Bill Siksay

[Petitions, October 5th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to again table a petition signed by many people from greater Vancouver supporting the passage of the conscientious objection act, a private member's bill that I have tabled in the House.

The petitioners note that our Constitution guarantees freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. They note that some Canadians object on conscientious or religious grounds to participating in any way in the military and associated activities that train people to kill and use violence, produce and purchase lethal weapons, conduct military-related research, prepare for war and killing, and other activities that perpetuate violence, thus hindering the achievement of all forms of peace.

These petitioners support legislation that would allow such conscientious objectors to redirect a portion of their taxes from military to peaceful, non-military purposes.

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, September 30th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think I am any expert on understanding the mind of a Conservative or a Conservative government or someone who is negotiating these deals on behalf of the Conservative government. There is a real problem with the whole approach.

New Democrats have been very clear. We have put forward a five-point plan on how we believe fair trade deals can be negotiated. It is a very detailed and clear plan.

We have also put forward a plan on how we can test and understand the effectiveness of trade deals and how those trade deals are working out. Our plan includes performance indicators that would tell us how those deals are working out. There is a long list of them.

The government should be examining standards that are already in place that deal with the quality of employment; the impact on wage levels; prices and market concentration, including the effect of currency manipulation; public health; environmental standards; human rights standards; the level and types of investment by industry; economic diversification; food self-sufficiency; consumer safety; the effect on farms and the number of farms; access to essential services; the fiscal system; and intellectual property and copyright.

We should be examining all of those things in light of the deals we have already signed to make sure that we are doing the right thing and that these deals are fair, both to the people of the countries we signed the deals with and to Canadians.

The Conservatives are not doing any of that kind of work. They stand up and say, “It is a free trade deal, it is great, hurray.” They say that all the time. We do not have proof. We do not have the proof that they are increasing trade, and we do not have proof that they are meeting any of these indicators. We need that. The government needs to do its homework. Otherwise, it is just a lot of hot air.

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, September 30th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, Panama has shown itself to be very resistant to influence from anybody with respect to cleaning up its act in some of these areas. It has resisted the International Labour Organization. It has resisted the OECD. It has resisted the United States in terms of cleaning up its act on tax havens.

Why does the member think that this agreement with Canada and the side agreement on labour, weak as it is, will somehow have any influence over the Panamanian government whatsoever, when it has resisted big international agencies and has resisted the United States, with which it probably has a far more significant trading relationship than it has with Canada? It is just not in the cards.

It is patently silly to suggest that what we have before us would in any way influence the government of Panama to clean up its act. The government of Panama has committed to reducing child labour and to ensuring that children have education. However, in the last year alone, 20,000 more children between the ages of five and 17 have joined the labour force in Panama. Panama is not meeting its obligations.

What does the member think is in this agreement that will magically force Panama to meet those arrangements, when all of these other agencies and countries have failed to do that? There is nothing here that is going to move Panama forward on that.

This agreement is weak from the beginning. It is not going to lead to any improvement in those serious areas.

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, September 30th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, clearly, if the corporate sector and the wealthy are not paying their fair share of taxation in any country, in Canada or in Panama, then there is a huge gap in what is available to the government and to the people of that country to improve their situation and deal with the developmental issues that they face.

We face that here in Canada. We make difficult choices about how we use our resources, where those resources go and the kind of revenue the government has available to do that important work, but when wealthy individuals and big corporations are allowed to avoid paying taxes and to ship their money offshore into a tax haven, it gets even worse and it exacerbates all of those problems.

It is not an appropriate way for us to behave and it is not an appropriate way for Panama to behave. Panama has not responded to the international pressure that it has received to clean up its act on this part. There is no way that we should be entering into an agreement with a country that has been reticent to do that and has outright refused to do that. It has made absolutely no progress toward those goals.

It would not serve our people and it would not serve the people of Panama to enter into that kind of agreement and reward a government that has refused to work on those important issues.

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, September 30th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to resume my remarks on Bill C-46.

I was going to provide a description of the current situation of trade between Canada and Panama. As of 2007, the two-way merchandise trade between Canada and Panama totalled a modest $149 million, including $128 million in exports from Canada to Panama, and $21 million in imports to Canada from Panama. Panama at the time was Canada's seventh largest export destination in Central America and the Caribbean and Canada's 12th largest source of imports from that region.

As for the export category, what Canada sends to Panama, the key piece in the last years has been flight simulators and parts. Next would be medications and other pharmaceutical products, then machinery and equipment and electrical/electronic products, followed by agricultural goods and food products, malt, pulses, potatoes and meat, and finally paper products and aircraft.

The imports that Canada received from Panama in 2008 were heavily concentrated in a couple of areas. The key one was crude oil and refined petroleum products. In 2008 more than one-half, 55% or $11.7 million, of Canada's imports from Panama consisted of refined heavy oil. In recent years crude oil has made up as much as 86% of Canada's imports from Panama. After crude oil and refined products imports, Canada has imported small amounts of tropical agricultural products such as bananas, melons and coffee and some silver ore. Those were the key imports from Panama to Canada.

Panama is not a major destination for Canadian direct investment abroad. Canadian direct investment in Panama totalled $111 million in 2006, falling from $143 million in 2005. Panama's modest source of direct investment in Canada with foreign direct investment stocks was $50 million in 2008. With regard to services, trade in services between Canada and Panama is negligible.

That gives us some sense of the trade situation currently between Canada and Panama. It is not a big player in terms of our export business, or imports to Canada.

There are some particular problems with the deal between Canada and Panama that we are being asked to ratify in Parliament. One of them is labour standards. We have heard a lot about that in the debate so far.

Panama's record on labour standards is not great, to put it mildly. The International Labour Organization, the ILO, has raised concerns about whether workers in Panama's export processing zones actually have the right to strike, even though unions and collective bargaining are permitted. The laws establishing and regulating these export processing zones in Panama do not include arbitration or specified procedures to resolve labour disputes. There are some problems with the existing labour laws in Panama and they need some attention.

Furthermore, there has been a record of violence against union organizers, union members and labour leaders in Panama. Labour leaders have been assassinated while demonstrating and working for workers' rights. Notably, in 2007 two members of the construction union were killed. Just this past summer anti-union repression escalated in Panama with the result that several workers were killed, over 100 were injured and 300 were arrested. There is a serious problem with anti-union and anti-worker violence in Panama.

This free trade agreement with Panama would provide a maximum government fine of $15 million for labour violations to the side agreement on labour. However, these fines are likely to be very difficult to collect and even if they are collected, they are paid to a joint commission to improve labour rights enforcement in Panama, which could also allow them to be funnelled back to the government of Panama.

A fine for the violation of labour rights in this scenario is then to be used to help the government do what it should have been doing in the first place. It does not seem like much of a punishment for the failure to respect labour laws and workers' rights to be forced to pay oneself a fine, essentially, and do what one should have been doing in the first place. This is an ineffective mechanism to enforce this side agreement on labour that is part of this agreement.

In this House in the past, when we were debating the Canada-Colombia deal, we talked about the side agreement on labour but that deal amounted to nothing more than a “kill a trade unionist and pay a fine” kind of agreement. It seems that this deal is no different as it follows the same pattern as the Canada-Colombia deal.

There are very serious problems with recognizing labour rights, respecting the rights of workers in Panama and providing any effective mechanism to uphold what has been negotiated as a side agreement. As we have pointed out many times, if labour rights and the recognition of workers' rights in Canada and Panama are important to these deals, then they should be part of the main agreement and not hived off to a separate side agreement with ineffective enforcement procedures in place.

There is also a concern about child labour in Panama. Poverty is a huge issue in Panama. Many people have very low income; a dollar a day in many cases. The United Nations radio reported that 55,000 children have dropped out of education to go to work because of extreme poverty. That report came out earlier this spring. Many children in Panama are not in school and the prime cause of that is the need for them to go to work. They leave their education and go to work at a very early age.

The Panamanian government reports that 114,168 children between the ages of 5 and 17 are working in Panama, most often in agriculture. In a country of just over 3 million people, over 114,000 children between the ages 5 and 17 working because of the poverty in which their families live is a huge number. This has increased from 2008 when 89,767 children in this age group were working.

Clearly, the efforts that the Panamanian government have agreed to undertake to make universal education available to children and to ensure that child labour is no longer an issue in Panama is not working. The efforts to get children out of the workforce and into school are not working.

We need ask whether that is the kind of country with which we want to enter into a trade deal. Is that the kind of country that we want to reward with special trade arrangements when it is not making progress on this kind of very serious child labour issue?

We have also heard a lot of serious concerns raised in the debate about entering into a free trade agreement with a country that is a notorious tax haven and a centre for money laundering. Panama is regarded as a tax haven by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the OECD, as well as several other countries, including the United States. In 2008, Panama was one of 11 countries that did not have a tax information exchange agreement signed or enforced. Panama is one of only three states, with Guatemala and Nauru, that would not share bank information for any tax information exchange purpose.

This situation led the OECD, back in 2000, to blacklist Panama as an unco-operative tax haven. In response to being blacklisted, the Republic of Panama wrote to the Secretary General of the OECD in 2002 with a commitment to meet the OECD's standards for transparency and information sharing so that it would no longer be considered a tax haven. The OECD has responded to that commitment and, I think, has bumped Panama off the blacklist and onto the so-called grey list. However, Panama has not followed through on that commitment.

Panama has not, to date, substantially implemented the internationally agreed tax standard to which it committed in 2002. That standard would have obliged Panama to share information upon the request of other countries such that those other countries could effectively implement their domestic tax laws.

Panama has gone from the blacklist to the grey list with a commitment to improve things but has done nothing about making those improvements. I have to wonder whether or it is not destined to be back on the blacklist before too long.

This has been an issue for the American Congress, which is looking at a trade agreement with Panama as well, and where that deal has also been delayed because of problems with the deal. U.S. Congressman, Michael Michaud, put it this way. He said:

Panama's industrial policy is premised on obtaining a comparative advantage by banning taxation of foreign corporations, hiding tax liabilities and transactions behind banking secrecy rules and the ease with which U.S. and other firms can create unregulated subsidiaries. According to the State Department, Panama has over 350,000 foreign-registered companies.

The congressman points out a very serious problem with the legislation in Panama that allows it to be this kind of tax haven.

We need to ask whether we really want to be signing a trade agreement with a notorious tax haven and centre for money-laundering.

Again, the U.S. Department of Justice notes that Panama is a major centre for money-laundering related to the drug trade and in fact there have been very serious concerns raised about the Colon Free Zone in Panama being linked to trafficking of drugs and other illicit substances.

The International Monetary Fund notes that the Colon Free Zone is a centrally located transit area for drugs. It is a very serious accusation coming from a respected international agency and one that we should be taking into consideration as we look to negotiating a deal with this country, in a sense rewarding the country with this kind of deal. There is no doubt that the government of Panama will trumpet its success in obtaining a deal with Canada and, given the very serious problems, do we really want to make that something easy for it to do?

I think all Canadians believe that the wealthy and big corporations should not be able to avoid contributing their fair share to the development of this country. They should be paying their taxes. Should we be dealing with a country that makes it possible for them to avoid paying taxes by operating as a tax haven? I am sure that most Canadians would answer very clearly that it is wrong and that we should not be entering into an agreement with a country has not cleaned up its act on that score.

There is not a word in this agreement about the tax haven situation and not a word about correcting this failure to exchange tax information with other countries. Today in question period we heard the Prime Minister say, very clearly, that the government had no tolerance for tax havens. I have to say that we would not know it by the fact that we have this agreement before us. The government is proposing that we enter into an agreement with a well-known and notorious tax haven in the Republic of Panama and it has put this agreement forward without any mention in the agreement of dealing with that issue. It is a very serious problem.

New Democrats are not opposed to trade. We are not opposed to fair trade deals. We want to ensure that Panama meets its international commitments and that it continues to develop, but this trade deal is not the mechanism to ensure that. We are not talking about ending our relationship with Panama. We are not talking about ending the trade that exists there or looking for other opportunities to expand that trade. We are not talking about ending diplomatic relations with Panama. However, what we are saying very clearly is that this deal does not meet the kinds of standards that Canadians would want us to uphold. Canadians would want to ensure that it was a fair agreement for Canadians and for Panamanians. Unfortunately, this agreement does not meet the test and, therefore, we cannot support it.

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, September 30th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak in the debate on Bill C-46, An Act to implement the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the Republic of Panama, the Agreement on the Environment between Canada and the Republic of Panama and the Agreement on Labour Cooperation between Canada and the Republic of Panama.

We are debating a motion that was proposed and moved by the member for Hamilton Mountain, the NDP labour critic, to delay consideration of the bill for six months, given the serious problems with it that she outlined in her speech yesterday. We usually call it a hoist motion, and if there has ever been a piece of legislation before the House that deserves to be hoisted off the agenda, it is this bill to implement the trade agreement between Canada and Panama.

Once again, we have before us a bilateral trade agreement that was presented to the House and Canadians with all kinds of claims about how good this will be for Canada and the Canadian people. Sadly, the reality is that in the past these free trade agreements have not done much for either Canadians or for trade.

There is a debate going on about the efficacy of these agreements. Studies are showing that more often than not trade actually declines between countries after bilateral free trade agreements have been signed. This has been shown to be the situation in the United States, with the agreements that it has signed. As champions of this method of improving trade around the world, the Americans will really have to struggle with that research.

The NDP international trade critic explained earlier today that, when we look at the value of Canadian trade in real dollars, factoring in changes in the value of the dollar, this lessening of trade is in many cases true for Canada as well, perhaps with the exception of NAFTA. Canadian trade exports to countries with which we have signed bilateral trade agreements have actually gone down after the agreements have come into effect. Costa Rica is a good example. And generally, there is no clear correlation between increases in exports and these so-called free trade agreements.

In addition, some people are arguing that our trade exports with the United States would have gone up regardless of the NAFTA agreement. Even with NAFTA, the grandpappy of all these agreements, there is some question about how well it did all the things that it promised to do. The benefits of these deals are highly overrated and oversold by the governments that have put them forward to the Canadian people and the House.

The reality is that the situation of Canadians has not improved with the signing of these free trade agreements, starting with NAFTA. Where is the prosperity that was promised every time we heard about one of these agreements? The incomes of the wealthiest 10% of Canadians have increased dramatically since the implementation of the NAFTA agreement, but every other income category in Canada has either stagnated or declined. These deals have not been good for middle-class Canadians. They have been a disaster for low-income and working Canadians.

There is a real problem with bilateral trade agreements, with seeking out specific trade agreements with specific partners around the world. There is also a serious problem with the effect these agreements have on Canadian sovereignty.

We have all heard about chapter 11 of the NAFTA agreement, which allows for the override of the democratic will of Parliament by corporate interests. We know that the same kind of provision is included in the deal we are discussing today. It has been included in other trade deals that have been brought forward since NAFTA, and we know that such a clause amounts to a serious diminution of the sovereignty of Canada. We have to protect our ability to make the laws that we need in order to ensure prosperity and success in our own country.

It would be great if the Conservative government spent as much time and effort promoting Canadian trade as it does in negotiating these questionable free trade agreements. It is remarkable to consider how little Canada spends on promoting Canadian exports around the world, compared with Australia or the European Union. There is probably more bang for our buck in trade promotion than in pursuing these kinds of deals.

[Citizenship Act, September 28th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this debate on Bill C-467, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (children born abroad), a private member's bill tabled by the member for Vancouver South.

The bill would amend the Citizenship Act to provide that a child born abroad to or adopted abroad by a citizen employed outside Canada, in or with the Canadian armed forces, the federal public administration or the public services of a provinces be considered like a child born in Canada.

I should say at the outset that New Democrats support the bill. We hope it passes this stage and we look forward to discussing it further at the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

In recent years, Parliament has spent some time on trying to fix the provisions of the Citizenship Act. We have seen great concern about this law over the years. Problems with the 1947 Citizenship Act in particular led to many Canadians, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Canadians, losing their citizenship. These lost Canadians, as they are called, were and are folks who, any reasonable person would agree, are indeed fully Canadian but because of the peculiarities of the law were excluded from citizenship.

Bill C-37, debated and passed in the previous Parliament, went some way to correcting these problems. However, some problems still exist, as the subject matter of the bill before us today attests.

The Lost Canadians Organization, headed very ably by Don Chapman over very many years, has done incredible work on these issues. They describe the current situation this way:

While Bill C-37 solved the citizenship problems of hundreds of thousands of Canadians whose citizenship had been taken away from them by the arcane provisions of the 1947 Citizenship Act, it also created a new problem of statelessness in children who are born abroad after April 19, 2009, to Canadians who themselves were born abroad.

What this means is that Canadian citizens who were born abroad, called the first generation born abroad, cannot pass on their citizenship to their children if those children are also born abroad. Hence, the second generation born abroad rule, which came into effect in April 2009, has already started to create serious problems for Canadian citizens who do not realize that their children do not qualify for Canadian citizenship.

New Democrats, while supporting the bill before us, believe that it does not go far enough. It is clear that Canadians working in some capacity for the government, in the armed forces or the diplomatic core for example, should be able to ensure that Canadian citizenship is passed to their children, born while they are working overseas, in exactly the same way it would be if that child had been born here in Canada.

There should be no discrimination against children of Canadians who are serving our country overseas, but why the limitation imposed in this bill? Why does this bill not apply to the children of Canadians studying overseas or to those of Canadian journalists working in another country or to those Canadians who work in international aid and development.

What about the children of Canadians working for a Canadian company offshore? Surely these Canadians continue to make a significant contribution to our country by their overseas service. Why should their children and grandchildren be subject to different criteria for maintaining Canadian citizenship than children born here in Canada or than children born to folks serving the government or the armed forces.

This is especially true of children born to Canadians overseas who risk statelessness. This can arise due to the laws of some countries which do not confer citizenship status on children born in that country as we do here in Canada. We must always ensure that no one is at risk of being stateless and our laws must never contribute to someone being or becoming stateless, but we also risk creating statelessness by not allowing a child born to Canadians overseas the ability to pass on their citizenship to one of their children who was also born outside Canada. This must be fixed.

My colleague, the member for Trinity—Spadina and the New Democratic citizenship and immigration critic, has identified this problem. That is why she has also tabled a private member's bill, Bill C-397, to resolve this problem. Her bill would end the second generation citizenship cutoff for all children born abroad to Canadian parents.

These changes are crucial in today's world, a world that, thanks to the ease of travel and globalization, is much smaller than it once was, and a world where it is increasingly common and even necessary to work in a foreign country.

Canada is strengthened by the experience gained and the work performed by Canadians overseas. We should be encouraging such activity, not putting in place barriers to it. Ensuring that the children born to Canadians working overseas have Canadian citizenship in exactly the same way that children born here would address one such barrier.

The member for Trinity—Spadina pointed out an interesting aspect of this situation when she spoke to the bill. She noted that in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, and perhaps other provinces, pregnant women have sometimes been sent to U.S. hospitals to give birth because of the lack of space in Canadian neo-natal care units. She wondered if these families knew that because their child was born outside Canada, that there would be a limitation on their child's ability to pass on Canadian citizenship to his or her child if that child were also born outside Canada. She wondered if people knew that their grandchild could potentially be stateless given this situation. Surely this is not an acceptable risk in these particular circumstances.

Some people would doubt the attachment to Canada of Canadians who live and work overseas. While there may be some who find Canadian citizenship convenient, we would be wrong to assume that is true of the vast majority of those who are affected by these circumstances.

We must also ensure that we do not enshrine different classes of citizenship in our laws. Canadians must not be punished because they chose to work overseas and their children and grandchildren must not be punished because they happen to be born outside Canada. There must not be two types of Canadian citizenship: one for those of us born here and one for those of us born elsewhere.

It may be necessary to consider ways to ensure attachment to Canada for individuals who spend considerable time away from home but that is a far different project than putting arbitrary limits on citizenship.

The NDP has made it clear that we will seek amendments to this bill at committee that would ensure it addresses the situation of all children born outside Canada to Canadian parents, not just those born to members of the Canadian armed forces or who are directly working for the Canadian or provincial governments.

To paraphrase what the member for Trinity—Spadina said in her speech, no child should be left stateless because his or her father or mother, or grandfather or grandmother, chose to become an aid or development worker and do good work outside Canada. No child should be left stateless because his or her parents or grandparents decided to work as journalists overseas. No Canadian mother working overseas should be forced to travel home to Canada, interrupting her family and career just to have her baby in Canada to preserve that child's full citizenship rights.

This bill is a start and it provides an opportunity, which is why I will support it. I hope other members will do the same.

[International Transfer of Offenders Act, September 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question.

It is not just my opinion that we are opening this up to too much discretion on the part of the minister, or that the change of wording from “shall” to “may” is ill-advised. There are certain things the minister is required to take into consideration and changing that to a list of things that the minister “may” take into consideration is a dramatic and fateful change to this legislation.

It is not just my opinion. Even with the current legislation, there is a problem. We saw this with the court decision earlier this week, when Justice John O'Keefe of the Federal Court of Canada ruled in two cases where transfers had been denied. He did not question the idea that the minister should have some prerogative, but he did write that courts cannot condone completely unstructured discretion, and that in circumstances where a decision has such a dramatic effect on someone, the law requires a complete explanation, however short the decision.

In two cases before the court, it found that there was a serious problem with ministerial discretion as it currently exists in the law. The problem is even greater in Bill C-5. We have heard that Bill C-5 goes much farther down the road of ministerial discretion than is currently allowed.

I think there are serious problems. It is not just my opinion. It seems to be something that is coming out of the Federal Court of Canada in a decision earlier this week, on Tuesday, in which Justice O'Keefe seems to have been addressing this very issue.

There are serious problems with the whole question of ministerial discretion. The change in this legislation, with respect to the minister's power of discretion, from a list of prescribed criteria to a much broader, open-ended list is a serious matter. I suspect that, given what the court has already said, the present range of ministerial discretion will have difficulty standing up to legal challenges down the road.

[International Transfer of Offenders Act, September 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to participate in the debate this afternoon on Bill C-5, An Act to amend the International Transfer of Offenders Act.

I am very strongly opposed to this piece of legislation. I am opposed to it because I believe that it mucks around inappropriately with an incredibly successful program that is already in place. I see no need or no appropriateness to the government introducing these changes to a program that has served us so very well to this point.

I also very strong believe, as we have heard in debate today and recently from my colleague from Windsor—Tecumseh and my colleague from Vancouver Kingsway, that these changes proposed by the government will make our communities less safe, not more safe. It has completely the opposite effect than the government is saying it will. There are very serious problems with this and I cannot be clearer in my opposition to this legislation.

What is Bill C-5 about? It is identical to a piece of legislation that was introduced earlier in this government's mandate, Bill C-59. That bill died due to prorogation before there was any debate in the House. Bill C-5 contains amendments to the International Transfer of Offenders Act. We have had legislation around the international transfer of offenders since 1978. The current legislation, the International Transfer of Offenders Act, was enacted in 2004.

The act provides a mechanism for foreign nationals imprisoned in Canada to apply for transfer to their home countries to serve out the remainder of their sentence. It also provides the mechanism for Canadian citizens imprisoned abroad to apply for a transfer back to Canada to serve out the remainder of their sentence.

This regime about the international transfer of offenders has been in force for over 30 years, and both Liberal and Conservative governments have overseen the administration of this legislation. They have also, both Conservative and Liberal governments, overseen the transfer of Canadian citizens back to Canada.

How many people have used this mechanism? Between 1978 and 2007, 124 foreign nationals were transferred out of Canadian jails and 1,351 Canadian citizens were transferred back to Canada.

In the current act, the purpose of the act is defined in section 3, and that section says:

The purpose of this Act is to enhance public safety and to contribute to the administration of justice and the rehabilitation of offenders and their reintegration into the community by enabling offenders to serve their sentences in the country of which they are citizens or nationals.

Correctional Service Canada, which obviously has a key interest in the legislation, has a website dedicated to this Transfer of Offenders Act, and it gives more detailed background about the principles underlying how this actually works. I will just quote from that website. It says:

Canadians incarcerated in foreign countries often find themselves facing serious problems coping with local conditions. The most common problems involve culture shock, isolation, language barriers, poor diets, inadequate medical care, disease and inability to contact friends and family...In some prison systems, the offender's family is expected to provide food and financial assistance.

It goes on to say:

The purpose of these agreements is humanitarian to enable offenders to serve their sentence in their country of citizenship, to alleviate undue hardships borne by offenders and their families and facilitate their eventual reintegration into society...Once transferred, the offender's sentence is administered in accordance with the laws of the receiving country.

Just as an aside, this agreement is very important to people in my own constituency. Recently I was visited by a constituent whose son is incarcerated in Japan. He is going through many of those issues that were mentioned on the Correctional Service Canada website, dealing with culture shock, isolation, language barriers in the Japanese correctional system, which is perhaps one of the better ones that a Canadian who is incarcerated overseas might have to deal with. The constituent was explaining to me the difficulties that she and her husband are having in terms of ensuring the safety, the well-being of their son, given the very serious trouble he got into, and everybody acknowledges that he did make some very serious errors.

They are also concerned about some of the changes in consular services that are available to people overseas from Canadian officials when they find themselves in these kinds of very difficult situations. There are very real purposes that affect Canadian families, given the kind of trouble that people have gotten into overseas.

The act explains the process for a transfer application. It says that for a transfer of a Canadian citizen to take place, the offender must consent to the transfer, the country where the offender is currently imprisoned must consent, and the Canadian government must consent. Therefore, the prisoner, the overseas government, and the Canadian government all have to agree to this process.

Currently, the minister of public safety is designated to review all applications for offender transfer and the act specifies that the minister has to consider certain things when evaluating an offender's application for transfer. There are four things that the minister is compelled to consider currently under the legislation.

The minister has to consider whether the offender's return to Canada would constitute a threat to the security of Canada. The minister has to consider whether the offender left or remained outside Canada with the intention of abandoning Canada as his or her place of permanent residence. The minister also needs to consider whether the offender has any social or family ties in Canada, and finally, whether the foreign entity or its prison system represents a serious threat to the offender's security or human rights. Those are all the current requirements that we see in the existing International Transfer of Offenders Act.

The bill before us, Bill C-5, proposes to change those requirements, and it changes the legislation in a number of ways.

First, it seeks to add the words “to enhance public safety” to the purpose of the act. Where the current act currently states that the minister “shall” consider certain factors, and actually requires the minister to consider certain factors, the new bill, Bill C-5, would change this to read that the minister “may” consider the following factors, thereby dramatically increasing ministerial discretion.

It takes away the requirement to do certain things and in a sense proposes that there are certain suggestions the minister must take into consideration. It is a dramatic change in the legislation.

The new proposal, Bill C-5, seeks to add the phrase “in the Minister's opinion” to the existing factors laid out in the act. What are those new factors that are laid out in the act that the minister may consider, again that the minister is not required to consider but might choose to consider, given these proposals from the government?

Those seven factors are whether, in the minister’s opinion, the offender’s return to Canada will endanger public safety, including the offender's victim, family or any child, in cases where the offender has committed a sexual offence involving a child, as well as whether, in the minister’s opinion, the offender is likely to continue to engage in criminal activity in Canada. The new bill also proposes that the minister may take into consideration the offender's health, whether the offender has refused to participate in rehabilitation programs, whether the offender has accepted responsibility for his or her crime, the manner in which the offender will be supervised after his or her transfer, and whether the offender has co-operated with police.

However, the most important change in this list of factors is the seventh factor, which would allow the minister to take into consideration any other factor that the minister considers relevant. Let me quote that again. The direct quote is “any other factor that the Minister considers relevant” while evaluating an application for transfer.

That is a huge opening to discretion that is utterly inappropriate in this process, that any minister could have the opening to whatever he or she wanted to think was a consideration. To add that into this process is completely inappropriate and irresponsible of the government to go down that road. If there is a reason for defeating and abandoning this legislation, it is right there in that phrase.

What have New Democrats been saying? We have heard a number of New Democrats participate in this debate today. Our justice critic and our public safety critic have participated in the debate.

We agree that enhancing public safety should be one of the purposes of the bill. The safety of the public should be given consideration when assessing an application for transfer. I believe it is already included in the factors that the minister is required to take into consideration. I am sure any minister evaluating an application for the transfer of an international prisoner would take that into consideration.

I do not think there is any indication, and there certainly has been no evidence presented by the government, that public safety has ever been compromised under the current act. It certainly does not seem to be a dramatic problem, and one wonders why the government dreamt up this idea in the first place. It is not an issue that I have ever been apprised of in the exercise of this legislation and this program.

It is important to remember that Canadians transferred back to Canada under the act are not being released immediately into the community. They are returning to serve out their prison sentence in a Canadian correctional facility, where they have access to rehabilitation programs and will be subject to the supervision that our correctional system provides.

We have to remember that whether or not these individuals are approved for a transfer they are eventually going to come back to Canada. When somebody is sentenced to a crime overseas, they serve their time, and at the end of that time, they come home. We cannot block their return to Canada. It is to our advantage to ensure that they have rehabilitation, that they have access to programs that will help them turn their lives around.

That is one of the reasons that a transfer in many cases enhances public safety. If we can get someone back, if we can get them into our rehabilitation programs, if we can ensure that their parole conditions allow for appropriate supervision once they are out of jail, our communities will actually be safer in the long run, safer than they would be if somebody came back who never had to engage in any of these programs and who cannot be supervised once back in Canada. There are lots of good reasons for wanting them to participate in these processes. Public safety is a significant consideration already, given the way these programs work.

We can offer anger management programs, rehabilitation programs, and substance abuse programs in our prison system. Often none of these things is available in programs outside Canada. It is to our advantage to make sure that a Canadian convicted of a crime overseas has access to these kinds of programs.

That is a crucial reason why this legislation is ill-conceived. It would not contribute to public safety. It would lessen public safety, because it would remove the possibility of people engaging in our criminal justice system.

We have to look at how this system has operated. What is the reality of what has happened over the years? How has it functioned? Why would we consider changing the program if there is no evidence that there has been a problem? This is crucial.

There are statistics and facts to bring to bear when we look at this matter. I will give the House one statistic. Of 620 Canadians who were transferred back to Canada under this program between 1993 and 2007, and who were reviewed for readmission to penitentiary in the two years after their sentence expired, only four were readmitted for a new offence. This is .6% of the 620, a .6% recidivism rate among people who were transferred back to Canada to serve out a sentence for a crime they committed overseas. That is an incredibly low recidivism rate.

There is probably nothing in our criminal justice system that could approach this rate of success in ensuring that people do not get into more trouble once they have done their time. The general recidivism rate in our corrections system is around 20% to 25%. This by any measure has been an incredibly significant and successful program.

Given that kind of success rate, a recidivism rate of only .6%, that is, only four people with serious problems out of 620 between 1993 to 2007, it is beyond me why the government would change this program, make it more difficult to participate in it, or even suggest that we ought to increase the ability of a minister to deny someone access to a transfer back to Canada to serve out his or her sentence.

This program has worked. This is a program that we have long-standing experience with. This is a program that allows someone who has gotten into trouble overseas to engage the criminal justice system and correction system in Canada and take advantage of rehabilitation, substance abuse, and anger management programs. We have built these programs into our criminal justice to make our communities safer and to ensure that people who get into trouble have a way out, a way of turning their lives around after making mistakes.

This program allows participation in those kinds of programs. Yet there is a suggestion from the government that we should turn our backs on that success. I think it is absolutely incredible, to put it mildly, that the government has cooked up some mysterious reason that this is an urgent issue demanding the immediate attention of Parliament. There is no reason for us to take up our time in reviewing this program. The program is working and it is necessary. It is an important program for Canadians.

We have heard other reasons in the debate this afternoon about how the program sometimes permits people who have been unfairly convicted overseas to find a way back to Canada. That is one situation that we also need to keep in mind. We have recognized problems with criminal justice systems in other countries, and this program has given us a way of ensuring that Canadians have some recourse when they have suffered unfair convictions overseas. That is something we also need to keep in mind when we look at this.

I believe this is ill-conceived legislation, and I hope it will go down to defeat very shortly in the House. I cannot tell the government to go back to the drawing board, because I do not know what the issue was that it was trying to address in the first place. I do not think it should be mucking around with this successful and important program.

There is little more to be said, except that this bill deserves to go down to defeat in the very near future.

[International Transfer of Offenders Act, September 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the member about the need for this bill. I question whether this is another situation where the Conservative government is inventing a problem where one does not currently exist.

I understand that 620 Canadians were transferred back to Canada between 1993 and 2007 under this program. Of those people, only four were readmitted to prison in the two-year period after their sentences expired. That is a recidivism rate of .6%, which is dramatically below the regular recidivism rate for people convicted of criminal activity in Canada. That one is up around 20% or 25%.

I am wondering why there is the need for this legislation, given that we have a program that works so dramatically well, by I would hope anyone's assessment, at the current time.