometimes shocks me. I am absolutely shocked that we would proceed with serious legislation like this without one piece of evidence, one study, to back up the need for this change in our criminal law.

We already have serious penalties for trafficking, exporting, importing and production for the purposes of trafficking. The maximum penalty for that is life imprisonment. There can be no penalty in Canadian law more serious than life imprisonment. That already exists for these crimes.

Many of the witnesses who appeared pointed to other studies and to other experiences that showed that mandatory minimum sentences were completely ineffectual.

The justice department's own study, in 2002, indicated that:

Mandatory minimum sentences do not appear to influence drug consumption or drug-related crime in any measurable way.

It was not the NDP who said that, it was not some drug-crazed hippy, the Department of Justice said that.

The minister claimed he could not produce any evidence. He could have produced evidence against his position, but he chose not to do that too. He chose not to listen to the evidence from his own department.

In 2005, the justice department also reported the following:

There is some indication that minimum sentences are not an effective sentencing tool...

Yet again, the Department of Justice said that mandatory minimum sentencing is not an effective tool. I wish the government had paid attention to the research and the work of its own department in this regard.

On the other side of the equation, people who are concerned about this legislation can produce many studies showing that these are ineffective and inappropriate tools.

The John Howard Society appeared before the standing committee that was studying the bill. It provided summaries of 17 studies from the United States and the United Kingdom on mandatory minimum sentences, lengthy sentencing terms, and recidivism, which all found that longer prison terms do not reduce recidivism. They do not stop crimes from being committed. Surely that has to be the goal of this legislation. The John Howard Society cited 18 other studies, which it did not provide summaries of, that came to the same conclusion.

Detailed analysis from the United States Sentencing Commission, which was presented at committee, found that mandatory minimum sentences go after low-level criminals and they are ineffective in deterring crime. Mandatory minimum sentences are even ineffective in who they target in the criminal community. They go after what is called “the low hanging fruit”, the minor players. The big players who are causing the serious problems, the ones who cause serious disruption in our society, the ones who make the huge profits, are not touched by this kind of legislation.

That evidence came from the United States Sentencing Commission, when it looked at its own failed attempts to use these laws in the United States.

The reality is that the United States did fail. Back in 1973, New York pioneered these kinds of mandatory minimum sentences. They were called “the Rockefeller laws”, and they were a colossal failure. New York, California, Michigan, Delaware, Massachusetts, all the states that went into mandatory minimum sentences are now repealing them. They found that they did not make their communities safer, they did not stop involvement in crime, and they sucked up huge amounts of taxpayers' dollars for the prison system, usually at the expense of the education system.

We know mandatory minimum sentences have been a failure just by examining the evidence from the U.S., which went heavily into this process. Why the Conservative government would use a process similar to the failed process in the United States is beyond me when the evidence is so clear.

We heard at the standing committee from former counsel to the United States House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, Eric Sterling, who said clearly and emphatically that his decision to promote mandatory minimum sentences earlier in his career was probably “the greatest mistake of my entire career of over 30 years in the practice of law”.

This is a very distinguished lawyer, who worked in the Congress of the United States, who is a counsel to a congressional committee, the Committee on the Judiciary, who is basically recanting his position in favour of mandatory minimum sentences. Surely this is the kind of experience we should be learning from, not completely dismissing and ignoring as the government has chosen to do.

We know that mandatory minimum sentences have failed to reduce drug use and failed to increase safety and security in communities. They have raised the prices of drugs, increased the profitability of the drug trade, and they have lowered the purity of the drugs. They have increased organized crime in the communities in the states where they have been implemented.

We also know from evidence presented at the committee from a woman named Deborah Small from Break the Chains, that in the state of New York where these laws were implemented, they targeted the poor and racialized minorities. She testified at the committee that “while drug use is pervasive among every social or economic group, 95% of the people incarcerated for drugs in New York were poor African Americans and Latinos”.

They target the most vulnerable people in our society. The big traders still get away with the crimes they commit.

When before the committee, Mr. Sterling also pointed out the huge expenditures that these laws require for enforcement and incarceration. He said:

In 1986, when we enacted the mandatory minimums, the Federal Bureau of Prisons' expenditure was $862 million. It went up to $994 million the next year. Two years later, it was $1.2 billion... In 1991, it was $2.1 billion.

The President's request for fiscal 2010 is over $6 billion.

There is an astronomical increase in prison costs related to these laws. Why would we go down that road when we know the cost and the ineffectiveness of them and when there is no evidence?

I think it is very important to consider all these issues when we are looking at this legislation. One of the bizarre aspects of this bill is that there is mention of drug treatment courts buried in it. Somehow this is supposed to be the saving grace of this legislation.

I think drug treatment courts are an important step to take. I am not sure that everything has been written yet about their efficacy in dealing with drug crimes. The jury is still out on them, as well. The reality is that there are only six drug courts in Canada, so they are very limited in scope.

The reality, too, is that with drug treatment courts we need the treatment spaces to make it effective. With any drug strategy, we need treatment spaces to make any effective progress. We know that there are not enough treatment spaces, and that is probably because we spend 73% of our resources on enforcement and only 14% on treatment in the area of drugs. We have to reverse that before we are going to make any progress at all.

Appearing before the committee, Chief Vernon White of the Ottawa police said, “I'm not a treatment specialist, I'm not a psychologist, to be fair, but I can tell you as a cop and as a parent and as a community member that there are some people out there who need this”, meaning treatment, “and we don't have near the capacity for those who want it, let alone those we need to persuade to take it”.

Even the police are acutely aware of the lack of treatment spaces. We need to make sure we have a treatment space for someone addicted to drugs that they can get into the moment they make the decision to seek treatment. If we miss that moment, we have missed the boat. We know it will be weeks and months before that possibility comes around again.

Until we can make that connection between the determination to seek treatment and the availability of a space, we will continue to fail these people and our communities, and we will fail to make any progress on these issues. That is a huge continuing failing of our approach on this issue.

This bill limits judicial discretion, and I, for one, want to stand up for the ability of our judges to have discretion when they come to sentencing, when they come to do their important work. They are the ones we charge to sit and listen carefully to all the testimony and assess the circumstances presented. I want to make sure that judges have the ability to use their discretion. That is what we ask them to do. It is a tough job. Sometimes they make mistakes—we all do—but I have great faith in our judges to make those decisions. I am very skeptical of constant attempts to limit the discretion of judges when it comes to sentencing. That is what this mandatory minimum sentencing bill will do with regard to these drug crimes.

I believe prohibition is a failure. We know the historical record shows that alcohol prohibition was a huge failure. If people would care to trace the parallels between alcohol prohibition programs, that whole legal framework, and drug prohibition, they will see the very direct parallels.

During alcohol prohibition in the United States there were huge problems with gang violence. There was all that mythology about gang violence associated with the alcohol trade during prohibition. It is exactly what we are seeing in Canada now, thanks to drug prohibition and the huge profitability of the illegal drug trade. Until we deal with the issue of the profitability of black market drugs, we will never be able to address the problems of crime, the social problems that arise from drug use.

When we look at the record of alcohol prohibition, we see the safety issues associated with black market alcohol production, such as exploding stills, which caused huge problems and burned people's homes down. We see those same kinds of problems with marijuana grow ops or crystal meth labs in our communities today. Exactly the same kind of effect that we know was caused by alcohol prohibition is happening now because of drug prohibition.

We saw huge family dislocation in the period of alcohol prohibition and we are certainly seeing that now with respect to criminal activity and addiction issues associated with the drug trade. We saw a lot of untreated addictions back in the period of alcohol prohibition and we are seeing it today. When a substance is illegal, there is a huge stigma about acknowledging one's addiction and seeking treatment for it, because of the criminal activity that is usually related to it. We need to address that issue as well.

During the period of alcohol prohibition, we also saw huge problems associated with the kinds of illegal products that were produced and the poisonous nature of some of them. Certainly we have seen that today with impure drugs and the problems they cause for drug users in our communities.

If we look at the historical record and try to learn from the experience of alcohol prohibition, we would see the failure of drug prohibition. We would even have a model for how to approach rectifying that situation.

We need to address the issue of profitability. One member likes to ask the question, “Is it not good to put a drug dealer off the street and into jail for a number of years, and does it not make our community safer just by doing that?” No, it does not, because the moment we put one of those people in jail, there is somebody ready to take his or her place. The reason someone is ready to take that person's place is because it is so profitable to be involved in the illegal drug trade.

Until we address that issue, it does not matter how long we put somebody away for, we have missed the boat on addressing the issue and the real problem. We need to take that very seriously.

I do not think there is anyone in the House who does not want to address the very serious problems related to drugs and the use of drugs in our society. I am certainly one of them, but I want to do it on the basis of what is effective, what will make the important changes, and what will ensure people get the help they need. The road that the Conservatives have chosen is one that has been proven to be wrong, that they cannot support with any evidence as to its efficacy, and we need to hold them accountable.

I have heard quietly from some of my Liberal colleagues that they do not like this bill but they are going to vote for it anyway because they think it is popular in the community. I want to challenge them to do the right thing. They know this is not going to make their communities safer. This is not going to address the problems that people are concerned about in their communities. Why pretend otherwise?

We are not sent here to pretend to produce solutions. We are here to do a job, to examine what comes before us and make decisions based on the best evidence we can get.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, June 4th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I know that in my colleague's time in the House, he has also had an interest in Correctional Service Canada. He will know that just recently the federal correctional investigator, Howard Sapers, issued a report that contained warnings about the situation in Canada's prison system. He was talking about the dangers of overcrowding and the need for additional capacity, especially if these Conservative so-called tough on crime measures actually come into effect.

Could the member speak briefly about how this bill, which will increase mandatory minimum sentences and technically increase the length of stay that people have in jail, might affect situation in our prison system in light of Mr. Saper's recent report?

[Petitions, June 4th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to table a petition signed by over 80 people from greater Vancouver, including some from my riding of Burnaby—Douglas, who are very concerned about the arrest of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners by security agencies of the People's Republic of China.

They are particularly concerned about the detention of Shuming Gao and Qinming Gao, whose sister, Xiaoming Gao, lives in Vancouver.

The petitioners call on the Canadian government to make a clear statement on the human rights violations and persecution perpetrated against Falun Gong practitioners in China.

[Elimination of Racial and Religious Profiling Act, June 4th, 2009]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-407, An Act to eliminate racial and religious profiling.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to table again a private member's bill entitled, “An Act to eliminate racial and religious profiling”. This bill seeks to ban racial and religious profiling by federal law enforcement agencies and officials.

I and my NDP colleagues have been very moved and often angered by the experiences of racial and religious profiling shared with us by constituents and other Canadians. The impact of this practice has been very serious and costly to those who have been its victims and to our society. Such actions by law enforcement officers and agencies are based solely on false stereotypes. It is bad public policy and bad law enforcement practice, plain and simple.

This is an updated version of a bill introduced by the member for Vancouver East in the 38th Parliament. It defines racial and religious profiling as actions undertaken for reasons of safety, security, or public protection that rely on stereotypes about race, colour, ethnicity, ancestry, religion or place of origin rather than on reasonable suspicion to single out an individual for greater scrutiny or different treatment.

The bill would require the RCMP, customs, immigration, airport screening officers and CSIS agents to eliminate racial and religious profiling. Those agencies would report to Parliament on their progress. They would also be required to have a working analysis of how racism functions in their law enforcement context.

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

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, June 2nd, 2009]

No, Mr. Speaker. If the hon. member chose to look at some of the evidence and to look at the study from Portugal, he would see evidence that that is just not the case. In the analysis of Portugal's experience, which has gone on for eight years, we see that is not the case. Having decriminalized all drugs, not just marijuana and so-called softer drugs, but all drugs, including cocaine and heroin, Portugal has seen very positive outcomes from that step.

The government should be looking at and examining that kind of evidence. Rather than introducing measures that have no evidentiary support, it should be looking at measures that can be proven to be successful in reaching the kinds of goals that all Canadians want to reach around drug use, drug policy and drug crime. We do not have that approach with this legislation, which makes it very flawed legislation and legislation that will not improve the situation here in Canada, and that is why New Democrats are not supporting this legislation.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, June 2nd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, we need a multi-pronged approach to dealing with drug issues in our society. In Vancouver we often talk about the four pillar approach to drug issues: prevention, treatment, enforcement and harm reduction. Sadly, however, all we have seen from the government is emphasis on the enforcement pillar.

Any stool that has four legs and one is bigger than the other will only fall over and be unsuccessful as a stool. Therefore, this four pillar approach requires equal treatment of all of the pillars.

We know that prevention and treatment are absolutely crucial to having an effective drug policy. Unfortunately, when an addict in Canada seeks treatment, more often than not they are told that they need to go on a waiting list before treatment is available so they put off that treatment. We know that is a loss right at that very moment. We know that every time we put someone on delay after they have made a decision to go into treatment we have lost the opportunity to deal with that addiction.

We also know that when they get out of treatment they need specialized support and specialized housing. However, if we send them back into the same circumstances they left when they were addicted, then they will have lost all the benefits of their treatment. We need to ensure we have a broadly based treatment program and one that extends beyond the actual drug treatment process itself to ensure success.

We also need to ensure we stress harm reduction. Unfortunately, despite the many studies that have shown harm reduction to be an effective tool in dealing with drug issues, the government has often failed to appreciate that evidence and has not given great support to harm reduction measures.

However, in Vancouver and in Burnaby we know the importance of harm reduction. Places like the safe injection site in Vancouver are very effective.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, June 2nd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak in the report stage debate on an act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which pertains mainly to the establishment of mandatory minimum sentences related to drug trafficking and the drug trade.

We are debating a specific motion that was moved by my colleague from Vancouver East, which would delete clause 3 from the bill. This section deals with nine mandatory minimums, eight of which deal specifically with marijuana.

It is pretty important that we talk about this because many Canadians have great difficulty with our existing marijuana laws. It has been an area where there have been many suggestions over many years about necessary changes to our laws, especially with regard to marijuana. Going into the area of mandatory minimum sentences around marijuana is something with which many people will have difficulty.

One aspect that I am particularly concerned about is the effect this law, should it pass and should this amendment fail, will have on compassion clubs that provide medical marijuana to thousands of Canadians. When other drugs, and more dangerous drugs, have been ineffective in treating their medical condition, the use of marijuana in various forms has been successful and extremely helpful to them.

I have visited the Green Cross Society in Vancouver and I have had friends who have dealt with the Compassion Club in Vancouver. I know of many instances where the use of marijuana has been extremely important to the successful treatment of a range of diseases. It has allowed people to get on with their lives in ways that other therapies and other drug therapies have been unsuccessful or more dangerous for them. It is very concerning to me how this law will complicate the services provided by compassion clubs.

What I find most disconcerting in this debate, however, is the inability of the government to provide any evidence whatsoever that mandatory minimum sentences will have the kinds of effects that it says they will in controlling the drug trade, for instance. The Conservatives have been asked numerous times to provide one study, any evidence of that.

When the minister appeared before the standing committee reviewing the legislation, the member for Vancouver East asked the minister this question and she received no response whatsoever. In fact, the member for Vancouver East asked the Minister of Justice no less than six times to provide evidence that mandatory minimum sentences were effective in dealing with drug crimes, that they actually worked, that they would have any of the benefits that he proposed. Six times he did not answer the question.

He did say that Canadians supported this approach, but he offered not one shred of evidence that mandatory minimums would have any effect on the drug crime situation in Canada. Probably he was unable to do that because such evidence just does not exist.

Why is the government hell bent on following this course of action when there is no evidence that what it has proposed will actually address the concerns of Canadians in this regard? It is unfortunate that we are going down this road when we cannot prove there is any efficacy whatsoever that the measures will have any effect on the situation at all.

On the other side of the argument about the ineffectiveness of this kind of regime, there is scads of evidence. In fact, at committee, Craig Jones of the John Howard Society talked about 35 peer reviewed published studies that showed mandatory minimum sentences had no effect and were completely ineffective in dealing with drug crime. He tabled 17 of those studies.

There is a whole body of evidence that shows this is the wrong approach in dealing with drug crimes. It is completely ineffective to deal with drug crime.

We have had many examples. We have seen the example of the United States, which got heavily into mandatory minimum sentences around drug crimes. The Rockefeller laws, as they are called, were introduced in New York state in the seventies. They have had exactly the opposite effect and have been completely ineffective in dealing with drug crime.

Other states moved away from mandatory minimum sentences because all they did was fill their prisons and they had no effect on the social conditions and on crime statistics. It has been tried in many jurisdictions and it has been a failure.

It is inconceivable that the Conservatives would go down this road at this point when there is such a body of evidence to the contrary of the effectiveness of this kind of legislation. As I said, the government and the minister have not provided any evidence whatsoever that this is an appropriate approach to deal with drug crime in Canada.

There are other options. Other countries have taken different approaches. One clear example is Portugal. In 2001 Portugal, in a nationwide law, decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. It was a decriminalization, not a legalization regime. Portugal remains the only European Union state with a law that explicitly declares drugs to be decriminalized.

Recently a study was done by Glenn Greenwald, for the Cato Institute, on Portugal's drug laws. I would recommend it to all members and to anyone else listening in on this debate to see exactly what has happened in Portugal.

One of the things that Mr. Greenwald does in his recent study is analyze the empirical data around this change. This is what he had to say about Portugal:

—the...empirical data...indicate that decriminalization has had no adverse effect on drug usage rates in Portugal, which, in numerous categories, are now among the lowest in the EU, particularly when compared with states with stringent criminalization regimes. Although postdecriminalization usage rates have remained roughly the same or even decreased slightly when compared with other EU states, drug-related pathologies—such as sexually transmitted diseases and deaths due to drug usage—have decreased dramatically. Drug policy experts attribute those positive trends to the enhanced ability of the Portuguese government to offer treatment programs to its citizens—enhancements made possible, for numerous reasons, by decriminalization.

Here is a different approach of decriminalization to drug laws, a far different approach than the Conservative government is taking in Canada, which has had success. The empirical data has shown this to be a successful approach to all the goals we seek for Canada such as decreasing drug use, crime, deaths from drug use and sexually-transmitted diseases, all kinds of positive value out of taking this kind of approach.

Others have done the analysis. They have compared alcohol prohibition to our drug prohibition policies. They have shown that the alcohol prohibition, which we know to have been a huge failure in North America, had all the same problems that drug prohibition has today. The measure that we are debating today falls clearly into a prohibition category of legal approaches.

We need to take that history seriously. We need a government that is willing to look at that history, to analyze it and act in light of what we already know in terms of how these kinds of policies affect drug policy and drug crime.

We know we will not change drug crime and gang crime in Canada unless we go to the profitability of the drug trade in Canada. There is nothing in the legislation that addresses why people make so much money selling drugs in Canada. There is nothing in it that says that somebody we put away for a minimum mandatory sentence will not return to the drug trade after that. In fact, a lot of them do return to the drug trade afterward, with a better network and with more skills from having been in prison.

However, the other reality is the person we send to prison on a drug trafficking charge is replaced almost immediately by another person who is willing to be involved because the profitability is so high. Until we grapple with how we address that issue, we are not going to make progress on dealing with drug crime in our society and dealing with the other issues that stem from it.

The government can show not one scrap of evidence that the approach to using mandatory minimum sentences is going to improve our society and is going to meet any of its goals, let alone the goals of Canadians, with regard to drug crime. That is the key reason I will not be supporting the legislation.

[Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, June 2nd, 2009]

Madam Speaker, it goes back to the whole question that the member for Elmwood—Transcona raised about the need for fair trade agreements. That has become a slogan for the NDP. It is a standard we try to live up to in our review of these kinds of agreements. There has to be respect for the people of the country with which we deal, and we do not see that in many of these agreements. That is are our stand on this.

[Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, June 2nd, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I am glad the member raised the whole discussion of labour rights in Peru because I did not get a chance to address that in my speech. This will give me the opportunity to note that the Garcia government has also continued its legislative decrees in a number of areas related to labour rights, which have been very controversial.

Peru has a very small organized labour community. Public servants are one area where the existing labour rights have been jeopardized since the signing of the agreement between the United States and Peru. Despite the arrangements it made to support labour rights in its agreement, things like punitive evaluations of current employees have been introduced into the labour standards for the unionized public service in Peru. This has been done outside of the collective bargaining process. It has eliminated not only the ability of Peruvian public servants to collective bargain, but it has also eliminated respect for the collective bargaining process.

Most Peruvians participate in what is called the informal labour market and this is a very significant issue for the majority of Peruvians. Even though there have been increases decreed by the Government of Peru, these have been unenforceable because there are no significant labour laws to do that kind of work.

It shows the kind of context where we try use some kind of lip service, and that is all we can consider it, because these agreements do not seem to have any enforceable measures to improve the adherence to the existing labour law in countries or see any improvements to those labour laws that protect the rights of workers in these countries.

The United States was unable to do that through its agreement. I do not have much faith that Canada's agreement will be able to do that for the labour standards that we are seeking to uphold and improve between Canada and Peru.

[Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, June 2nd, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak in this debate to Bill C-24, An Act to implement the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the Republic of Peru, the Agreement on the Environment between Canada and the Republic of Peru and the Agreement on Labour Cooperation between Canada and the Republic of Peru.

Part of the context of our debate today is the fact that this morning and this afternoon thousands of members of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, CEP, my old union, will be gathering here on the Hill for a national day of protest to say that forestry workers fight back for jobs, pensions and families. I was a proud member of CEP Local 232.

One of the reasons this protest has been organized is because of the failure of free trade agreements between Canada and the United States and the failure of the softwood lumber agreement between Canada and the United States to protect the jobs of Canadian workers. That is one reason why thousands of people will be here in Ottawa today to protest the failure of Canada to protect Canadian jobs and Canadian workers through these types of trade agreements. That shows why it is so crucially important that we pay attention to these agreements as we sign them and as we develop them. I am glad that we have this opportunity to debate the Canada-Peru agreement here in the House today.

As my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona said, New Democrats support trade agreements but we would support fair trade agreements. We want to ensure they meet the social, environmental and labour goals of our country and that they support our democratic vision for our country and for countries around the world. We want to ensure that any agreement we enter into supports those standards.

I do not think that makes us Boy Scouts, as the member for Mississauga South indicated. I do not think the Boy Scouts would appreciate the way he slagged their intent to be honourable citizens. It does not make us Boy Scouts or naive to want to uphold those kinds of standards in these agreements. One might ask the member for Mississauga South if he is prepared to sell his soul for a mess of potage, which may be the other end of the coin when it comes to these kinds of agreements. This is a very appropriate time to give due diligence to these agreements and ensure they do what they say they will do.

We are very concerned and we always raise the context of labour rights, of environmental protections and the investor chapters of these agreements. This Canada-Peru trade deal is no different in those regards. We believe these agreements do put the interests of big business before workers and the environment and that is one reason why we do not support the agreement. We have not learned anything from the problems with NAFTA's chapter 11 on investor rights. We continue to be concerned that this would give corporate interests the ability to override the democratically elected representatives of the people of the country when it comes to corporate relations and some training relationships. These provisions have been maintained in this Canada-Peru agreement and it is one of our key concerns with that deal.

The other contextual setting that I want to give is with what happened with the U.S.-Peru free trade agreement, how that was implemented and its effects since it was signed in December 2007. It is important to understand what happened with that deal and to look at some of the differences between what the United States negotiated with Peru and what Canada has negotiated with Peru.

Some of this information comes from an article written by Mary Tharin, a research associate with the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. She has pointed out a number of problems since the negotiation of the U.S.-Peru free trade agreement. She claims, and backs it up with evidence, unlike other members of the House who seem to have opinions but no evidence, that the U.S.-Peru free trade agreement has been used by President Garcia of Peru as an excuse to dismantle environmental and labour standards that did exist, such as they were, in Peru, and that it has also led to further economic deterioration in Peru. Ms. Tharin says that this should be taken into consideration before other free trade agreements are signed by the United States. I think that is instructive for Canada before we enter into this agreement with Peru.

She also notes that corruption is a serious issue with the Garcia government and that there is a long and continuing history of scandals in that government, especially scandals of corporate interests and the involvement of the government and leading officials with bribery and whatnot. That context is an important one for us to struggle with as well. Do we enter into agreements that cannot guarantee the force and supremacy of law and get bound up in these terrible scandals related to the development issues of their country?

The article goes on to talk about how President Garcia has been implementing and changing the legislative framework of Peru to accommodate the U.S.-Peru free trade agreement. He has been doing it by the use of legislative decrees. In fact, in the first six months after the agreement was signed, he enacted a total of 102 legislative decrees designed to harmonize national laws with the conditions laid down in the free trade agreement between Peru and the United States.

It is interesting to note that the Peruvian Constitutional Commission has recently declared about 40% of those decrees to be unconstitutional, which again brings into question the Garcia government's commitment to the constitution, law and background framework of this agreement. There has been considerable comment in Peru, via the Peruvian press as well as politicians and activists, that the government has used these decrees to the detriment of labour, the environment, the agricultural industry and indigenous rights there.

One of the most controversial of the legislative decrees was decree 1015, which was passed in May 2008. That decree was designed to facilitate the privatization and stripping away of communal lands held by indigenous and subsistence farming communities. Any of us who know anything about Peru know that communal land is essential to the Peruvian understanding and the traditional way of life in Peru.

Previously, the law in Peru required a two-thirds majority in congress to authorize any land sales from these communally held lands. However, decree 1015 lowered this requirement to a simple majority in a clear attempt to encourage those kinds of sales and subsequent exploitation of the land by foreign and domestic entrepreneurs. That is one of the key changes that came about, despite the agreement between the United States and Peru.

Another legislative decree, 1064, eliminates the ability of landowners to negotiate with oil and mining companies over the use of their land. Before that decree, companies had to reach an agreement with property owners in order to buy or rent their land for commercial use. Only if negotiations failed could companies turn to the government, specifically the ministry of mines and energy, to force owners to sell their land. Decree 1064 cuts out landowners completely, leaving the entire negotiation process in the hands of government.

Certainly, by our standards, this would be a significant backward step in how landowners and traditional communal landowners in Peru deal with the negotiations with oil and mining companies. In the context where Canadians are increasingly aware of the activities of Canadian corporations overseas and requiring stronger measures around corporate social responsibility, I do not think the lowering of this standard in Peru says good things about our ability to enter into an appropriate agreement between Canada and Peru for trade.

Another decree, 1090, is known as the forest and wildlife law. It allows President Garcia to remove barriers that protected the country's national forest. It redefines national forest patrimony and lists protections against logging and other forms of exploitation. There is considerable comment in Peru, and among opposition critics as well, that talks about how this decree reduces transparency and eliminates input from civil society.

This also all happens in a context where the environmental standards negotiated by the United States are stronger in its agreement than they are in the agreement that Canada has negotiated with Peru. That is another key reason why we should be very concerned about this agreement. It is why I and my New Democratic colleagues will not be supporting the legislation and the agreement between Canada and Peru.