Dennis Bevington

[Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity Act, May 3rd, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I note my colleague's comments about extra dollars in his pocket. I come from a territory where many people suffer with low income, not the income of parliamentarians that puts them in the top 5% of our country.

Seniors and elders in my territory have worked hard all their lives and they will now have to add another couple of years on to that. They already have low incomes. While the quality of income is reducing, the member opposite, one of the top 5% of wage earners, talks about his ability to put an extra $3,000 in his pocket. I am insulted by that.

We have to talk about equality. When we have wage inequality in the western world, the population suffers greater social and health concerns.

How would my colleague respond to all those people who are not in the top 5% of wage earners, people who work hard to make a living and are now told they will have to work an extra couple of years just to get a pension?

[Criminal Code, April 27th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to stand for even the shortest time to offer my congratulations to the member for Kildonan—St. Paul in moving the bill forward.

I followed the progress of the bill through three parliaments, and it is a great thing when a private member's bill moves toward completion. I think we all revel in it, especially when the bill is such that it attracts support from the entire House. Standing as Canadians together, we support these endeavours by individual members of Parliament.

Before I came to Parliament, there was a bill that caught my attention. It came from a Conservative MP as well. It was to remove the substance from cigarettes that kept them lit when they were not smoked. That took 20 years to get through the House of Commons. Lives were saved when that bill went through and that substance was taken out of the cigarettes so they did not fall out of someone's fingers and set something on fire or create second-hand smoke in the ashtray.

The value that private members can bring to the House is so important and it sometimes puts attention on small, definitive but extremely important issues that can change our society. To that endeavour, as MPs we should all salute this initiative.

Having said that, I will speak to the bill before my time runs out. The bill, as far as it goes, would work to deal with this issue. In some ways society has to have a greater recognition of the nature of human trafficking.

The latest example of human trafficking in Canada was on April 3. The head of the Domotor crime group, which the RCMP claims is Canada's largest human trafficking ring, was using males in the construction industry as slaves in Hamilton, a large city with labour unions, with inspectors, a city administration with better business bureaus and all those things, and our society could not recognize what was happening. Could it recognize that perhaps this was going on?

We have picked off the head of this organization, but we have not changed society. It is important that we understand the people who are working for us, that we understand what is going on in our society around us and that we understand what our communities are representing. To me, that spoke volumes about the nature of our society and how we would have to move from exploitation, as we have tried at all times to do, and understand laws that would remove the opportunities for exploitation and identify for Canadians the nature of exploitation.

Certainly, if the example of this person in Hamilton does not get attention in the construction industry right across the country, there is something wrong.

It is a time for reflection. When the bill passes, when we move forward in this regard, we need to recognize that society is still the answer to most of these issues.

[Protecting Canada's Seniors Act, April 27th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I had an interesting incident in my constituency office a number of months ago. A senior talked to me about a problem he had with his son taking advantage of him with his low-cost housing. He was afraid that he would end up in trouble with the housing authority. I told him to simply ask his son to leave, but he said that his granddaughter was there as well.

When we talk about elder abuse and raising the bar on penalties, in many cases they would be inflicted on the relatives of the elder and those most closely connected. I think we have to be very careful with this. I would like my colleague to comment.

Are we going to find that in some cases elders do not report abuse because they are worried about the kinds of penalties that would come down on those who are closest to them who may be engaged in the abuse? If the penalty is too high, would elders be inclined not to bring that forward? It is a very important question because it will play out over and over again in our society.

[Petitions, April 27th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I am presenting a petition from a number of Canadians who state that as the undersigned citizens, they draw the attention of the House to the following: that horses are ordinarily kept and treated as sport and companion animals, that horses are not raised primarily as food-producing animals, that horses are commonly administered drugs that are strictly prohibited from being used at any time in all other food-producing animals destined for the human food supply and that Canadian horsemeat products currently being sold for human consumption in domestic and international markets are likely to contain prohibited substances. Therefore, the petitions call on the House of Commons to bring forward and adopt into legislation Bill C-322, an act to amend the Health of Animals Act and the Meat Inspection Act (slaughter of horses for human consumption), thus prohibiting the importation or exportation of horses for slaughter for human consumption.

[Aboriginal Affairs, April 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the aboriginal justice strategy was an investment in crime prevention that was working. The Department of Justice's own study showed in communities with these programs, repeat crime was reduced by half. I do not know of any other investment that could show such a return. The minister himself praised this program at committee last month and told MPs to wait for the budget and see what would happen. We have waited, and there is nothing.

When will the minister support real crime prevention that we desperately need in our communities?

[Aboriginal Affairs, April 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, funding for the aboriginal justice strategy reached its sunset date on March 31. The Minister of Justice has not said a word yet about new funding for this program. Crime prevention, youth gang strategies and restorative justice programs are at risk in over 600 communities across the country. Organizations are already laying off staff.

Why the silence from the minister on this important program?

[Climate Change in Canada's Arctic, April 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, this week I was one of 3,000 at the International Polar Year conference in Montreal. I joined many elected representatives from other northern countries.

Northern Canadians attended the conference in great numbers. Northerners are concerned about how their environment is being impacted by climate change and want to hear the latest scientific findings. Loss of sea ice, melting permafrost and southern species replacing northern ones are just some of the negative impacts climate change has wrought on the north already.

The government chooses to deny the reality of climate change. Canadian environmental policy is being drafted to suit the needs of foreign-backed resource exploitation. Canada's position on climate change places it completely out of step with the rest of the world, for which it is being criticized right now. Recently Norway's former prime minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, said Canada has been moving backward on this issue and that Canada's position on climate change is anti-scientific and naive.

The Minister of Aboriginal Affairs says the north is fundamental to our identity. It is too bad that the government's denial of climate change is destroying that fundamental identity.

[Protecting Canada's Seniors Act, April 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, this has been identified as one of the major concerns of seniors in my riding in the Northwest Territories. The seniors associations there have stressed many different aspects of and solutions to this.

This bill would simply clarify some of the things that already exist in law, to allow extenuating circumstances to be used in sentencing people for particular crimes. However, does this really get at the root of what we are dealing with? On a scale of 10, how would this fit in with respect to productivity on this issue?

[Questions on the Order Paper, April 26th, 2012]

With regard to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation: (a) broken down by department, what programs have been put in place since government funding ended to ensure the continuation of services to victims of residential schools; (b) for each program identified in (a), what is the number of clients served broken down by (i) province/territory, (ii) recipient organization for each of the fiscal years 2009-2010, 2010-2011 and 2011-2012; (c) for each program identified in (a), how much funding was provided; and (d) if programs have not been developed for former Aboriginal Healing Foundation clients, why not and when will they be developed and implemented?

[Citizen's Arrest and Self-defence Act, April 25th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am struck by the discussion about firearms. When we think of firearms in our country, we think about a criminal act of not storing them safely. Business owners will not be in a position to have loaded firearms available if someone comes in to take over the store because they have to store their firearms in a separate place from the ammunition. Safe storage is under the Criminal Code.

The other point I want to bring up is with regard to the police. For instance, police officers will say that the most likely gun they will be injured or killed by are their own guns. In fact, their bulletproof vests were designed to repel a slug from their issued firearms.

When we talk about increasing the supply of firearms in our country, would the member not agree that it will take a lot of examination to see whether this bill fits in all of that?