Dennis Bevington

[Arctic Sovereignty, February 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, Canada's Arctic sovereignty is becoming a concern for working Canadians. With the ice melting and the Northwest Passage opening wider every day, the government does not even know who is in charge of protecting our sovereignty.

Earlier this month the general in charge of military planning said that Indian and Northern Affairs is now responsible for Arctic sovereignty.

Could the Prime Minister tell northerners what has the government planned for Arctic sovereignty and who is in charge of this critical file?

[Criminal Code, February 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill S-213. I would like to advise the House that the NDP will not be supporting the bill.

We take the issue of cruelty to animals very seriously. The current animal cruelty laws were enacted in 1892 and have not been substantially altered in 114 years of Parliament's rule over this land. The answer to dealing with these issues is not simply to cosmetically increase the sentences that are being meted out for offences that are not enforceable in the first place and have not been enforceable over many years.

There have been many instances of animal cruelty where the RCMP has not bothered with charges because the punishment meted out was not worth pursuing the case and it was impossible to prove wilful neglect. We need more of a deterrent. We need something that speaks to the nature of animal cruelty in a modern context.

Hon. members who have spoken before me have talked about the history of dealing with this issue in Parliament over the last seven years. Parliamentarians and governments have tried to focus on this issue and have found that it is impossible to move modern legislation through the two Houses that deals with animal cruelty.

The former government's Bill C-50 was not allowed to pass through the Senate. In 2003 it had support from animal protection groups, animal industry groups such as farmers, trappers and researchers, the vast majority of Canadians, and all parties in the House of Commons.

We have seen a disconnect when dealing with this issue of animal cruelty. We are stuck. We are only dealing with this bill now, not another companion bill, that would achieve support in the House and in the Senate. On the one hand we can put this bill forward which will cosmetically increase the penalties for animal cruelty, but it will not deal with the fundamental issues of a modern animal cruelty bill. That is not adequate. It should not be adequate to parliamentarians. It was not adequate in 2003 and I fail to see how it has become adequate today.

When we look at animal cruelty and the opportunities for the misunderstanding that comes with harvesting of animals, with the use of animals in agriculture, those things cry out for a clear definition. They cry out for a modern bill that would set the terms and conditions by which human beings could deal with animals. Without that, the deterrents are meaningless.

My constituents have spoken to me on this issue and have urged me not to support Bill S-213. I see their logic. I am concerned. The hon. member for the Bloc said that if we set higher deterrents without understanding the nature of cruelty to animals and without outlining it carefully in the legislation, we may find that it will lead to difficulties in different industries in the future.

My constituents still are part of the trapping industry. My constituents utilize animals in a modern fashion. When I look back through the history of trapping, humane traps were designed by trappers in response to their understanding of the nature of cruelty to animals. That is admirable. The industry looks at how it conducts business and regulates itself to a great degree. The understanding of the nature of that can lie with the industry very well.

In my own home community of Fort Smith, the Conibear trap was originally developed by a trapper who worked for many years in the bush. He saw how leghold traps worked and how effective they were and how the tools they used worked with the animal population they were harvesting.

Those types of issues need understanding in a bill. It is not good enough simply to increase the sentences for the actions of society toward animals. We need to understand how to use the law to make society work better with animals. That requires more than simply raising the penalties in a law that was first enacted in 1892 and virtually has not changed since then.

I do not think that this action today is correct. We need to look at the question in its entirety. Parliamentarians in the past have done that. We have not been able to come to a full consensus in both houses but we have a duty to Canadians to act correctly in this fashion.

Our party's justice critic may have an opportunity to expand on this in further debate. I urge members to consider carefully what is being done here.

[Railway Operations Legislation, February 23rd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague across for the chronology of the events. This lack of action on the part of the government shows a basic disregard for the process. It shows how the labour movement has been downgraded over the years, how serious labour action in the integrated economy can be and how important it is for the government to be out front with this and deal with it in a timely fashion. We see the results of this now. We see the results of the lack of respect for the labour movement, which leads to this kind of situation.

Does he really think the government has acted fairly with the labour movement so far and with the strikers who are involved in this by its inaction over the past two weeks?

[Northwest Territories, February 21st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, Canada's north has been called the last great bastion of colonial rule. While there have been some transfers of authority to the northerners, the north still lacks many of the essential powers that the provinces enjoy. In reality, the north is very much under Ottawa's thumb and that thumb belongs to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.

In 1996 I co-chaired the Northwest Territories constitutional development steering committee that was tasked with developing a replacement for the current constitution, the federal Northwest Territories Act. The final recommendation from us was that constitutional development and finalization of aboriginal land and self-government claims should proceed together.

This recommendation was based on the fact that the Canadian Constitution protects both the right to public government and aboriginal inherent right of self-government. Since we have made that recommendation, there has been little progress on the right to public government in the Northwest Territories.

Because of this lack of progress, this weekend aboriginal and community leaders and I will be joint hosting a public forum in Yellowknife on NWT constitutional development.

[Business of Supply, February 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I too thank the hon. colleague for her excellent presentation on disability and her understanding of the nature of that part of society, which needs more attention.

When we speak about the minimum wage, we think of people in poverty in the workforce. We think of the many opportunities there are to slip up in the workforce when one is working for $6 or $7 an hour. We think of the kinds of things that can take one out of the workforce and into unemployment very quickly, things that are not in one's ability to control.

Why would the hon. member not support our aim to raise the minimum wage so people, when they are working, have a decent chance to remain working and overcome the obstacles put in their way in their daily lives? Extra dollars can make a difference.

[Canadian Human Rights Act, February 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for my hon. colleague from the Bloc. Three parties have been calling for more consultation on this bill or they have been saying that the consultation has been inadequate. I agree completely with that. For parliamentarians to understand the complexity of the changes that this will require in a lot of the practices of first nations across the country, this can only be gleaned through proper consultation. It is complex. It fits with many of the practices and customs.

If we move this bill along, how does the member think we will be able to achieve any kind of goals of consultation within a committee process?

[Canada Elections Act, February 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize. In my enthusiasm, I am afraid I overstepped my bounds.

I will conclude by saying that I hope Canadians understand that this debate is important and that this debate sets the tone for how we conduct ourselves in this country.

[Canada Elections Act, February 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to again speak to the bill because I, along with my caucus, truly feel that this bill is bad for Canada, bad for the electoral system and is not what we need right now.

We have heard many arguments in reference to that this afternoon. I truly hope Canadians are listening.

Before I came into the House I met with some businessmen from Alberta. I told them that I had to come back into the House to speak to this bill. They asked me why I was doing that in the House of Commons and for what purpose. I told them that I did not have an answer. However, as I sit and think about the clauses in the bill, I can find some answers.

More and more, those parties want to turn politics into a retail business and, by having birthdates, it can be done. Using modern computer systems, we can target voters and give them selected information that will appeal to their age group, the kind of people one fully expects to see in there. By that token, we can be less than honest with voters about our intentions when we govern by selecting the kinds of policies that we present to them.

There is anonymity in the voting system and among the voters. Politicians need to tell them everything. When politicians get elected, they know they have not told the voters what they should know. This is a glorious opportunity for political parties to be selective with the voters in the information given. That is not part of the political system in which I want to participate. I want people to have full information about political parties, not some kind of Sears public relations platform that parties produce for different age groups.

This is probably where the voter age information is going and where it will be used by clever minds in political parties that do not have the integrity of the voter in mind first.

We have heard the numbers for voter fraud: 4 cases among 24 million voters. Let us talk about the candidate fraud that we have seen. How many candidates have misrepresented themselves when they said they were Liberals or Conservatives during the past three elections and then changed their mind? Out of the 308 ridings, we are talking about a far larger percentage than the voter fraud we have in this country. Canadians are tired of that.

What did we in the House do? Did we do something to stop the practice of candidate fraud? No. Two of the political parties turned down our bill to deal with candidates who do not stick to what they say after they are elected. Candidate fraud is, by far, the larger number in our electoral process.

What do we have here? We have a bill that tries to determine voters' identities. In many cases, a photo ID will be required. What percentage of Canadians have a driver's licence? Was that evidence presented to us? No evidence was given on the percentage of Canadians who have identification available to them at a moment's notice.

We do not understand the impact of this legislation on Canadians. We do not understand it and yet those three political parties are supporting it. This is shoddy work in the House of Commons. If one does not understand what is going to happen from the work one is doing, then one is not doing one's work properly. Since the evidence about the availability of identification to Canadians was not raised in committee, then we have not done our work. This bill should be sent back and re-examined in light of that kind of evidence.

We have a flawed bill. We have a bill that was amended with a clause that even Conservatives found unacceptable when they first heard it. Their gut sense told them it was wrong. They changed their minds for purely political reasons.

Now we have a bill in front of us that the three parties are willing to support and yet they are not even here to hear the arguments because they do not want to hear the arguments. That is a shame. That speaks to the problems we have in our system. I am not going to go--

[Canada Elections Act, February 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, as the member for Western Arctic, I will preface my remarks for my colleague by saying yes, in Western Arctic this issue has been debated in the newspapers, and it has been debated in our legislative assembly. People know this is an issue that drives to the heart of the sense Canadians have of their own place in their country and their own identity.

As for the idea that now we are going to drag out a photo ID licensed by the government in order for us to vote, in a small community, where everybody in the community knows each other, people do not carry identification with them on many occasions. In my own home community, I do not carry identification around with me. I do not find it necessary. I do not find it useful. I leave it at home where it is safe. When I do need it, I can get it.

There will be a lot of people right across this country in large cities and in small places who will not have their ID when they go in to vote at the voters' booth. This will disenfranchise them. They will be turned off voting. We are going to create more of a problem.

The real problem we have with voting in this country is that we do not get everybody out to vote. Forty per cent of voters do not show up to vote. That is a much greater and a much more serious problem than the four people who were charged with fraud in three elections. We have a staggering problem if 40% of our electorate does not go out to vote.

In my riding, it is probably closer to 50%. I do not want to put impediments to voting in their way. I want them to vote because by voting they join the democratic process and they validate what we in the House of Commons are doing.

I would like to ask my honourable colleague a question. In his riding, does everyone have voter ID and does everyone carry voter ID on election day? When they finish work, head to the voters' booth and find they do not have ID, are they going to be satisfied with going home across the city and coming back to vote?

[Natural Resources, February 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, last week the Northwest Territories brought down its budget. In his speech, the NWT finance minister put the government on notice that we want progress and ownership of our natural resources through devolution. Like so many northerners, the NWT's finance minister said he is growing impatient with the lack of real progress on an issue so vital to the future of our territory.

The Prime Minister has personally promised quick action on these issues, but just like it was with the Liberals, there is no progress. All we have seen is the appointment of a former Mulroney cabinet minister, who says we have to start all over again.

This is unacceptable. When are northerners finally going to see some action?