Dennis Bevington

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, June 4th, 2009]

With respect to the Building Canada Plan (2007-2014): (a) under the Building Canada Fund, (i) what projects have been approved for funding to date, (ii) where are they located, (iii) who are the partners involved, (iv) what is the federal contribution, (v) what are each partner's contribution, (vi) has the funding flowed; (b) under the Public-Private Partnerships Fund, (i) what projects have been approved for funding to date, (ii) where are they located, (iii) who are the partners involved, (iv) what is the federal contribution, (v) what are each partner's contribution, (vi) has the funding flowed; (c) under the Gateways and Border Crossings Fund, (i) what projects have been approved for funding to date, (ii) where are they located, (iii) who are the partners involved, (iv) what is the federal contribution, (v) what are each partner's contribution, (vi) has the funding flowed; (d) under the Asia-Pacific Gateway and Corridor Initiative, (i) what projects have been approved for funding to date, (ii) where are they located, (iii) who are the partners involved, (iv) what is the federal contribution, (v) what are each partner's contribution, (vi) has the funding flowed; and (e) under the Provincial-Territorial Base Funding, (i) what projects have been approved for funding to date, (ii) where are they located, (iii) who are the partners involved, (iv) what is the federal contribution, (v) what are each partner's contribution, (vi) has the funding flowed?

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, June 2nd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the minister actually makes the point that I was trying to make. Criminalization of drugs that are used by such a large percentage of the population, some for medical purposes, some for recreational purposes, is driving the criminal industry in this country. Eighty per cent of the revenues of organized crime for drugs comes from marijuana. That is a terrible statistic. That is the oxygen that drives the criminal industry in her province, in my territory. We need to take that away. Decriminalization is the first step in doing that.

I personally believe that we will not get a reduction in crime until we legalize marijuana. We can look at the other drugs. I am not sure about those. I am willing to call it on that.

However, when the minister speaks as she does, she is making my case.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, June 2nd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, because of the sense of illegality around drug use, because of the kinds of relationships that people get into when they are drug users, because these are illegal substances they are forced into the criminal market, because of all those things, young people take on the air of those around them.

In one respect the government is right. There is a gateway into drugs. That gateway is the criminalization of drugs. That is what in so many cases is driving the development of many of the drugs that are used in this country. The statistics prove it.

We need to come back to basics. We need to understand what has to happen in this country. Without that understanding, with this continued ideological presentation of issues on this subject, Canadians are going to suffer, young people are going to suffer, the young people the member is talking about in the future. We are simply doing them an incredible disservice.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, June 2nd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to debate this bill.

By and large, the direction the government has chosen to take with the bill is completely at odds with our party's policies. We do not support mandatory minimum sentences for drug offences. The amendment we are talking about today would eliminate those from the bill.

The bill in front of us, which is taking up the time of Parliament in the discussion of drug policy, is really indicative of the government. We see the government put forward legislation, not to deal with the problem of a drug policy but simply to put a sugar coating on its anti-crime agenda, to mollify its constituents who somehow might believe the Conservatives are doing something useful for Canadian society with this bill.

That is the problem we face today. We, in this Parliament, are not dealing with the real issues that are in front of us in this country. When we put forward legislation like this, we are simply putting forward a public relations effort to convince Canadians prior to the next time we go to the polls that the government is actually engaged in serious work for Canadians on the justice side.

Drug use in Canada remains at a level that it has been for many years. In many cases, it represents the appetite of Canadians, the direction that Canadians take with their lives.

I live in a northern region, where the problems we have with substance abuse primarily come from alcohol. We have worked with those issues for centuries. Sometimes we seem to get closer to the solutions. The solutions do not come with enforcement. The solutions to the alcohol issues in the Northwest Territories, in northern Canada and across the country do not come from putting people in jail.

The misuse of a substance, which most Canadians enjoy, they do not mind taking a drink occasionally, they find it useful, perhaps even a little helpful to them in many cases, is the prime cause of misery, broken families, property damage and so on.

We do not try to deal with the problems of alcohol abuse by simply putting people in jail. We know that is not a solution. We know we need to come up with better solutions. We know the solutions that are going to work are based on understanding, education, working with people to ensure they have a decent income and the opportunities that come with life.

This is a bill that speaks to trafficking, I agree. This is a bill about those who traffic in the drugs, the drugs that Canadians buy and Canadians use.

Therefore, if the bill were passed in the state it is in now, it would likely increase the value of drugs on the street, make it more profitable for some to purvey the drugs, but would it actually come to grips with drug issues in our communities? No, I think it would actually go the other way. It would increase the problems we have because we have not taken positive steps toward solving these problems.

We have chosen to go in the wrong direction, and that is really unfortunate. That takes up our time. That sets this country on a course that in a number of years will have to change; we will have to go back in the other direction. We put forward an amendment to try to change the bill even somewhat, to try to make Parliament understand that this is the wrong direction.

We are interested in working in the right direction on drug policy in this country. What is the right direction? For 80% of the value of illegal drugs sold in this country, being cannabis, we will likely want to move to a decriminalization mode. That is our party's position, and it has been for many years. Why have we taken that position? Our position has been backed up by every study and every independent commission dealing with the subject in Canada. We came to realize that some drugs might actually be used by people for their own personal health reasons.

Years ago the government put forward a medical marijuana ordinance, which is not working very well. The statistics are quite interesting. Of the 400,000 people in this country who likely use marijuana for health reasons, about 3,000 are licensed under the government program. There is less than 1% under the program. It has been a complete failure.

The other 99% of those people who might use marijuana for medical purposes are on the streets buying it from dealers who are going to be impacted by this legislation. They will raise the price and make it more criminal. Those people will be in an even worse situation than they are today.

Interestingly, when we look at the drug strategy and controlled substance program and the medical marijuana cost breakdown, for those 3,000 licensed users, $5.2 million was spent in 2006-07 supplying them with medical marijuana. That is outrageous. It shows the incredible ineptitude of this Parliament and this government, and the previous government, in actually coming to grips with the issue of drug policy and drug use in this country.

We are today battling over whether we should put the traffickers in jail for longer periods of time, yet we cannot face the reality of what Canadians do for medical reasons, for recreational reasons or for addictive reasons. We cannot come to grips with that. That is an incredible failure on the part of the government and on the part of our society in this day and age.

I do not know how much longer I have to speak on this subject. I do not know how much longer I want to lecture the government on its failures and the failures of the House of Commons.

Could we please move forward in a sensible and rational fashion on drug policy? Could the government please put the ideology aside, recognize what is important for Canadians, read the statistics, listen to what the experts are saying and then come back with something that resembles a useful tool for Canadians for the future?

[Petitions, June 2nd, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I rise to present a petition signed by some 800 residents of the Northwest Territories, approximately 3% of the adult population of that territory.

The petitioners request the House of Commons and Parliament to revise the Divorce Act, and enact legislation that requires a rebuttal presumption of equal shared parenting for children after divorce or separation and that adequate judicial training on accountability be implemented to ensure compliance with the legislation and the will of Parliament. This refers back to a 1998 special joint committee on child custody and access report entitled “For the Sake of the Children”.

[Marine Liability Act, May 13th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, the insurance industry does not have many participants in adventure tourism right now. It is really a limited market. That evidence was presented at committee. The potential for co-operative action on this, with the extremely large liability costs without the waivers, is unlikely.

[Marine Liability Act, May 13th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his perception about the nature of the debate. The adventure tourism debate is one that is not an easy debate. Coming from an area of the country that has considerable adventure tourism, not simply in my own community but across the north, it was important to understand that there would be a definition around adventure tourism. I was not completely satisfied with the definition, but within the bill the government has the ability to put forward conditions and regulations that can carefully define the industry.

In some of the presentations from the witnesses, they were very concerned, and I think my hon. Bloc colleague talked about this in his speech as well, about the potential for operators of non-adventure tourism to take advantage of the law to reduce their liability insurance by offering waivers.

We were quite clearly looking at defining that for adventure tourism. When people are on a Maid of the Mist tour underneath Niagara Falls, it is not considered adventure tourism. The proposed bill will not allow the operators of vessels like that, and I am sure the operators of the Maid of the Mist are not interested in this, to take advantage of the situation to reduce their cost of their liability insurance.

Those were some of the intricacies of the adventure tourism section within the bill.

Laws are made by man and man is not perfect, or humans to be more specific. The bill is not perfect, but it is the third iteration of this issue in front of Parliament, and it is the best so far.

[Marine Liability Act, May 13th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I thank all those who applauded me from across the House. That is very nice. It really speaks to the goodwill that came out of the transport committee in bringing forward the third reading of this bill to amend the Marine Liability Act.

I may not have served as much time as many of my august compatriots on the transport committee but in the time I have been here I did feel that this bill was a good example of parliamentarians working carefully on a bill that had very little partisan aspects to it and very little ideology. It is a pretty straightforward bill that would put into place certain international conventions and then ratify them. These conventions have been around for a very long time in which Canadian law has picked up, in one way or the other, over that time and there are provisions within those conventions.

The bulk of the bill's importance was within the conventions but that did not necessarily translate into the time the committee spent on those particular aspects of it. More of the committee's time was spent on the Adventure Tourism aspect of it and the opportunities for establishing liens against foreign vessels in Canadian waters.

The committee's work should be applauded by all members of the House because it does represent good work together. However, it is not like this committee does this all the time. We have differences. Quite clearly, the debate that took place over Bill C-9, the amendments to the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, showed that when the issues are controversial and they speak to differences in ideological direction on the committee there will be a healthy debate and a strong presence by all parties.

The functioning of the committee is good but this is a committee that is also in charge of infrastructure. What I have seen here on the committee is a failure to deal with infrastructure issues. We saw that quite clearly with a vote at the last committee meeting on a motion brought forward by a Liberal member to examine right away the aspects of the infrastructure stimulus moneys that had been put forward in the budget. The motion was defeated because there was a reluctance on the part of two of the parties to deal with a very important part of parliamentary business, for which this committee is responsible. The committee has a responsibility to Canadians to ensure that the work that is going on under the infrastructure stimulus program is well understood and well expressed in the committee.

I find that these types of issues sometime need to come back to Parliament as well. We need to have exposure of what we are doing on the committee in order for the committee to work properly and for individual members on the committee representing their parties to understand that there is are reactions to the positions they take.

I was quite willing to accept that with Bill C-9. I had to come and stand up again in Parliament to debate amendments to try to bring sense to the bill as I saw it. I exposed the workings of the bill because I considered it inappropriate but I suffered the consequences in the vote and did not get what I wanted. Nonetheless, the House understood what was going on in the committee and it understood what was happening with the bill, which is a better situation for everyone. Infrastructure is important and I hope the committee will come around, as it has come around with Bill C-7, to work on the issues that are important and in front of the committee.

I mentioned earlier that two aspects of the bill were under some degree of scrutiny and that they were clearly understood by the committee as to their impact on citizens in Canada. The impact of ratifying conventions when enormous sums of money may or may not be utilized for the purposes of cleaning up oil spills or other types of pollution that occur in waterways was probably not that well understood by the committee and we simply accepted the good advice that came from a variety of witnesses and experts in international law who gave us the assurance that these larger issues matched up to what was good for Canada.

There is background to this. In May 2005, Transport Canada put forward a marine law reform discussion paper in which many of the points in the bill were brought out so that the legal communities had many years to take a look at it and understand what was happening with the larger conventions.

When it comes to the smaller issues, such as Adventure Tourism, there were many more grounds for improvement in the bill and the government, in bringing forward a number of amendments, admitted that, which was a good step forward. We have come to a better understanding of how Adventure Tourism waivers will work in the system and how this bill would enhance the ability of the industry, which is not a huge industry and a very seasonal industry.

I understand the Adventure Tourism industry because in my hometown of Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, we have probably one of the largest whitewater rivers in Canada with class six rapids. For many years we had Adventure Tourism with rubber rafts on that river but the nature of the risk involved with these rubber rafts, bringing people in and putting them on the river, made the business of Adventure Tourism very difficult and expensive to operate.

Adventure Tourism is not a gold mine of opportunity and the cost of insurance is a drag on the system. The opportunity to use waivers to allow people to engage in Adventure Tourism is with the understanding that they take on the risk themselves for the activity that they are involved in as long as the operator provides a certain measure of safe conditions, equipment, professional conduct and trained guides. When those are in place, the waivers are acceptable and there is a prior understanding by the people involved in the Adventure Tourism that the waivers are something they can either accept or not participate in the activity. They have that knowledge prior to showing up at the river's edge with their families for the Adventure Tourism opportunity.

All of those things were discussed. We went through them in detail in committee and heard from many witnesses and I think we came to a satisfactory solution on Adventure Tourism. However, this would be the third attempt by Parliament to come to grips with it. There was a law in place prior to 2000, then another law was put in place in 2000 and now we have another law in 2009. This subject is not perfect and will not likely to be perfect but it is the third iteration of the understanding of the nature of the liability that Adventure Tourism operators take on.

This subject is not perfect, and not likely to be perfect, but this is the third iteration of the understanding of the nature of the liability that adventure tourism operators take on. We worked on it and I think in all conscience all parties tried to come to a good understanding on this issue.

Then we took on another issue that was controversial, and a number lawyers were present to debate this with us. This issue was the nature of maritime liens and whether maritime liens, as outlined in the bill, would be effective to ensure Canadian suppliers would get their money out of foreign boats before they escaped to the high seas.

There was considerable debate on this. There was a sense that if we gave it to the lawyers, it might not be good enough because lawyers might not be available, their fees might be too high, the timing might not work right and the foreign vessel would escape Canadian waters and the Canadian supplier would be out the dollars for whatever type of provision had been given to the boat. There were differences of opinion on it, but they were differences of opinion that were primarily technical. They were not going to stop a ship supplier from putting a lien against a boat. They might make it a little more difficult, they might make it expensive, but it was there for the ship supplier to do it.

This was the compromise we finally achieved in putting the bill forward to Parliament. My Liberal colleagues made valiant presentations about the nature of the lien and the nature of work of lawyers, and I thank them for that. The Liberal Party is well supported by lawyers. They like those intricate details of how these things work. I appreciate the work they did. I think we have came to a solution on that one.

The bill is now before us. The good work of the transport committee in agreeing to put the bill forward, with the unanimous support for it at the end, suggests it should pass through Parliament just like a foreign vessel slipping out of Canadian waters without paying its bill.

We are not at the end of debate at the transport committee. We saw this in the previous Parliament when the safety management system in the bill to amend the Aeronautics Act was fought tooth and nail by my party, and to good success. We kept it from coming back and being foisted upon the Canadian public in a fashion that it could have been without the hard work of the New Democratic Party. We stood day after day and debated the issue to ensure it did not go forward.

That kind of work will continue in the transport committee when the occasion requires it. At this point in time, though, we can be congratulatory and we can be happy about the work we have done. Parliament now has the opportunity to move forward in a consensual fashion with the Marine Liability Act.

[Canada's Motto, May 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate and thank the Liberal leader for supporting my motion to change Canada's motto to truly reflect the geographic reality of our Arctic nation.

Canada's motto is an important symbol, which should describe Canada extremely well. Motion No. 110 is a motion I have tabled in the House several times.

This morning I wrote to both the Liberal leader and the Prime Minister. I asked the Liberal leader whether he could formally support Motion No. 110 by becoming a seconder. I asked the Prime Minister for his support to move this initiative forward.

I call on all members of the House from coast to coast to coast to support amending the motto. Not only is it a symbol of Canada's Arctic sovereignty, it is a symbol of how the House can put aside partisanship and co-operate with each other.

[Royal Canadian Mounted Police Superannuation Act, May 12th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, could my colleague go on a little more about this? I know that it is only peripherally related to the issue of pensions, but it is very important for the future of the RCMP and for the future of the pension plan to understand what has happened in the past with the desire of the RCMP to have collective bargaining. Perhaps he could talk about his experience in the House of Commons over the years on that particular issue.