Charlie Angus

[Public Safety, February 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, what is clear is Canadians cannot trust the government with protecting their privacy rights.

Let us try out this quote, “We're only seeing the tip of the iceberg...The greatest threat to privacy is coming from within, from our federal government”. Who said that? It was Ann Cavoukian, the privacy commissioner of Ontario. According to the minister, she is on the side of child pornographers. He is wrong. She is on the side of average, law-abiding Canadians who play by the rules.

Why is he on the side of intrusion, snooping and treating Canadians like criminals?

[Public Safety, February 14th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I wrote the minister a letter asking why he was breaking the promise of Stockwell Day. Stockwell Day promised Canadians that the government would protect privacy rights and judicial oversights. The minister wrote me back and said that times have changed. Yes, times have changed. Stockwell Day is gone and the Conservatives have a majority.

The basis of a free and democratic society is the right to due process and the right to privacy. The government has declared open season on average Canadians. The minister needs to come clean with Canadians on why he wants to snoop and spy on them.

[Public Safety, February 14th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives think it is okay to spy on ordinary Canadians and treat law-abiding citizens like criminals and that it is okay for the police to track one's cellphone or follow one on the Internet however they want, whenever they want. The government is going to force companies to build elaborate spyware so that it can track the activities of any ordinary citizen. This would be like putting an electronic prisoner's bracelet on everyone with a cellphone.

Why is the government turning against ordinary citizens? Why is it attacking the rights of privacy of ordinary, law-abiding Canadian citizens?

[Aboriginal Affairs, February 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, let us go through the facts for two months. He has frozen $1 million in education to the band. There is no jurisdiction in the country where it would be legal for a government to cut off funds to a school to punish a municipality.

Why is he treating these first nation children as bargaining chips? He cut off the funds to the school. He cut off the funds to the students who were going off reserve to high school.

I know these students. They have done nothing wrong. Why have they been used as bargaining chips in his fight with a third party manager and the band?

[Aboriginal Affairs, February 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, there is no need for further study. It is a time for action. The education panel demands that the government codify the right of education. As a right, education cannot be interfered.

Yesterday, when I asked the minister why he had cut off funding to Attawapiskat students and teachers, he said that it was a fabrication. Does he not even know what is happening on the ground in Attawapiskat?

Why is he cutting off funding to the school? Why is he targeting children in order to force the band into submission? Is this his idea of putting first nations children first?

[Aboriginal Affairs, February 7th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the fact is that the minister, in order to punish the community, has actually cut off funding for the children. For two months, education dollars for that community have been cut off by the minister.

Education is a universal human right. It cannot be interfered with. It cannot be withheld. It cannot be used as a bargaining chip to force the submission of a band council that made the minister look bad.

Will the minister stand up in the House and explain to Canadians why he has cut off funding for children, for teachers and for high school students for two solid months? Explain that.

[Aboriginal Affairs, February 7th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday modular homes for Attawapiskat had to be taken off the trucks because the third party manager screwed up. He has been withholding the funds needed by the De Beers technical team to get the site work done in Attawapiskat.

We have a small window here. Time is ticking. So far the only thing this high-priced Indian agent has done is to hit the community up for about $50,000. That is a lot of coin to provide political cover to a minister who has completely blown this file.

Why does the minister continue to punish the people of Attawapiskat?

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 6th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, when I speak with police officers in Timmins and in the Iroquois Falls region and ask them how they use the registry, they say that when they go out on a domestic violence call, they need to know if there are four or five guns in the house. They say that knowing there is a gun owner is not sufficient because that fifth gun could be the difference between life and death. That is what we hear from front-line police officers.

The security chief over there from Yorkton—Melville sent a letter to me saying that he believed that the Chiefs of Police of Canada were attempting to find all the data on gun owners so they could seize their weapons. He said that he felt that the police were leading us to a totalitarian state. I think that kind of language from a government member is very disturbing.

Why does my hon. colleague think the government is so convenient about using police when it suits its needs but when the police speak about their actual use, they are decried as a totalitarian threat to the liberties of the Conservative backbench.

[Aboriginal Affairs, February 6th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, today, in Geneva, Switzerland, 16-year-old Chelsea Edwards from Attawapiskat is leading the delegation of first nations children who will tell the international community how they have been systemically discriminated against by the government.

Education is a universal human right and Canada is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The government has a legal obligation to protect the equitable education rights of all but it has failed in this job. Nowhere is this failure more noticeable than in the mistreatment of the children of Attawapiskat: 12 years without a school; 12 years of broken promises.

No wonder the late Shannen Koostachin stood up to the government and said that the children had suffered enough. She knew that children have only one childhood. It is a precious resource that cannot be squandered under the substandard buildings, third-rate education and broken promises of the Conservative government.

Shannen had a dream that all children have the right to an education in a safe and comfy school. Meegwetch to our youth leaders who are making Shannen's dream a reality at the United Nations today.

[Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act, February 6th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I come from a rural area where people had such a bad experience with how the registry was developed. I have heard it said again and again that it should never have cost $1 billion. We could have spent $1 billion on a whole manner of other more useful functions than a computer system that took so long to get off the ground.

That being said, when I talk to people in Timmins—James Bay, I say that the Conservatives' solution is to take that billion dollars' worth of records and have a bonfire. People say that is really stupid, and it is. To take a billion dollars' worth of records and say, “What a waste of money” and then to show us what a waste of money it is they are going to set fire to all this data that is being used by the police and could be used by the provinces.

That is the fundamental difference between good policy and Conservative policy. If we have paid for that data and we are using it, we should maintain that data because it is important for public safety.