Brian Murphy

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, February 4th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, this is an important debate on an important aspect of criminal justice. I want to open with a little anecdotal story from my and my community's past, greater Moncton.

I was elected to council for the city of Moncton in 1992. We had an older councillor, who was over 80 years of age, named Al Galbraith. He is now deceased. He was a veteran of World War II. He was a very fair-minded individual, but a law and order councillor. We all know those types who speak from the benefit of age and experience.

We were having some problems with loitering and lack of curfew being followed in some of the poorly lit parks in the city of Moncton at the time. I was newly elected and like all newly elected people I was going to save the world very quickly and easily. He was the old sage councillor and when we went on a radio show together, he talked about the problem of youth congregating in a darkly lit park. I thought perhaps we should toughen the curfew laws and look to the law side of it, the black letter. The older councillor suggested that if children were congregating in a place without lights, perhaps we should put lights in the park or provide opportunities for youth to congregate elsewhere. It struck me at the time that there were more ways to effect better laws and to have good laws followed than just enact new laws and that we had to look always at the resources in the community and what we would do to raise a community.

I do not want this to be seen as an endorsement of Senator Clinton, but it is a village that we are raising and the attempts to raising the village come not always from the law and from this place.

Nevertheless, we are talking about Bill C-25. Just like that park in the north end of Moncton, it would have been really easy perhaps for the government to turn on the light over its desk and read all of the Nunn report. It appears that it only got to one of the six recommendations.

The part of the bill that deals with the revolving door of custody is a good start. It will have to be fixed at committee. However, the Conservative government once again is in the dark with respect to criminal justice issues by not following the whole of the Nunn report. It has not even adverted to the review of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which will be upon us very shortly. It also has not embraced other aspects that come from without the Nunn report.

My colleague, the member for Beauséjour was very clear in his remarks, as our justice critic, that the part of the bill that dealt with custody of repeat offenders or those charged with serious offences under the Youth Criminal Justice Act was a good start and that it could be fixed. I do not want to spend any more time talking about it because there is so much to the Canadian public what the government is not doing to keep our community safe. It did not follow the other aspects of the Nunn commission report, which was the very germane, sensible and logical response to a horrific incident involving Ms. McEvoy. Being in neighbouring New Brunswick, it rocked the province of Nova Scotia for the period in question.

In short, with Bill C-25, the government could have at least copied the recommendations in the Nunn report. If the government needed a set of crayons, we could have got them for it. However, it only copied one of them and, at that, not so well.

Then there was the slip-in of the issues of deterrence and denunciation.

What the government does not realize is that from time immemorial there has been legislation that bifurcates the responsibilities and the penalties to be meted out to adults on one side and youth on the other. If we are only to return to an era where everybody, in some sort of Dickensian novel way, gets treated the same way, everybody gets thrown in the debtors' prison and the poorhouse respective of age and circumstance, then that is what Canadians should know. Maybe they should know that the government wants to return to that sort of era.

We have had youth crime legislation, whether it was the Juvenile Delinquents Act, the Young Offenders Act and now the Youth Criminal Justice Act, for some time, and we do not act in a vacuum.

It is quite interesting to note that upon the enactment of the YCJA in 2003, it was the subject of a reference from the province of Quebec in respect to constitutionality and also its legitimacy on the world stage.These are important matters dealing with children and the way children are raised in our communities.

The bill does not talk about punishment. It talks about justice to the community. What are we to do with our youth? None of the principles of deterrence or denunciation were in the YCJA. The most offending aspects of the YCJA in international law deal with those provisions in sections 61 to 72, regarding the imposition of adult sentences, or the mode of trial in adult court, for young offenders.

Sometimes we live in a bubble that media outlets and certain Conservative demagogues propagate, such as having no laws covering this, or we are a lawless society, or our youth are running rampant across the country committing crimes. That is not the case.

The YCJA has provisions that have been challenged for their constitutionality and their international human rights legitimacy with respect to trying youths as adults. It is important perhaps to remember and to remind Canadians that we have legislation on the books to deal with the problems that face our communities. In certain circumstances children and youths have been tried as adults. What is wrong with the principles of deterrence and denunciation is that they import a concept from the Criminal Code of Canada into the YCJA.

Justice Nunn talked about a lot of things. The McEvoy incident was horrific. It rocked the community. There have been instances like the McEvoy incident across the country. As parliamentarians we should be dealing with things like this.

Let me be clear. We on this side of the House would have welcomed both here in the House and in committee a more comprehensive Bill C-25. Alas, amendments to Bill C-25, incorporating more of the Nunn recommendations, might well be out of order. They might be further than the concept that this very narrow bill suggests.

The government chose to import one concept of the over six recommendations. It inserted from its political quiver an agenda of punishment, of incorporating concepts that did not belong in the act. The government chose to try to get a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada to get the whole YCJA thrown out. Maybe that is the whole ploy here. Incorporating the principles of sentencing of deterrence and denunciation will put the YCJA in jeopardy.

It is important to remember this. We often talk about what we add to legislation, but often there are teeth to pieces of legislation. The Criminal Code and the YCJA are no exception.

Reading the very monosyllabic but frequent Conservative press releases on criminal justice, one might be surprised to read that there are principles of sentencing in the YCJA. On a good and fair reading, these principles might make Canadians feel that judges are given the task of interpreting these principles and ensuring that our communities remain safe.

Section 38(3) states:

In determining a youth sentence, the youth justice court shall take into account

(a) the degree of participation by the young person...

(b) the harm done to victims and whether it was intentional...

(c) any reparation made by the young person...

(d) the time spent in detention...

These alone speak to the community interest.

How many times at justice committee and in the House have we heard, for example, the member for Wild Rose say that victims are never part of any determination by judges or lawyers in any of the discussions on criminal justice across the country?

I stand here today as a representative of a community where an 83-year-old veteran councillor had the sense to say that we did not have to deal with all the law. Sometimes we just had to turn the light on in the park and read the laws that exist. I wish the government had done that.

[Business of Supply, December 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened with interest to the member's comments about P3 and public-private partnerships. He may or may not be aware that there is an institute that governs good public-private partnerships and comments on bad ones.

I wonder if the member would agree with me that it is not so much that the Conservative government over there is planning to set aside some money for triple Ps, but that it has set no guidelines as to how that money will be spent. We may in fact be in another era of Mulroney-Schreiber boondoogles where good friends of the government spend public money to no good end.

I wonder what the member's comments are on the difference between boondoogle/bad PPPs and ones that actually work with public ownerships and governed structures.

[Business of Supply, December 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, in New Brunswick it was quite well done. The cities, the incorporated areas, got half the money and the unincorporated areas and the small villages got the other half of the money.

If this gas tax division of revenue in the province of New Brunswick does not take place, it means villages like Saint-Quentin, the towns of St. Basile, now part of Edmunston, and the other smaller villages, Kedgwick and other places in his riding will not have enough money through the gas tax sharing of revenue to maybe pave or renew their streets and roads that their tourists go through. They will not have any money to do any economic development, restoring things like the great Restigouche River salmon fishery.

They will not have the money to see infrastructure projects like winter skiing, Palais des congrès, all these things that take place in the vital area of the Breyonne, which he represents, Madawaska, take place because there will be no long term funding formula for those poor municipalities.

I appreciate he is doing all he can—

[Business of Supply, December 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, there was a lot there. I am glad that the parliamentary secretary gave me an opportunity to talk about the Petitcodiac River, a major environmental cleanup project on which his government completely closed the door after a federally sanctioned EIA project. A federally funded project was entered into and the previous federal government and the current provincial government said that they would abide by the findings.

In the 1990s a landfill closure took place, which was sanctioned by both levels of government. Environment Canada found that there was pollution getting into the river. Through a court settlement, it was agreed that the city of Moncton, for the first time, would contribute economically to the restoration of the Petitcodiac River. For the first time, a city of Moncton council said that river restoration was a very important thing.

I am very proud, having been the mayor of that municipality, to own up to responsibilities. I only wish the Conservative government would own up to its responsibilities and say that the Petitcodiac River restoration is just as important as the Saint John Harbour cleanup, as many of the other projects in Conservative ridings that get environmental funds.

When the parliamentary secretary talked about 2003 and the member for Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, I was a mayor in 1998 and on when the Liberal government came down, after much barking from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, not some backbench Alliance-Reform-Conservative Party, or whatever they were then, MP. It was the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, of which I was part, that got a government going on the best infrastructure program for municipalities in the western hemisphere. It is a Liberal invention that the member should not destroy.

[Business of Supply, December 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to talk about communities and municipalities.

In New Brunswick, where I am from, we have big cities, small cities and communities that are not organized, also known as local service districts.

I would like to craft my comments knowing what I do know from New Brunswick and the Maritime provinces but also having served on the Federation of Canadian Municipalities finance committee and having been the president of the Cities of New Brunswick Association, to bring to the discussion, which I think we need to have in this Parliament, about this order of government called municipalities in Canada and what has happened to them recently and in the recent past.

In a question earlier from the parliamentary secretary, although it is odd that he would ask an opposition member for advice, but knowing that he asked the member for Scarborough—Rouge River for advice was probably a good decision because of his sage advice often given in this House over his many years here.

However, it is interesting because that member represents the greater Toronto area and we often look at cities as if it were just Toronto, but it is not. There are 10 major cities in Canada that comprise some 75% of the GDP in this country, but there are other communities. There are hub cities and metropolitan areas. The census now recognizes places like Moncton as a census metropolitan area. We have to remember that cities, towns and villages are organized areas that can all profit from the motion that is before this House with respect to the sharing of gas tax revenue.

There are orders of government in this country. During the debates that predate Confederation and the reports that Confederation was based on, and one in particular is Lord Durham's report, there was much discussion of making municipalities a formal order of government, a government with its own constitutional sphere of powers. That never came to be.

If I may be permitted, municipal scholars have looked at the Confederation debates and there was some talk of making municipalities in that sphere. It never happened but a lot of things were discussed at the Confederation debates that never made it into the Constitution Act, or the BNA as it was then in 1867.

However, it is important to underline that communities existed at the time Canada was formed and they became an order of government, on paper, subservient to provincial governments.

The question about whether municipalities' acts in the various provinces are enacted and create and regulate municipalities may seem like a moot one. This is clearly a division between federal and provincial jurisdiction.

However, not so fast, I would say, because over the course of history the federal government and the provincial government, those two levels or orders of government, have either let municipalities continue with their powers in their own sphere, uninterrupted, not invading that territory, so that by right municipalities have constitutional status, by default as it were, but more recently, there have been involvements by federal and provincial governments in allowing municipalities certain powers or agencies of government certain powers being devolved to municipalities, which make our cities, towns and villages a true order of government which, I may say, without doubt, as an experienced veteran in the field of municipal affairs, were treated much better under the past Liberal government than they are being treated today.

If we want to just cut the debate short, all questions could be answered by asking this one question: What do municipalities, cities, towns and villages across this country think of the Conservative infrastructure program?

Are the cities in Canada that do not have borders and do not have bridges happy that over half the money that is called infrastructure is going to borders and bridges? I do not think so. Are they happy that this government will not have the guts to say that after one more year it will cut out the gas tax transfer?

The government is just putting this in its aspire budget so that it can skate passed the next election and then get really to the point about cities. It does not respect cities. It does not respect them as orders of government. It is going to take away that hard-earned money from our communities and leave them pretty bereft. It is quite certain.

Let us put this in contradistinction to what the Liberal government did. When I was a city mayor, a lot of lobbying and work was done on behalf of the Liberal government by people like the member for York West who authored a report, which was accepted by the government in 2001, and the member for Don Valley West who became a secondary minister responsible for municipalities and infrastructure.

After a lot of work, progress was being made. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities was a little happier and our cities could see forward a few years. They could keep the lights on along the roads. They could keep shovelling the snow off their highways. They could ensure that they could grow and become the economic generator they are for Canada today.

Is it lost on the government ? In listening to the debate, is it lost on the House that cities and municipalities are growing? Sadly, our country is becoming less of an urban nation, as it was at the time of Confederation, than it is now. That is part of the character of Canada that is being lost, but it is very much in sync with what is happening in the rest of the world. It is a fact that cannot be ignored. If we look at progressive legislation over the years, recognizing facts that happen is a lot better than reacting to something that is evident after a disaster happens. I will provide two examples.

In the 1970s the Liberal government instituted its first minister of state for urban affairs. This was followed, as I mentioned, with the appointment of the member for Don Valley West. There is a continuum under Liberal governments of respecting municipalities.

What happens under Conservative regimes is a downloading of authority without an uploading of financial resources. I can give one example that will ring true to everyone who knows anything about disasters, human health and governance for our citizens, and that is Walkerton.

Before Walkerton, municipal infrastructure programs, and I do not care which government I spatter with this, were very much at the whim of the political desires of the local representatives, affecting very important strategic infrastructure like water treatment plants. What is more important than delivering clean drinking water to our communities and citizens? Very little except national health care, maybe.

After Walkerton it was very much realized that the infrastructure programs had to take care, through its strategic initiatives, to ensure the money was well spent. That is why there has been a return to the days. The Conservative Party in power now wants to take infrastructure money, put it into friendly communities, that is, Conservative communities, and spend the money for pork barrel politics. That is what is happening here.

Let us also remind ourselves that it was a Conservative regime that created the Walkerton mess in the first place. One does not have to look far afield from this place to realize that people like the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Health and the Minister of the Environment were involved in a government that devolved authority to municipalities, which did not have the resources to follow through with their very heavy responsibilities.

It is a sad tale in Walkerton. The fellow who was in charge of putting chlorine in the water purification system also had duties cleaning rinks at night. This is because the Harris government decided that it had better cut money to the municipalities. Does it not ring true in a continual chain when we hear the Minister of Finance so ungraciously and unimaginably insult cities and their mayors? He did it publicly and openly. He had a chance to retract it and he did not. It is the way he feels. It is the way the government feels.

The young member for the riding of Nepean—Carleton was on an Ottawa talk show and completely insulted mayors, as if mayors were aliens that came out of nowhere, asking for money that did not belong to them as representatives of citizens. In many ways, municipalities respect the rule that the voter or citizen, the person they deal with and see every day, wants his or her garbage picked up and snow removed.

Those are the people who the Minister of Finance and the member for Nepean—Carleton have no respect for and that is why the government has no guts and will not support a motion that extends the transfer of gas tax revenue. I can see no other reason except it has an agenda of getting a majority government, spending money in the communities it likes for big boondoggle projects, doing nothing about extending gas tax revenues to municipalities and letting them wither on the vine.

It is shameful. This motion is positive. It follows an historic chain of recognizing and supporting municipalities. I urge all members of the House to support it.

[Criminal Code, November 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask for unanimous consent for the following motion. I move that Bill C-254, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (hate propaganda) stand in the name of the member for London West instead of the member for Etobicoke Centre, and that it stand on the order of precedence in the place of Motion No. 400.

[Tackling Violent Crime Act, November 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative government promised to hire 2,500 new policemen and to seek RCMP recruits, even in the instance where the RCMP itself is having difficulties bringing the levels up on a normal evaluation. What does the member think about the unkept promises of the law and order government?

[Correctional Service Canada, November 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, today is the day that Ashley Smith, formerly of Moncton, would have been released from prison. Tragically, she suffocated to death just a few weeks ago while in the Grand Valley Institution for Women.

Last year the Correctional Investigator raised issues about the treatment of federally sentenced women and the discrimination of prisoners with disabling mental health issues. Yet the government continues to claim that there are no discrimination issues in the criminal justice system.

When will the government take action and implement a mental health strategy for Canada's prisons, so that an Ashley Smith incident will not occur again?

[November 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to hear that the parliamentary secretary has had previous lives. He may need nine of them in a place like this.

I am confused in that the affidavits that have been referred to, which I have gone over in part because I am implicated in one of them, are comparing apples and oranges.

In the New Brunswick case, 10 MPs bought ads with locally raised money for an advertisement that was in all papers of provincial distribution, including the ridings in which each of the 10 MPs were involved.

In the Conservative example in Moncton for instance, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, $7,600 came from the national fund, was spent on national advertising which did not have prominence in the riding of Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe and then was paid back. It is completely different.

In short, I understand that the parliamentary secretary is saying that the Elections Canada ruling was wrong. Will he abide by the ruling of the court and undertake not to appeal and waste taxpayers' money?

[November 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I can understand that there is a lot of commotion in here tonight about the Saskatchewan Roughriders winning the Grey Cup. I rise to my feet amidst all that glorious celebration of Canada's oldest professional sport championship and offer salutations to both sides.

I rise to ask a question in the realm of democratic reform. I was fortunate enough to ask a question of the government. However, I was not fortunate enough to really receive an answer.

My question involved questions regarding Mr. Michael Donison and his imprimatur.

I should go back a little. He was one of the star witnesses for the Conservative government when it brought in its new accountability act, the most comprehensive, et cetera, as I have heard the member for Nepean—Carleton go on about the title. In fact, Mr. Donison was a witness at the Bill C-2 hearings who said that the convention fee expenses were totally legal and totally within the confines of the Elections Act.

However, it turns out that over the summer the Conservative Party defied, I guess, the evidence of Mr. Donison and treated convention fees as contributions, as all parties had, and did a sort of volte-face on their original position.

My question, thoroughly put to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform, is this: will we see the same turnaround with respect to the colouring of the in and out expense aspect done on most Conservative campaigns and totalling some $2 million? Will we see a change in the position in this very important matter? Was it really necessary for the Conservative Party to sue Elections Canada and to put the taxpayers to the expense of defending Elections Canada when it is very clear that Elections Canada did not allow these expenses in the first place?

Much has been made in court filings about other advertising undertaken by other members across the country, but I hasten to add that Elections Canada has not thrown out any other expense accounts except the numerous expense accounts put in by candidates, successful or not, in the Conservative Party who have participated in the in and out affair.

Local candidates had claimed, many of them in defiance of their party leaders, that it was national advertising. In fact, it was. Much of the advertising that took place, and this is according to Mr. Donison, who is now sort of in the embrace of government and who said it would be no real news to a local campaign: it would be “a transfer in and back out, same day...as agreed”. He said that there would be “no net cost”. It is very close in scheme to money laundering.

I want to know, if everything was done by the letter of the law, why did Elections Canada reject not one not two but a myriad of claims? Also, why was it necessary for the Conservative Party to take the Elections Canada decision to court and not accept Elections Canada findings, as all of us as candidates have? Why are the Conservatives putting the taxpayers to the expense of defending Elections Canada?