House of Commons photo

Crucial Fact

  • His favourite word was something.

Last in Parliament October 2019, as Conservative MP for Chatham-Kent—Leamington (Ontario)

Won his last election, in 2015, with 42% of the vote.

Statements in the House

International Trade June 7th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, Canada is a trading nation. Our economy and quality of life depend heavily on doing business with the world.

Earlier today, the Minister of International Trade announced that Canada has concluded a free trade agreement with the countries of the European Free Trade Association. This is Canada's first free trade agreement in six years.

Can the Minister of International Trade explain the significance of this agreement for Canada on the global stage?

Immigration and Refugee Protection Act June 5th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, I want to continue on the line of questioning that the member was just addressing and that is the international realm of this problem.

We all know, of course, that human trafficking is a problem not only in this country but in other countries as well. I am reading a report that has to do with organ harvesting and it is somewhat of a grizzly situation that we are encountering. The efforts to combat it are working internationally.

My question to the member is this. How would this type of legislation be helpful to other countries? How would this possibly send a message to other countries that are dealing with the same problems and are possibly even involved in human trafficking? How can we send a message that this is going to stop and that Canada is going to be at the forefront of that direction?

Immigration and Refugee Protection Act June 5th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, NDP members love to get on their soapboxes and rant about Conservative motives. Rarely do they miss an opportunity to claim themselves the champions of minority rights and women's rights. They claim to be the moral compass for society, especially to the disenfranchised.

Here we have a bill that would make a real difference in the sex trade industry, the most vulnerable of groups, and yet we hear that the NDP is not going to support it. I find that incredible. I find that repugnant. I find that offensive.

The RCMP tells us that 800 to 1,200 sex workers are coming through. NGOs are telling us that it is as many as 15,000.

If NDP members are really the champions of the oppressed, and if they are really the voice of repressed women, why would they not work with the government and work with this legislation to stop the sexual exploitation that exists in our present immigration act? I welcome the member's response.

Petitions June 4th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, I have before me a petition that was signed by quite a number of my constituents.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to lift the visa requirements for the Republic of Poland. They recognize now that Poland has become a full member of the EU and that it has also joined NATO. Things in the nation have changed dramatically.

Therefore, they ask that our government look at the visa requirements and make some recommended changes so they can have better visitation with their relatives and friends from Poland.

Old Age Security Act May 11th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member and I am actually amazed. I will not be supporting this private members' bill and this is why.

We spoke a little while ago about some of the problems with immigration and illegal workers. The problems are a direct result of failed Liberal attempts to correct a system that had good intentions, but we know where good intentions often lead and what is often paved with good intentions.

My parents came from another country. They understood what the rules were. They also understood that should they take their parents along, they had an obligation.

In light of what we saw with the last proposal, that we change our immigration policies and in light of those as a direct result of failed Liberal attempts, what does the member expect would be the outcome when people are not expected to make a contribution? What could we expect next? What policy would they bring forward to try and correct that kind of a mess that we would be headed into?

Agriculture and Agri-Food May 11th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, for too long Canadian farmers were neglected under the previous Liberal regime. In January 2006 new hope arrived for farmers in the form of a Conservative government.

The Minister of Agriculture continues to lay out some very impressive programs to help farmers from coast to coast. Could the parliamentary secretary to the minister of agriculture tell the House what the government is doing to help improve the outlook for Canadian farmers?

Ferguson Jenkins May 9th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, among other things, Chatham is known as the maple city. It is the site of the 1812 Battle of the Thames where the brave Chief Tecumseh died, and the end of the underground railroad. It is also the hometown of Fergie Jenkins.

Fergie pitched for several teams, including the Philadelphia Phillies, Texas Rangers, Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs. Over his lengthy career, he played 664 games and reached the 20-win mark 7 times. He is the first Canadian to be inducted into the baseball hall of fame in Cooperstown, New York.

Last Friday I was privileged to attend a ceremony at Rideau Hall where Fergie Jenkins was honoured by the Governor General, Michaëlle Jean, with the Order of Canada.

The people of Chatham are proud of their city and the people of Chatham are especially proud of their hometown hero, Fergie Jenkins.

Criminal Code May 8th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, before I get started on my remarks, I would like to say hello to my mother, 87 years old, who has been ailing of late and is doing much better. They say behind that every successful man there is a surprised mother-in-law, but behind my mother there are 10 children, 60 grandchildren and 70 great-grandchildren, and we are all glad that she is still with us.

I am pleased to speak to Bill C-299. This bill was introduced by the hon. member for Edmonton—Leduc. It was supported at second reading and referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

In February, the committee heard from the sponsor. During clause by clause consideration, the committee also heard from witnesses from the Department of Justice. Those discussions were very fruitful.

The objective of Bill C-299 is oriented toward a particular problem, specifically the practice which is commonly known as pretexting. Pretexting is the act of getting people to reveal personal information by various kinds of deception.

In this case, the sponsor of the bill was particularly interested in the obtaining of information about people by deception of other parties. The bill was focused on deception generally and also specifically on deception that takes the form of impersonating another person.

For example, there are many reported instances of people calling a telephone company and pretending to be a subscriber. The caller then asks for the subscriber's phone records. The telephone company, believing the caller to be an actual subscriber, releases the records. The caller then obtains the records, which reveal a significant amount of information about the subscriber.

This kind of practice can be a flagrant violation of privacy. It is also a tool used by identity thieves to obtain identity information that can be used to impersonate the subscriber in a range of different contexts.

In its original form, the bill amended the Criminal Code, the Competition Act and the Canada Evidence Act. It created new offences and other measures designed to address this form of pretexting conduct.

The justice committee of the House heard that there were some concerns with the bill as it was originally drafted. One set of concerns related to the offences that were proposed for enactment in the Criminal Code. For instance, as originally drafted, Bill C-299 would have created offences that criminalize the very act of obtaining personal information by deception of some kind, without anything more.

I mentioned previously that this kind of act can be a privacy intrusion or it can be the first step to an identity theft enterprise, but there are also legitimate circumstances in which deception is used.

For instance, deception is a legitimate investigative technique used by police. Undercover police are constantly deceiving the targets of their investigation as to their true identity, all with a view to obtaining evidence against those targets. Outside of the undercover context, the police can also use deception when they interview suspects.

There are many other legitimate circumstances in which people use deception to obtain information. Investigative journalists likely employ such techniques when they are tracking down a story. Although it may be distasteful to think about, it is probably also the case that parents, friends and spouses sometimes tell each other lies in order to uncover information.

Simply put, lying is not sufficient to amount to a crime. All of this is to say that the original wording of the offences proposed in Bill C-299 was too broad. It captured too many circumstances by also criminalizing deception that is undertaken for legitimate or non-harmful purposes.

I believe the hon. member for Edmonton—Leduc was in agreement with this assessment. As a result, the committee, with the sponsor's approval, amended those proposed criminal offences by adding an additional component.

Simply put, the additional requirement is an intent to use the information obtained to impersonate the person or to defraud someone. In the criminal law context, people obtain other people's information in order to use it to impersonate them. This is what is commonly referred to as identity theft.

Using another person's information like a key, the identity thief can then access their financial or bank accounts, sell their property, make purchases on their credit card, and so on.

While the acts of impersonating and defrauding someone are already criminal offences, the act of obtaining the necessary identifying information is not a crime, even where that is done for the sole purpose of using the information to commit an offence.

Following this logic, the committee adopted the offences that were proposed in Bill C-299 by adding a criminal intention to use the information to impersonate or to defraud someone. The result is an offence that criminalizes the deception as a tool of identity theft. At the same time, the offence would not criminalize lying in other contexts where there is no intention to later use the information to commit another crime. This makes sense.

By criminalizing for the first time one technique that is frequently used by identity thieves, Bill C-299, as amended by the committee, is a significant step forward for our criminal law and should be applauded.

However, the committee acknowledged that the offences, even as they were amended, did not completely address the problem of identity theft.

There are other tactics that identity thieves use to collect valuable information, such as rifling through garbage, hacking into computer databases, and watching over a person's shoulder as they use their cards. These methods do not rely on deception. As a result, Bill C-299 does not make these acts criminal. The committee recognized that Bill C-299 does not comprehensively address the issue of identity theft but viewed it as a good first step, and I would certainly agree.

In this regard, I would like to take the opportunity to remind members that the Department of Justice has been working on proposals to amend the Criminal Code to deal with the full range of identity theft situations. I understand that this work is ongoing. I hope that we will see more comprehensive government legislation in this area in the future.

The committee made a number of other changes to the proposed new Criminal Code offences. For instance, it replaced the definition of personal information that was previously provided. The original definition was the same as the definition from the Personal Identification and Protection of Electronic Documents Act, known as PIPEDA. That definition is “information about an identifiable individual”. This definition is suitable for a statute such as PIPEDA, which is designed to protect the privacy of personal information.

However, privacy is not the primary focus of an identity theft law. Identity theft is about protecting a person's identity from being falsely used, not about protecting privacy for its own sake, although privacy protection is certainly enhanced by identity theft laws. A definition which includes any information about a person is too broad for an identity theft offence because a lot of information that is about people is not useful for impersonating them. For instance, the initial definition would have included information like shopping preferences, a person's religion or height, and an infinite amount of other information. None of these types of information are relevant to identity theft.

The type of information that is pertinent to an identity theft law is information that is capable of identifying a person. This is a much narrower case of information than information that is about a person. For this reason, and again with the consent of the sponsor, the committee replaced the definition originally in the bill with a definition more suitable to the context.

Another change the committee made to the proposed Criminal Code offences was to expand the scope of the offences so they would cover not just the use of deception to get information from third parties, such as a telephone company, but so it captured the use of deception to get information from any person. This change means the use of deception to get a person to reveal identifying information about themselves would also be an offence. This makes good sense. We know that identity thieves do in fact get information directly from the people they intend to impersonate.

Phishing attacks are a good example. A phishing attack is an unsolicited email which falsely appears to be from a legitimate banking or other type of institution. It asks the recipient to provide valuable identifying or financial information, which the identity thieves then use. Phishing scams do not deceive third parties into revealing information; they deceive the victims directly. Bill C-299 has been reported back to the House in a form that would now capture this behaviour.

There were other elements of the original bill. There was a proposal to amend the Canada Evidence Act and proposals to amend the Competition Act.

With the agreement of the hon. member who introduced the legislation, the proposal that would have amended the Canada Evidence Act was deleted from the bill. Those proposals that pertained to the Competition Act were also deleted. It was suggested that the issues raised by those proposals would be raised with the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics for consideration as part of its legislative review of the PIPEDA legislation.

I thank the members of the committee for their detailed consideration of the bill and for their amendments to it, which I believe improve the legislation.

I again commend the hon. member who tabled Bill C-299, which represents an important first step in the battle against identity theft.

Criminal Code May 3rd, 2007

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is calling for the vote, but I think some of us still have some questions as to some of the statements that were made and more particularly the fact that jail times do not result in a slowdown on crime.

I would like to express some of my own experience. I have two sons who are police officers. They often tell me about their frustration. There is a term to which they refer to: “catch and release”. They say they are doing their jobs as policemen, they are catching the guys who are repeating time and again. The result is that they are back on the streets.

I am a little confused when the hon. member begins to question whether or not we are going in the right direction when we as a government, incidentally I think it is also fair to say that it is also the direction of the public, say that we are fed up with this. There has to be a consequence for actions that are taken.

We can use statistics and studies, and I am sure there are studies on both sides, but the fact remains that we have habitual criminals, individuals who insist on breaking the law time and again. We are not talking about the young person who makes a mistake and gets into trouble. We are talking about people who have violently offended. We are talking about people who have stolen cars not once or twice but over and over again.

We are talking about people who have no regard for the law and no regard for our police officers. After repeatedly being arrested and repeatedly standing before the judge, at what point do we then say they have to pay for what they have done, there is a penalty for their actions. At what point would the hon. member say that we now have to take some action?

Criminal Code May 3rd, 2007

Mr. Speaker, I will make this quite short. We have all been watching this with quite some interest. I have listened to the member's speech. We share the concern, as he does, that we really have to adjust our attitudes.

I recall an incident not that long ago when we were discussing the punishment of crime. I would like the member to comment on some of the remarks that I heard. There was a reference to prison as repression. I heard that reference a number of times from the Bloc.

Would the member care to comment on that? Is there something I am missing here? Have we turned a page in history?