Derek Lee

[Business of Supply, December 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have a simple question for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities.

Does he and his party intend to support the Liberal motion that is being debated here this afternoon? This motion would make more permanent the movement of gasoline excise tax in eight of our municipalities for infrastructure. Does his party intend to support that? I hope it will.

[Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, November 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy just to make a brief comment. A lot of what the hon. member said is correct. There is some political rhetoric, but the one that I react to is his suggestion that the government lowered the income tax to 15% from 15.5%. It was at 15% when the Liberals left office and the Conservatives increased it to 15.5%. Talk about rebranding, that is rebranding and taking credit for a tax cut where the increase never should have been made in the first place.

[Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, November 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to engage in the debate on the budget bill. Budget bills often include a lot of public policy and this budget is no exception. We have a lot of territory to cover.

Since I sit in opposition, I think my remarks will be found to be more opposition oriented, not so much critical as skeptical and demanding of more. However, I think Canadian voters expect that when they send members of Parliament in opposition, they will perform that role. I will try to be constructive as I go through my comments on the bill.

I cannot imagine that in the whole history of this country there has been a better economic backdrop for a budget. The same is arguably true for budgets under the previous Liberal government. We have a situation in Canada that has evolved over the last 10 or so years to one that is highly good looking. We have interest rates among the lowest they have been in 30 years. Unemployment is at its lowest level in just about as long a period.

I represent an area in the greater Toronto area, Scarborough, and in our Toronto area those unemployment rates are getting right down where finding replacement workers is getting close to what is called structural full employment, but that is not a complaint. I am saying that the state of the economy is such that in general across the country Canadians are faring very well.

Our gross domestic product, the measure of the strength and size of our economy has now gone over the trillion dollar mark. We are now officially a trillion dollar G-7 economy. That is big by any measure and just managing that on a day to day basis is a huge task. We realize of course that the government does not manage the whole economy. It manages a piece of it and facilitates the rest, or it should be trying to facilitate the rest.

The world marketplace is bidding up the value and price of Canadian commodities such as we have not seen for a long time. We know that from commodity to commodity there will be good years and bad years but it seems like all commodities around the world are being bid up in value and Canada has is a big land, a very big place. It has a lot of big commodities.

When I was a kid I would not have listed diamonds as one of our commodity assets but, son of a gun, I find that the explorers and prospectors have found diamonds and now we are mining diamonds in the north for the most part.

The bidding up of world commodities has placed Canada, its people and its currency in a very favourable position. However, that will not always be the case. There will be some weak years. However, with the burgeoning economies in China, South Asia and India, the buoyant, firm value of commodities will likely be around for a while. I know that Canadians, particularly Canadians in communities outside the big cities, actually gather the commodities together by mining and hunting. To those Canadians who work hard at that, it is a pleasing prospect.

The federal budget has been in balance now for almost 10 years. It has been a long time in our history since that has happened and it is a very pleasing prospect. Canadians of course are the ones who enabled that to happen. It did take a government a few years ago, a government that I was a part of, to actually bring things back in balance and it was hard work at the time.

If we listen to the debates here, we still hear criticisms from the opposite side of the House about what they call Liberal cuts to various budgets. Most of those Liberal cuts were absolutely necessary to bring our government spending in line with what our revenues were, and by 1997-98 we had actually accomplished the task.

For about 10 years we had a surplus budget and those surpluses have served us well and I hope our spending served us well. I hope it has, but that is always an issue of debate in the House.

The current account is how we measure between all the money going out of the country and all the money coming into the country. The current account has been in surplus for about seven years and that, in terms of international measurements, is a very big deal. If the current account stays in surplus on and on, our currency must, by definition, go up in value.

Our balance of trade is just the difference between what we manufacture and ship out and what we manufacture and ship in, and what goes out and comes in, in terms of services. Our balance of trade has been in surplus for many years, thanks to all the sectors of the economy that contribute to our economy, all the workers who produce goods and all the work of the people who design and ship them, the truck drivers, the trains. We ship out more than we import and that surplus goes to our current account and keeps us well off. We are a well off country by any measure.

As a result of all of those things and other things, our currency has strengthened and it has strengthened to the point where a lot of our economy is having to adjust. Some of those adjustments are painful and many of them are laid at the feet of workers, small businesses and medium size businesses across the country, and we are starting to see those adjustments now.

If people are outside the country watching, they would probably ask us what Canadians have to complain about. Needless to say, there are a few complaints out there.

Sitting in opposition, we have reviewed the budget. The budget bill is a budget implementation bill. In opposition, our job is to provide a kind of adversarial, critical role. In doing that, we also must accept that a budget implementation bill will have some good things. It cannot, for heaven's sake, all be bad. If it were all bad, we would probably see it on the front page of the newspaper every day.

Therefore, this budget implementation bill would implement a whole raft of technical changes. Most of these are technical changes but some are integral to policy changes brought about by the government.

In opposition, we like some things but we do not like other things, but in the end we need to find a balance. Normally in a budget implementation bill we would find the opposition just pro forma voting against the budget. It is something that opposition parties normally do. If there is a critical mass of things they do not like in a bill, they will just vote against it, but that is assuming that we have a majority government.

In this case, in this Parliament, we do not have a majority government so the implications of voting no just because we do not like the look of the thing would be quite significant. It would actually end up in the dissolution of Parliament if all of the opposition parties or if a majority of members were to defeat a budget bill.

There are some constraints as the opposition address the bill and I hope Canadians will recognize that. I certainly have had to do that as a member of Parliament.

What are some of the measures in the bill that I or my constituents might or might not accept. The one I know my constituents will relate to is the public transit tax credit. This current budget expands the scope of it but the tax credit already existed.

Most transit riders accept that as a good thing but there are some public policy issues surrounding it. Does this particular tax measure increase ridership on municipal transit? That might have been part of the general intention but without the full data it is not clear to me that it has increased ridership. If there is a tax break, surely it has a goal. Does it increase ridership?

The last time I read about this in my area, just one part of the country, the greater Toronto area, it did not appear to have increased ridership in the way the government thought it might, but there is data coming in from across the country and there may be data that shows this in a more positive light.

Here is another question. Does it do anything to reduce the heavy burden of the huge mass transit costs on large municipalities? The answer to that, I think, is no, it does not do anything to reduce the costs or the burden on municipalities in providing, building and maintaining mass transit.

One could argue that if the riders are given a break in taxes, then the municipalities might be able to increase the fares and, therefore, provide more revenue to the transit authority. However, that is not the plan. We do not want to start monkeying around with municipal transit fee and fare arrangements, so we will leave it alone.

When I asked those questions, many of my colleagues on this side of the House felt that, notwithstanding the pleasure it might give to a transit rider, the transit tax credit did not actually accomplish a significant public policy benefit.

A second item I want to mention is enhancing tax benefits for donations of medicine to the developing world. This measure must, by any measure, get an A+ if it works. This is to facilitate the movement of drugs out of our very rich, very well off and very well medically provided for G-7 countries to the developing world. I applaud that tax measure because it can only help. The tax expenditures, which, in accounting terms, are called tax expenditures in government, that might be involved in this tax measure, I am hopeful, will be seen by all Canadians as well spent.

A third item concerns the government wanting to streamline the process of dealing with and registering prescribed stock exchanges around the country. This brings us very close to the issue of securities regulation. The measure is so technical that I do not think it means very much to the average Canadian, but it raises in my mind the issue of the development of a national securities regulator or a regulator of securities who would manage the system nationally in partnership with the provinces.

In a way, the government may only be nibbling at a very significant policy issue. I am hopeful that the government will be able to move a bit closer to that objective of a national securities regulator. The previous government, with which I sat in the House, was not able to move the yardsticks too far ahead. There were discussions, expressions of interest and statements of principle but it is a major task to bring the provinces onside. Hopefully, one day we will get there.

The next thing I want to mention is the provision dealing with withholding the tax exemptions for cross-border interest payments. This is a good measure. We have now and will increasingly have large numbers of people in this country residing, staying or visiting on both sides of the border because that is the nature of the two countries, Canada and the U.S.A. This measure has to help. We have many other issues but we must deal with the cross-border issue. It only needs a minor tweak to assist some people and reduce the paperwork.

I will be a bit harsher on the next issue. This has to do with what the government is calling double deductions of interest expense for financing the acquisition of foreign affiliates. This was actually stated quite differently in the budget speech. I really think that the Finance Minister actually made a mistake in the budget speech, or those who helped him prepare the speech made a mistake, because when it was originally described in the budget speech, it was a decision by the government that it would ban all deductions used to purchase foreign affiliates.

This, of course, was an unwarranted, ludicrous intervention in what is a normal business tax deductibility practice when Canadian businesses do international purchases and acquisitions.

Our businesses have to be able to do that. Tax deductibility for financing is a basic routine accounting item and for some reason in the budget speech the minister seemed to have got it wrong.

In the end, in the bill, the Conservatives have refined the target thing they wanted to work on, to the double deductibility. They wanted to remove the double deductibility. That may have to be looked at from case to case, but absolutely, for sure, if a Canadian outfit is financing the acquisition of a capital property internationally, it simply has to be able to deduct the interest expense incurred in financing it. Otherwise we, as a country, will be out of business in terms of global business and international companies will not even want to be here if we have these kinds of income tax restrictions.

I think the government has repaired it, but I will let the finance committee, this House and the other house, and MPs who work on this more intensively than I do sort that one out.

Number six on my list is with respect to the income trusts. The government has measures here to deal with the taxability of income trusts.

There has been a lot said in the House and outside the House on this issue. It is pretty clear that notwithstanding the commitments made by the Prime Minister before he was Prime Minister that he would not tax these publicly traded income trusts, now the government has made the decision to do it.

The day was referred to as black Friday. It has been characterized as a breach of faith, as a broken promise, as a betrayal. This was not just a little hiccup. This had huge reverberations in financial markets. In fact, it still is. The adjustments going on are still huge and many or most of the investors, certainly not all, have real capital losses as a result of that. They will not forget.

I cannot fix this one. The Prime Minister made the commitment. The government reneged on it and that one sits for the consideration of Canadians.

The last thing I want to mention, as I get right to the end of my list, is the amount of repackaging and rebranding I see going on. The government will take $50 million or $100 million in a program, bundle it all together, and then re-announce the program with a new name. That is okay in politics. Rebranding is important. I just hope Canadians realize that a lot of the money being announced now is really just the same old program with a new brand.

I wish the new government well as it does that, but its rebranding is just as valid as my complaining that all it is, is rebranding.

[Tackling Violent Crime Act, November 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, no, I do not think the Grayer decision cited by my friend adequately deals with the issue that was raised. There is a certain pride in authorship that officials take when they present legislation. Always they are reluctant to accept that there might be a flaw in it.

However, at some point, if my instincts are correct, there may be a need for some amendments. There certainly will be some constitutional challenge, but in the end Canadians will get the laws they deserve and hopefully we all will have done our job in this place.

[Tackling Violent Crime Act, November 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the hon. member and his assessment of the individual in that case, the convicted perpetrator of that horrible crime, but here we are designing a system to respond to the real exigencies across the country.

It is true that in the 1970s and 1980s there were many egregious failures of the criminal justice system in dealing with parole, interim release and bail. I note the number of statutory amendments that have come through this place over time, one of which was to address the circumstances described by my friend involving the victim Stephenson.

We believed we had done a good job of fixing the Criminal Code and process and the sentencing process. By and large, I think, the House, the corrections system, the justice department and provincial counterparts all have done a very good job of making the system work in a much safer way. I once referred to some of these people as the human counterpart of nuclear waste and nuclear fuel when they are out there on our streets and are a danger to the public.

I think we have done it better. This bill is an attempt to improve it. I just am not a loud, vocal supporter of the methods and procedure used in this particular case.

[Tackling Violent Crime Act, November 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to debate at report stage this omnibus criminal law statute. The government made a decision before the session opened that it would package together in one statute approximately half a dozen criminal statute amendments, most of which had already been through the House of Commons and into committee.

As for those parts of the bill that have already been through the House, the justice committee did not spend an undue amount of time in reviewing them, nor did we seek witnesses on them since the parliamentary record deals reasonably adequately with those other components.

The one part of the bill that Parliament has not had an opportunity to look at is the part on the provisions dealing with dangerous offenders. The amendments here tweak or modify the provisions. I want to make three comments in the limited time available so that my views are clear.

Certainly for my constituents I want them to know, and I would like the parliamentary record to show, that are a couple of issues which may be cause for public debate in the future or perhaps in the other place.

First, the name of the bill is slightly pretentious, as it purports to tackle violent crime. I can understand where that thinking has come from, but I suggest that if we as a society are going to tackle violent crime we had better address the causes of crime.

I think most people would accept that the Criminal Code itself is not the cause of crime. The procedures in the code are not the cause of crime. The real causes are societal. They are out there and they are real. This statute really does not do a thing to address the societal causes of crime. It draws the line clearly in the sand and it alters the procedure, but in terms of its impact on the causes of crime, and therefore on crime in the future, the future will have to assess that.

I regard the attempt in this bill to deal with the causes of crime, although I think it does not do it, as being a little like trying to fix a leaky roof from the underside of the roof. It cannot be done. If someone is going to fix a leaky roof, it has to be done from the topside. We have to deal with where the leak is, just as in criminal matters we have to deal with crime and focusing on the causes of crime. It cannot be done at the end of the pipeline. It has to be done at the beginning. I know that most Canadians buy into that.

My second point has to do with the constitutional protections inside the bill. We are dealing with a criminal statute here. While many people will say that we are dealing with criminals so let us just put them in jail and be done with it, the fact is that before these people are convicted they are citizens just like me and everyone else in this chamber. We expect that our citizens will be accorded the fairness and the legal protections that have been inherent in the Canadian justice system and our Constitution virtually forever. Part of our job in this House is to make sure that continues.

The first principle is the principle of “fundamental justice”. One of those principles that is protected by section 7 of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the right to remain silent. In this particular new provision involving dangerous offenders, imposed in the procedure is a reverse onus, a presumption. It states, and I am paraphrasing, that if a person has been convicted three times of offences which carry a sentence of two years or more, that person will be “presumed” to be a dangerous offender.

If, under our Constitution, a person has the right to remain silent in criminal procedures, the imposition of this presumption effectively takes away that right to remain silent because one cannot rebut the presumption unless one breaks one's right to remain silent.

In this particular case, the new procedure allows the judge some discretion in not finding the person to be a dangerous offender, but is it enough? In my own judgment, it is borderline. I think it comes so very close to breaching the charter protections that I was very cautious about it. In the end, I think I just barely accepted that it withstood scrutiny. I am not so sure that the legal fraternity in Canada or the other place will view it the same way, but they will have the benefit of our parliamentary record and our debate on it.

The second issue is constitutional in nature and also has to do with protection, not protection from criminals but the legal protections that we all have under the Constitution. In regard to imposing the reverse onus on the offender in this case, I should point out that until now it has not been a reverse onus. Every element of showing someone to be a dangerous offender had to be proved by and shown by the Crown. A pretrial assessment and a lot of procedural protections and judgments are brought into the process.

However, until now, the burden has been on the Crown to prove it. If this section reverses the onus and says that the person is presumed to be dangerous and now must disprove it, my question, to which we have to find an answer, is this: how does the person alleged to be a dangerous offender know the particulars that have come to make him or her dangerous, the particulars that allow that person to meet the threshold of the definition that he or she is dangerous?

The new statutory provisions do not take any steps to insist on the provision of particulars by the Crown as to why the person is dangerous. There is simply a presumption that he or she is dangerous. I believe that this does cross the line. If, in the procedure that is out there, the officials involved begin to rely on the presumption, they will fail to meet a standard of disclosure. Disclosure is part of a procedure that will take away, potentially for life, the freedom of the convicted offender. The courts and a fair-minded assessment under our Constitution will find these procedures deficient.

In order to rectify this, I did propose an amendment at committee. It was fairly discussed at committee. In the end, it was not adopted. In my view, this potentially would require an amendment to section 753 or section 754. All it would require is a statement in the code that in relying on the presumption it would be necessary for the Crown to provide a list of particulars, an itemization or a description of the particulars on which the Crown is relying and on which the judgment that the person is a dangerous offender is based. This would cure that particular problem for me.

If we have all been right, and I hope that we are right in this House, that the general presumption meets the charter test of fairness and does not offend the principles of fundamental justice, then this bill will have a chance to see it work itself out, even though I think we can find much better ways to address the causes of crime and I think we should be doing it.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, November 22nd, 2007]

Fortunately, Mr. Speaker, as a society, we know the causes of crime. We have itemized them and studied them. A parliamentary committee published a report that itemized the causes of crime.

This particular piece of legislation, and some of the others before the House, actually does not address any of those causes. It only attempts to deal with sentencing. I mentioned the myth that tweaking the sentencing will reduce the causes of crime but it will not. This pattern of activity, the increasing of sentences, does not help solve crime. It is a massive employment program for prison constructors and correction officials.

The myth of public protection is attached to it but it is actually a massive federal-provincial download because most of these mandatory minimum sentences we are talking about now will need to be dealt with by the provincial reformatories, not the federal prisons.

We are mandatorially sending all these people into provincial correction institutions and the provinces need to pick up the tab. That is a federal-provincial downloading exercise, one of the biggest ones I have seen.

All of this debating and tweaking of sentencing will not reduce crime because it does not address the real causes.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, November 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the inquiry by Mr. Justice Nunn took place following, what so often happens, a tragic series of incidents, in this particular case involving a young offender. The part that Justice Nunn reflected on here is that if the youth court can see a pattern of violence, if violence has occurred and there is some prospect of it continuing if the youth is released, the judge involved should have some statutory ability to maybe flip the thing over a little bit, move the goal posts in a way that is more likely to protect society.

That is like having twenty-twenty hindsight in advance. The judge does not have it. No one has it. However, in cases where the judge sees a pattern of violent behaviour and has a sense that it might continue if the youth is not restrained in custody, then the judge would have an ability to do that.

According to Justice Nunn, that was a conspicuous piece of the YCJA that was missing. All the procedures in the act that were intended to help deal with youth were working quite well except for that one small piece. It is a one-off and I think Mr. Justice Nunn appreciated that it was kind of a one-off, filling in a little gap in the current statute, and it was given in that spirit.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, November 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise you that I intend to split my time with the member for Halifax West.

What we have here is a new initiative, which is really not that new, in evergreening and updating the Youth Criminal Justice Act. It is not the first time we have seen an amendment to the Youth Criminal Justice Act and it probably will not be the last.

There will be amendments made to the Criminal Code and criminal justice legislation many times as we work our way into the future. This is because society changes, society's values change the way we deal with social issues, and problems change.

Some have asked why we have a Youth Criminal Justice Act anyway. Why do we not just treat all offenders the same? Some people say that if the government is into setting up mandatory minimum penalties all over the place, so many that we can hardly keep track of them, why do we not just make the sentence for every crime five years or ten years? Then everyone would understand.

Most Canadians realize that this would be crazy. It would not work. We would fill the prisons and we would not accomplish anything.

Why do we have a separate Youth Criminal Justice Act? The answer probably is because it makes a whole lot of sense and this is how we have always done things as Canadians.

Before I was born, which is quite a while ago, there existed the Juvenile Delinquents Act. Then it became the Young Offenders Act. Now it is called the Youth Criminal Justice Act. We have always in this country had a separate youth criminal justice system because society has believed and continues to believe that youth need to be treated differently than adult offenders. The current statute does that and does it quite well.

In case Canadians think there is something radically wrong with the statute, we can refer them to the recent report of Mr. Justice Nunn in the province of Nova Scotia, who did quite a thorough reworking and studying of the act. He found in his report, which is publicly available, that the act actually works quite well overall. He did mention one or two small areas that could be modified. One of those areas is contained in the bill.

The bill does two things. I know that this has been mentioned on the record earlier, but the bill will broaden the scope of circumstances in which pretrial detention of a youth may be considered, including instances where a violent offence has occurred. This is the part that reflects the report of Justice Nunn in Nova Scotia following his commission of inquiry.

The other thing this statute does is add into the principles of sentencing in the Youth Criminal Justice Act the principles or objectives of deterrence and denunciation. There may be a place for that. That is what we are considering here.

I, for one, recognize that these principles were not put into the original Youth Criminal Justice Act because there did not seem to be a need. In other words, the objectives of dealing with youth under the YCJA did not require advertence or reference to principles of deterrence or denunciation because there was a whole constellation of principles that seemed to fill the need.

I would say for those who want to fix this, if they think something is broken--and of course there is an adjustment needed in the statute--and if they think we can fix things by shouting louder or complaining longer or praying harder so that we just keep changing laws by increasing sentences, it does not work. It never has. It never will. What we have to do is be rational in how we are doing this.

The myth out there, and this probably is not just my own view but the view of many, is that by tweaking sentences and changing sentencing we somehow reduce crime.

We have heard the phrases “getting tough on crime” or “getting harder on crime” around here so often it is getting boring. The offences have already been written. The code already exists. We are not, generally speaking, around here in the last while making new criminal codes, new sentences. All we are doing is changing the sentencing.

I am pretty sure that if I went out on Wellington Street or out on Shepard Avenue in my riding of Scarborough—Rouge River, I would not find anyone who would actually know how we have adjusted the sentences up or down. If I were to ask them what the penalty was for stealing a magazine from a convenience store, I do not think they would have any idea whether it was a mandatory sentence, a jail sentence or a fine.

The reason I say that is because the whole criminal justice system has recognized that the real deterrence for those who would commit a crime is not the actual sentence they might get, because before they commit the crime they do not know what they are going to get. They do not even think about it. The deterrence almost always lies in the prospect of getting caught and having to deal with it. It is getting caught that is the deterrent component in the criminal justice system. Whether or not they go to jail, whether or not they pay a fine, whether or not they are embarrassed or whether or not they lose their job, getting caught is the most important part, which is why police enforcement and resourcing our police is so important. They must be able to keep up a reasonable effort at catching those who do criminal acts.

I just wanted to debunk the myth that by ratcheting up sentences and changing the way we sentence we will reduce crime.

I will ask the question one more time. If we were to increase the sentence for a bank robbery by three years, does anyone really believe that there would be fewer bank robberies in this country? I do not think so because the guys committing the robbery do not think they will get caught. If they do think about getting caught, they know they will do time. However, when they are planning to do whatever they are going to do to break the law, they do not get out a calculator and do the sentencing math. Almost all of these people are not actually very intelligent. I am sorry to treat them as a class of people, but they actually are not smart enough to go through that exercise. They are into a lifestyle that reflects, perhaps, an absence of thought, an absence of consideration.

I want to now deal with the sentencing principles that are contained in this bill. First, I want to refer to the sentencing principles that are contained in the Criminal Code, generally. As I said earlier, they do not actually apply directly to the Youth Criminal Justice Act but they are contained in the Criminal Code. This House legislated them in the year 1995. That was a first for Canada because it was the courts that generated the principles.

At committee we will consider the sentencing principles of deterrence and denunciation being added in the bill. Those principles exist in adult sentencing. However, I want to point out that there may be a conflict between those principles being inserted into the statute and sections 38(2)(c) and 38(2)(b) of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which say that proportionality and similarity of sentencing between different youths committing similar crimes need to be there.

If we begin inserting denunciation and deterrence in a particular case, judges may have some difficulty making that fit with the other sentencing principles that already exist within the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

If this bill gets through second reading, I look forward to reviewing it at committee.

[Committees of the House, November 21st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would seek the unanimous consent of the House to revert to motions and, if there is unanimous consent, I would move that the first report of the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations, presented to the House earlier today, be concurred in.