Charlie Angus

[Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act, October 26th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am fascinated by this discussion because all Canadians are implicated in it in some sense because we are all living in a digital realm. All our kids are on the Internet. We recognize the need to make sure that police have the tools they need.

The member says that provisions will be in place to ensure that the normal rule of law, in terms of warrants and privacy, will exist, and yet there is a provision for telewarrants. In other words, if it is inconvenient to have a written warrant, it can be obtained verbally. I find that a very odd and possibly huge loophole to slide into the legislation.

I would ask the member to explain to me why it is that in this day and age, as hooked up as we are, we should have a provision so that if it is inconvenient to get a written warrant or to type anything or to send a fax, one simply needs to make a phone call and there will be access immediately. That seems to me to be a bit beyond what we would have under normal jurisprudence.

[Aboriginal Affairs, October 21st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development told the children of Attawapiskat to their faces that building them a school was not a priority. However, his government has made a priority of funnelling money to two private schools in Tory ridings.

There are pork-barrel cheques for private school recreation and meanwhile, kids in Attawapiskat are in makeshift portables on one of the most toxic sites in Canada. They do not even have a lousy set of playground swings. They have been shovel ready for nine years.

When will the minister tell these children that they are a priority for the Government of Canada?

[Ending Conditional Sentences for Property and Other Serious Crimes Act, October 20th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to participate and ask questions of my colleagues because these are the issues that Canadians have sent us here to deal with. These are serious issues with profound implications.

My Conservative colleagues keep talking about how we have to walk the walk by getting tough on crime, yet over the last four years they have dragged bills out, let them die and then bring them back. This is a bit of a circus for them.

This is not about getting tough on crime. The Conservatives use these days to get tough on the taxpayer. They take people's statements out of context and then they use taxpayers' dollars to send attack mailings to trash people's credibility and to trash them personally.

Every day my constituents ask me what kind of people make such cheap, dumbed down attacks, and then expect taxpayers to pay for them. I tell them the former defence minister cannot seem to stand on his own two feet and say anything credible in the House. He is attacking the Liberal leader. I have no problem with someone attacking the Liberal leader, but I do not think the former minister should be using taxpayers' dollars to do that.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague why he thinks we have seen this endless parade of crime bills and dumbed down crime talk? Why are taxpayers' dollars being used to fund a Conservative attack campaign in every riding in this country? Why are Canadian taxpayers paying for Conservative personal, vitriolic and embarrassing attack mailings? This is embarrassing for Canadian politics.

[Ending Conditional Sentences for Property and Other Serious Crimes Act, October 20th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the issue of rehabilitation versus punishment comes down to the ability of a judge to look at a situation.

The member asked if any of us had ever been a victim of property crime. I have been a victim of numerous property crimes because I also lived with people coming out of prison. I would say that the vast majority of these offenders are just dumb. They do dumb crimes for dumb reasons again and again. Sometimes it takes a judge to say that someone who is an OxyContin addict needs help. There are other people who are real bad apples and they need to go to jail. Some of the people who came through our house were rehabilitated because they were given the chance. Sometimes it was a 10th hour and 11th hour chance but the judge would say that if they go into this and succeed that people we will work with them. That is the issue of discretion.

When the member says that we ought to walk the walk and get tough on crime, to me that sounds like one of their ten percenters. Our obligation here is to be smart on crime.

I would ask the member if he agrees that it is incumbent upon all members, regardless of whether they put out the 10% attack mailings or they receive those 10% attack mailings, the fundamental issue is that we need to be smart on where we go and that comes down, at the end of the day, not to teach slogans but to discretion, and that is the issue we are discussing here today.

[Criminal Code, October 20th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I think we are all agreed on the need to move on identity theft because of the threat it poses to citizens across the board. My question for my hon. colleague is a follow-up to a question my NDP colleague asked earlier.

About the larger vision of where the government is going, I guess using the word “vision” when talking about Conservatives makes a pretty bizarre connection. The government can have mandatory minimum sentences for furniture theft but no plan to deal with the environment at a time of world crisis.

On identity theft, it is fine that we need to address the criminal aspects of it, but there is no long-term plan for the fact that millions of Canadian citizens put all kinds of information online through Facebook and Myspace. Kids put out information and there is no commitment from the government to move forward with an educational process. I would like to ask my hon. colleague about the need for—

[Business of supply, October 19th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I have a great deal of experience with private woodlots in our region in northeastern Ontario. Private lands are being cut right down to the water and being shipped over to the mills in Quebec. We would never see a reciprocal agreement with our Quebec neighbours because they would not allow that to happen. Therefore, I certainly have concerns.

However, I want to comment about the decision by our colleagues in the Bloc not to work with us on a motion about the black liquor subsidy, which would help industry. Their position on the softwood issue is they will get more money and some loan guarantees. There is not an industry that the Bloc knows of in Quebec that should not be given money. For example, look at the rotting old Quebec asbestos mines. Those guys will ship this poison around the world and insist that people subsidize it.

What we need are markets and access to them.

When the Bloc Québécois voted to crush our access to the U.S. market, the members voted knowing that part of the agreement was we would not be able to give loan guarantees. Nor would we be able to retool our industry. Every time we would do that, the U.S. competitors would go against us, which is what they have done.

Now we are paying $70 million in fines thanks to the myopic vision of the members of the Bloc Québécois, who could have stood and said that opposed to Canada having a say in their domestic forestry planning, they were giving it over to the U.S. Therefore, Quebec's forestry planning now gets to be vetted by the U.S., just like Ontario's, just like B.C.'s, and we pay through the nose any time we attempt to help.

On an issue like the black liquor subsidy, why are our forestry workers once again being sold down the river and being sold a misplaced bill of goods from the Bloc, which has sold us out on the softwood lumber issue?

[Business of supply, October 19th, 2009]

This is the first stage of what will be many penalizing attempts to shut down our industry as we try to retool.

I would like to ask the hon. member if she will stand with us and vote against the government when it comes back one more time to squeeze money from our industry to pay to our competitors in the United States.

[Business of supply, October 19th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative minister told us there has been this great economic recession. Our towns were being wiped out before the recession. They were being wiped out because of unfair trade practices with our number one competitor. Yet the government's solution was to cripple access to our number one market.

Now Conservatives are telling us that they have a little project here and a little project there. However, if they were to talk to the workers at Tembec or in Opasatika or the Abitibi region, they would say their industry has been completely wiped out. There is not an operating mill pretty much anywhere in northern Ontario, other than a small mill left in Elk Lake. That is an unprecedented situation.

The government abandoned the forestry communities. It abandoned one of the largest industries in this country, and it signed away our access to our only market. We are going to have to pay another $60 million or $70 million in fines on top of this, thanks to the agreement that the government signed on softwood.

[Business of supply, October 19th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, this past week in my riding of Timmins—James Bay, it became known that Grant Forest Products, which is one of the largest players in the forest region in the north, is now in a court-ordered bankruptcy protection. It might be taken over by the U.S. multinational Georgia Pacific. We saw how the Conservative government rolled over when Vale walked away with respect to Inco. We know the government will do nothing to protect the resources of a Canadian company.

I would like to question the minister on some of the more far-fetched claims she has made in terms of the government's commitment.

The government's main commitment to dealing with the forestry industry was to sell us out the very first chance it got with the softwood lumber deal, where it gave $1 billion to our competitors, where it crippled our markets, where it threatened that if our companies stood up and continued to defend their interests, they would be penalized.

Now we see the spectacle of the government having to come back, cap in hand, having given up every right that we wanted, every trade negotiation, and we are now being told we are going to have to pay another $60 million to $70 million for the government's complete mishandling of the file.

When the minister comes into the House and asks for this Parliament's support, I would like to ask her two questions: number one, will she apologize to this House for the campaign of misinformation that her government ran in terms of promoting this bogus deal; and, number two, when will she bring this in? I want to be able to stand in this House and say there is no way that on our watch we are going to pay another $70 million so that our competitors can continue to tool and retool and come against our industries.

[Aboriginal Affairs, October 8th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, on this Thanksgiving weekend the children of Attawapiskat have very little to give thanks for because we have flu and the winter season quickly approaching. Yet on the James Bay coast we have families who are living now in unheated tents without running water, tents because four months ago their homes were flooded with sewage.

Indian Affairs and the government have nickeled and dimed this community over the most basic reconstruction, health and sanitary aid.

I am pleading with the minister. Will he show leadership? Will he come to Attawapiskat and see the misery that these families are living in?