Mr. Speaker, I would like to try to nudge the debate a little closer to the topic. The mover of the motion proposed the motion and we seem to be dealing with all kinds of different topics such as the way the deficit was 5, 10, 15 and 20 years ago, firearms legislation and helicopter purchases.
I remind colleagues, and perhaps the mover of the motion, that the subject is national security generally. The opposition has moved the motion so inevitably it will be rhetorical. Inevitably it will be political and sometimes wilfully blind to some of the facts. However that is the way we operate around here. Our job is to try to contribute things to the debate that will keep us on topic.
National security is very much a challenge of responding to and managing risk. It is pretty clear to everyone that the perceived risk pre-September 11 is different from the risk we see now. Most of the risk we have had to encounter was risk targeted at our American neighbours.
Pre-September 11 these risks did not seem to be targeted directly at Canada, but these days national security is an international item. It has an international dynamic. It is not just domestic. We must work with our partners internationally to deal with managing the risk. When one of our international partners is at risk our legislation and our policy are to assume that we also are at risk and will collaborate with them.
The December 12 announcement of a 30 point action plan by this government and by the government of the U.S.A. reflects the fact that security in North America is pretty much pooled together. That 30 point action plan was not accomplished overnight. It is a wish list that will span out over several years. The 30 point plan became a much shorter 8 point plan, I think it was, by March 8 when our minister met with his U.S. counterpart, Mr. Ridge.
Many things are going on and one of the challenges of responding to security threats is that the actual response by government is not made public necessarily at the time the response is taken. One element of dealing with security is that its elements are not usually made public, at least in an aggressive, press release kind of way.
The March 8 announcement included improvements to our Canada-U.S. border screening operations and a joint program to address the risk of security breaches involving shipping container traffic at our seaports. These joint teams will now be developing action plans for Canadian and U.S. ports across the northern tier of the U.S. or the southern tier of Canada.
They will find problems. They know what they are. The member opposite who moved the motion has referred to the problem of organized crime in more than one of our seaports. It is a fact that police have told us at committees of the House and apparently of the Senate that we do not control container traffic. It is controlled by workers at the ports. Statistically speaking approximately half the workers in some of those ports have criminal records, which does not mean they are not following the rules but it does raise concerns. I for one have concluded that we do not control sufficiently our container traffic coming into our ports. I will not say which one.
We have a serious problem which can only be addressed by government. What we have heard publicly so far from the people who manage the seaports is not accurate. I assume some of us in this place will be engaged in further debate on that.
One of the problems with security matters is that they often get siloed into different subject and ministry areas. The difference among health, policing, customs and military security creates a great challenge for modern government.
We have tried to address it by placing one minister at the cabinet table with an ad hoc committee of relevant ministers. The Americans have tried a different route by using a non-cabinet minister to try to bring things together. There were challenges on both sides of the border. Both sides are working with these challenges and have attempted perhaps to low ball the turf wars that occur between different agencies within government.
Our problems are analogous to the kinds of problems in that regard of our American neighbours. Our response to terrorism includes two pieces of legislation: one passed by the House, Bill C-36, the anti-terrorism bill, and Bill C-42 which is before the House. It will certainly have more debate here. Those are good faith strong attempts, strong responses by the government to deal with legislative weaknesses of which we perhaps were not aware before September 11. The same has happened in many other countries around the world as we try to remediate our domestic legislation to respond to the very real threats out there.
The government reconstituted the national security subcommittee of the justice committee. The phone calls went out within days after September 11. Members of the House will be working on that committee in an attempt to provide focus for the House on the envelope of national security, which I have already said is somewhat segmented, inevitably so, between different ministries and different agencies within government.
In the motion today is what I regard as a silly throwaway comment asking the government to try to make parliament more relevant. It is not the job of the government to make parliament more relevant. It is the job of parliamentarians. Let us please stop asking government, which is several hundred thousand people strong working outside the House, to try to make the House more relevant. This is our job. Anyone in the House who asks some nameless, faceless person in government to help us make the House more relevant is whistling, dreaming.
