Don Davies

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, September 14th, 2009]

With respect to Employment Insurance claims made by residents of the constituency of Vancouver Kingsway: (a) what is the number of claims that have been made since January 2008, (i) broken down by month, (ii) in total; (b) what is the percentage of claims that have been approved since January 2008, (i) broken down by month, (ii) in total; and (c) what has been the average period of time it has taken to process the claims that have been made since January 2008, (i) broken down by month, (ii) in total?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, June 19th, 2009]

With respect to applications to sponsor family members for permanent residency made by residents of the constituency of Vancouver Kingsway: (a) what is the average processing time for applications made to sponsor family members from (i) China, (ii) the Philippines, (iii) India, (iv) all countries aggregated; (b) what is the approval rate for applications made to sponsor family member from (i) China, (ii) the Philippines, (iii) India, (iv) all countries aggregated; and (c) what are the top five main grounds for denying claims and their rates of usage for applications made to sponsor family members from (i) China, (ii) the Philippines, (iii) India, (iv) all countries aggregated?

[Komagata Maru, June 11th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, May 23 marked the 95th anniversary of one of the most shameful events in Canadian history. On that date in 1914, the Japanese ship Komagata Maru arrived in Vancouver with almost 400 passengers. Most of these people were Sikhs, and there were also Hindus and Muslims aboard.

While they had every legitimate reason to be welcomed to Canada, the Canadian government did not allow them to disembark. In truth, this decision was a racist one, taken to prevent South Asians from entering our country.

The ship remained offshore for two months and was then forced to return to India where 20 passengers were killed by British troops. This is a black mark in the history of B.C. that has long cried out for redress.

I just attended a moving vigil in Stanley Park very near where the ship was anchored. I listened to thoughtful words spoken by representatives of the Professor Mohan Singh Memorial Foundation and of the South Asian community, people such as Sahib Thind, Jasbir Sandhu and Raj Hundal.

Their words were clear: They want what is just and long overdue, a proper and dignified apology in the House of Commons by the Prime Minister of Canada. They deserve it and I urge the House to work together to do so.

[Business of Supply, June 11th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague who gave such a wonderful speech invoked the name of Stanley Knowles and J. S. Woodsworth who pioneered the concept of security for people in their old age.

We all know that the Canada pension plan in its current form does not provide that for people. It only is intended to and in fact is structured to provide only a fraction of what people need in retirement, even with old age security and the GIS.

I note that the current government is exploring with the provinces ways to come up with different kinds of programs. It would seem to me that the Canada pension plan is sitting right in front of us with an administrative scheme right there for us to simply start adding investments to it, so that we can apply those pensions.

I know the government talks about payroll taxes, but really pensions are simple. We get out what we put in. If we want secure retirements, we put in more money now. It grows and we take it out.

I wonder if my friend could comment on that concept.

[Business of Supply, June 11th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, this week, Teamsters Canada is having their convention here in Ottawa and I had the pleasure of addressing them yesterday. Prior to being elected, I worked for a Teamsters local and sat as a trustee on a employer and union jointly administered pension fund. It is the type of pension that many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Canadians count on to provide for their retirement security.

I know what these jointly administered funds really need is for government to ease some of the funding and solvency tests that they often have to meet, particularly in the case of multi-employer plans, where there are very onerous solvency requirements that hamstring these boards in their ability to deliver the benefits.

I wonder if my hon. friend or the government has looked at the possibility of easing some of these rules so that we can have them prudently and securely funded, while also giving them the flexibility they need to provide the benefits that their members need.

[Business of Supply, June 11th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP has long stood up for pensions and income security for seniors. Our commitment to the dignity of seniors and all Canadians stems back to the work of MP J.S. Woodsworth, who fought hard for the Old Age Pensions Act passed in 1927. Stanley Knowles, as well, played a pivotal role in establishing income support for our seniors.

In my riding I have met with many seniors at Cedar Cottage, New Chelsea Gardens and Little Mountain Manor seniors homes. They all tell me the same thing. They need more Canada pension plan, more old age security income, better prescriptions, eyeglasses and health care coverage, and better transport and home support.

Could the hon. member comment on the possibility of simply using the present Canada pension plan, which is already a national pension plan set up with all the infrastructure and administration in place? Should we be looking at raising the contribution levels of Canadians so that they can contribute to a national pension plan that is safe and secure for them, as well as increasing the old age security amounts in this country?

[Criminal Code, June 9th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my hon. friend's party, the Bloc Québécois, which also has stood firmly in principled fashion against these incursions against our civil liberties.

He is quite right. There are many examples in this country where legislation has been passed that, on the face of it, does not offend any rights, but in the application of that legislation, it does so. So what would we make of the current legislation that, on the face of it, violates people's rights?

My friend mentions the case of Mr. Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen sitting in an embassy abroad, who has the full right to come home. The government is ignoring orders of a court to bring that person home and it cannot produce an iota of evidence that the person presents a danger. Are we to trust the government's version of implementing legislation? I do not think so.

It is a slippery slope. Members opposite have said that it is important to have this legislation to prevent terrorism, that the ends justify the means. We can make our society safe tomorrow. Let us allow police officers to kick down the front doors of every house in this country if they suspect a crime has been committed there. Certainly more criminals will be caught, but I do not think Canadians would accept that, because they understand that the most majestic thing about living in a free and democratic society is the right to be free against state incursions into their liberties.

That might mean that the state is not as ruthlessly efficient in rooting out crime as it could be, but that is the price of living in a free and democratic society. That is the balance that the NDP was talking about that the Liberals claim to want to pursue, but of course, it depends on which way the wind is blowing and what particular day of the week it is as to whether they will actually have the courage to implement it.

[Criminal Code, June 9th, 2009]

Indeed it could, Mr. Speaker.

To quote someone who is eminently unquotable, Ronald Reagan said, “One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter”.

How do we define terrorism? The provisions of the bill are directed at compelling people to come forward and potentially be jailed in the name of fighting terrorism. Who defines that?

Today we say we do not have to worry about that because it will never be defined in any improper way. Really? In the history of this country, labour leaders have been jailed for exercising what at the time were considered inappropriate actions and all they were doing was trying to organize workers. That was considered a criminal act.

It is not a stretch of the imagination for someone to think that an accumulation of people might, in their view, be an activity that might threaten the security of this country. It has been done before by people in the party of members opposite who thought that trade unionists were criminals.

It has been done in the name of racial profiling. Recently members of the Canadian Muslim community have been unfairly targeted for doing nothing other than being members of the Islamic faith.

A person was rendered to Syria and thrown in jail for two years and tortured because, as a truck driver, he had a map of Ottawa. CSIS, in its great secret service intelligence gathering fashion, thought it was a map to be used for improper purposes. It turned out to be a map telling him how to deliver goods to warehouses.

When someone stands up and says, “We can violate rights. Trust us. We are never going to violate the rights of anybody who ought not to have their rights violated”, that is not a reliable basis on which to pass legislation in this country. Everybody's rights should be protected in this country.

[Criminal Code, June 9th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, as the House may know, prior to question period I was discussing Bill C-19, which engages the issue of civil rights in this country.

I would like to point out the valuable work that is done in our country on behalf of the civil rights of ordinary Canadians and, in fact, on behalf of people all over North America, by people like James Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, John Murphy, an international vice-president, the Canadian president of Teamsters Canada, Robert Bouvier, international vice-president and long time British Columbia teamster, Don McGill, Ontario teamster Larry McDonald and the very fine work done at the grassroots level fighting for the rights of people every day by British Columbia teamsters Jure Kelava, Maureen Roberts and Larry Sargeant.

These are the kinds of people who go out every day and help support and strengthen the civil and human rights of Canadians in our country. It behooves everyone in the House to remember the efforts of such people when we are debating bills, such as Bill C-19.

Getting back to the gist of Bill C-19, prior to the break I was speaking about the first problem with the bill, which is forced testimony under compulsion of prison under the Anti-terrorism Act.

The second thing in the bill, which is highly objectionable to anyone who cares about human rights, is the provision respecting preventative arrest, meaning that the state can imprison someone for up to 12 months, without ever laying a charge, on the mere suspicion of being involved in a terrorist endeavour.

Clause 1 of Bill C-19, which re-enacts section 83.3 of the Criminal Code with substantially similar provisions, deals with recognizance with conditions and preventative arrest to prevent a potential terrorist act. Under this re-enacted section, with the prior consent of the Attorney General, a peace officer may lay information before a provincial court judge if he or she believes that a terrorist act will be carried out and suspects that the imposition of a recognizance with conditions or the arrest of a person is required to prevent it.

Such a detained person must then be brought before a judge within 24 hours or as soon as feasible thereafter, which is not spelled out, and at that time a show cause hearing is held. If a judge determines that a person should enter recognizance, the person is bound to keep the peace and respect other conditions for up to 12 months, to which it is unlikely a terrorist will not agree. However, if the person refuses to enter into a recognizance or disagrees with the conditions in any way, the judge can order that person to be imprisoned for up to 12 months.

As I said before the break, our school children know about the right to remain silent. They also know of the presumption of innocence. They believe strongly in the western British tradition that informs the justice system in Canada, that people cannot be jailed on mere suspicion. They should not be jailed without being arrested, charged or convicted on any charge. That is exactly what the bill does.

First, New Democrats are opposed to the bill because it is an ineffective way to combat terrorism. Second, it is an unnecessary and unwelcome infringement upon our civil liberties. As I said before, we cannot protect freedom by offending it. We cannot protect human rights by infringing them. We cannot strengthen due process by abandoning it.

The Criminal Code already contains the necessary provisions for investigating those who are involved in criminal activity and for detaining anyone who may present an immediate threat to Canadians. We believe terrorism cannot be fought with careless and rights offending legislation, but it can be fought with intelligence efforts and appropriate police action.

I am proud to say that the NDP is once again taking a stand against the Conservative government for going too far. I am not taking this position just to take a stand against the government, but I will take a stand against a government that goes too far in pursuing a national security agenda that violates the rights of Canadians. We all believe it is important to protect national security, but it cannot be done at the expect of civil liberties.

Ensuring public safety is essentially about protecting Canadians' quality of life. We hear the government side say that all the time. But quality of life can be defined in many ways. If we talk to our family members, neighbours or people in the community, I would dare say they would define quality of life in a variety of ways. However, it would be by defining the right to live in peace, the right to pursue liberty and happiness and the right to be protected against offensive incursions of liberties by a state.

I think that two other things come out. While they are in favour of protecting Canada against terrorism and in favour of having a country that is secure, they are also in favour of freedom and civil rights. Security means feeling safe. It means feeling that our country and communities are safe and that we can safely go out into the streets. However, it is also about feeling that our federal government, provincial governments, courts and country are protecting us. That means protecting our civil liberties and human rights.

In addition, Canadians want to see any kind of security legislation balanced against these rights, because freedom and rights are as dear in principle to Canadians as national security. For some reason, the Conservative government is either unwilling or unable to find that balance, as has proven by introducing Bill C-19 and also the security certificate legislation. With both of these pieces of legislation, the Conservatives take the wrong approach. They take an unbalanced approach to fighting terrorism in Canada.

Do we need to fight terrorism in Canada? Of course we do, but there are many tools at our disposal currently in the Criminal Code that could be used as opposed to introducing yet another piece of legislation.

Let us look at the facts. I have said that this legislation is unnecessary. It was not used once in the first five years of its being introduced in 2001. The government says that it is necessary. If it is so necessary, why has not one person been brought before a judge on it?

Second, is it effective? Again, not one person has ever successfully been brought before a judge on it, so how can we say?

However, I do know there has been one case of someone being successfully prosecuted in this country under the Criminal Code for an alleged conspiracy to commit terrorism, and that is Mr. Momin Khawaja. The important lesson to be learned is that under our normative criminal laws right now and our current legal framework, we are successful at prohibiting and interrupting any attempt by anybody in this country who might wish to commit a terrorist act. This legislation is not necessary.

However, I can say that there are at least five examples of Canadian citizens in the last eight years who have had their rights offended because of the Anti-terrorism Act's provisions that hearken back to 1950s McCarthyism. The Anti-terrorism Act in this country allows trials to be conducted in secret. It allows testimony to be heard behind closed doors. It truncates the ability of accused people to have their counsel of choice cross-examine and test evidence that is presented in private.

Who am I talking about? I am talking about people like Maher Arar. I am talking about people like Mohamed Harkat. I am talking about Messrs. Nureddin, El Maati and Almalki, who have been rendered to foreign prisons because of secret, untested testimony. They were tortured in Syrian and Egyptian dungeons. Mr. Harkat has been under a security certificate for five years for absolutely nothing.

The same reasonable and probable grounds that the members on the opposite side say have to be demonstrated before any of the imprisonments, security certificates or violations will be implemented will not protect them. The same testimony by CSIS, which resulted in all five of those men losing their liberties and being tortured, has now been cast under a cloud of suspicion.

Just two weeks ago, the Federal Court issued a stinging decision that questioned the compliance of CSIS with court orders. It raised the possibility of prevarication by CSIS witnesses. For everybody in this House, “prevarication” is the polite way for a judge to say “lying”. It found that CSIS buried and actually kept evidence from the special advocates appointed to defend Mr. Harkat, which cast doubt on the reliability of the secret witnesses against him.

When my friends on the other side of this House talk about there being protections in this legislation, tell that to Mr. Harkat. Tell that to any of the five people who have either had their rights offended or been tortured or been subject to house arrest for the last five years. They are Canadians, too, and their human and civil rights have been offended.

Again, Bill C-19 would do two things that are offensive to anybody who believes in a just society, in civil liberties and human rights, who believes in a fair justice system. It would force people to testify without the right against self-incrimination and it would force them to go to prison if they do not. It would actually allow the state to imprison people for up to 12 months without being charged with anything.

We say we want to preserve our way of life, that we want to preserve our freedom in this country. Is the way to do that to offend our freedom? I say, no.

We all understand that the Anti-terrorism Act was introduced by the previous Liberal government in 2001. The Liberals were all in favour of it then. They opposed that legislation two years ago when they voted with the NDP and did not agree that the sunset clauses be reintroduced. Now it is hard to know what they think about it. I cannot get it clear from them. It sounds like a classic Liberal position.

We can understand why such legislation may have been passed in the high emotion and nervousness in the aftermath of 9/11. It was wrong, but we can understand it. However, we cannot understand why any parliamentarian would stand in this House and violate precepts of parliamentary democracy and Canadian civil rights when there has not been one example in the last eight years of anybody who was successfully brought before a judge that would make this legislation necessary .

In calm, rational and sober thought, in a moment where we can actually address our minds to the needs and what this legislation would really do, no parliamentarian ought to stand in this House and violate Canadians' rights. I do not care what the justification for that might be. States have always justified incursions into civil liberties by appealing to some fear. They have always tried to truncate people's freedoms with the justification of some bogeyman of some type, but it ought to be rejected.

The members opposite talk about protective provisions in this bill. Again, let us talk about the case of Mohamed Harkat. All those provisions and protections were in the legislation then. There was judicial oversight. There were court-appointed defence counsel for him called special advocates. There were court orders issued to CSIS to produce information to his lawyers. Did that help? Tell that to Mr. Harkat. He is the victim of a security certificate that has been in place for years, and now we find out it was probably because there was some witness testifying against him in secret and it turns out he had no credibility.

I want to move my remarks to the overarching point, that if we have learned anything since 9/11, it is that our fundamental freedoms and guarantees of due process are critical to our rights as citizens. It is what we are protecting. It is the rationalization for why we would even propose any kind of legislative framework in this country.

The complete Orwellian irony of having a government propose legislation that would violate those very rights in the name of protecting them needs to be explained by the members opposite.

The civil rights we enjoy, the right to remain silent, the right to not be detained in jail before the state has proved a case or a charge against someone, are important bulwarks against the potential abuses of state power. These are not purely theoretical rights. These make up the fabric of our country, the fabric of our constitutional rights as citizens.

New Democrats are going to stand strong and firm to make sure that the rights of Canadian citizens are protected in every respect and that we create a functional and effective security establishment in this country that also respects fundamental civil liberties and rights as Canadian citizens, because that can be done.

[Criminal Code, June 9th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I am cognizant that I have 20 minutes to speak but only 4 minutes to begin. I am going to lay the preparatory groundwork for my speech later on.

Not everybody in the House will agree with what I am about to say, but the fundamental issue presented by the piece of legislation before the House today is that due process in law cannot be supported by offending due process in law. Civil rights cannot be protected by violating civil rights. Freedom in this country cannot be supported by abridging the freedom of Canadians in this country. That cuts to the heart of this matter, and I will come back to that concept later on in my speech.

Bill C-19, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (investigative hearing and recognizance with conditions) was introduced in the House on March 12 of this year. It contains the provisions found in former Bill S-3, as amended by the Senate Special Committee on Anti-terrorism in March of last year.

The bill proposes amendments to the Criminal Code that would reinstate the anti-terrorism provisions that expired under a sunset clause in February 2007. It provides for the appearance of individuals who may have information about a terrorism offence, compells attendance before a judge for an investigative hearing, and it contains provisions also dealing with imprisonment of those people for up to 12 months without charge.

This legislation also contains a five-year sunset clause that requires the Attorney General of Canada and the Minister of Public Safety to issue separate annual reports that include their opinions as to whether these provisions should be extended.

The seriousness with which the bill attacks our civil liberties in this country is established by the fact that it has to contain sunset provisions to come back before the House. The government does not have the confidence to put these provisions into law for an extended period of time.

Bill C-19 essentially reintroduces the provisions relating to investigative hearings and recognizances that first came into force in December 2001. A sunset clause contained in that act stated that the provisions in question would cease to apply at the end of December 31, 2006 unless they were extended by a resolution passed by both Houses of Parliament.

As of February 2007, not one investigative hearing had been held, and there was no reported use of the provisions on recognizance with conditions at that time. I will come back to this theme later on.

Hon. colleagues on the other side of the House continue to maintain that this legislation is required, but it has never been used in the first five years of its existence.

Let me start with the first of these two offensive provisions, and that is investigative hearings.

Clause 1 of Bill C-19 would amend the Criminal Code, and it is similar to the original Anti-terrorism Act. Section 83 of the Criminal Code forces individuals who may have information about a terrorism offence to appear before a judge for an investigative hearing. The objective is to compel that person to speak, under penalty of imprisonment.

A peace officer, with the prior consent of the Attorney General, can apply to a superior court or a provincial court judge for an order for the gathering of information if there are reasonable grounds to believe that a terrorism offence has or will be committed.

If there are reasonable grounds to believe that information concerning the offence or whereabouts of a suspect is likely to be obtained as a result of the order, and if reasonable attempts have been made to obtain such information by other means, if granted, such a court order would compel that person to attend a hearing and answer questions on examination. No one attending such a hearing can refuse to answer a question or produce something in his or her possession on the grounds of self-incrimination.

Every Canadian school child is familiar with the edict in this country that an individual has the right to remain silent and not to testify if that testimony would present self-incrimination. It is considered a fundamental tenet of western and British legal tradition. It has been part of our country's Constitution and civil liberties for hundreds of years.