Don Davies

[Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, May 4th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, in my home province of British Columbia I know how important the coastlines are to the citizens and how deeply they care about maintaining the pristine nature of the waters up and down the coast.

One of the many ways this concern is expressed is in ensuring that ships carrying toxic materials, such as oil tankers, are carefully regulated and, in fact, banned in many areas, so we do not run the risk of having terrible oil disasters, like what happened with the Exxon Valdez some years ago.

Could my hon. colleague from Western Arctic, whom I want to congratulate on his wonderful work on this bill, elucidate a bit on how the bill may or may not impact upon the possibility of dumping oil or other toxic substances in the pristine waters of the Arctic?

[Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, May 4th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his astute comments on the bill. Canadians are united in their desire to see a high level of diplomacy and negotiation conducted among all nations that touch on the Arctic. I believe there are five competing jurisdictions and we all understand the need for co-operation in this interconnected world in which we live.

Could my colleague comment on his views or feelings about the current state of diplomacy and international co-operation going on in this region and on the subject of the bill?

[Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, April 29th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the public is hungry for reliable product safety information and a law that will get unsafe products off the shelves, if not keep them from being sold in the first place. Parents especially want safe toys. Ninety consumer products, many used by children, were recalled last year and already thirty-seven more this year.

Would the member comment on how she sees the bill affect the safety of products that are used by our children in particular?

[Committees of the House, April 29th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I move that the fifth report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration presented on Wednesday, March 11, be concurred in.

New Democrats are pleased and proud to move concurrence to this motion that would place a moratorium on the deportation of people to Sri Lanka.

Of course, this raises the issue that is before the world right now of a horrible civil war that is going on in Sri Lanka where there are gross violations of civil and human rights taking place as we speak.

This motion also gives us an opportunity to discuss the longstanding oppression of the Tamil people and once again an opportunity for us to highlight the need, the immediate need, to recognize the political autonomy of Tamils in Sri Lanka.

I would like to share a little bit of history. Upon independence from British rule, Sri Lanka was left as a unitary state, without constitutional safeguards and protection of national minorities. Successive governments have imposed discriminatory policies to reinforce the notion that Sinhala is the national language and Buddhism is the state religion. This has resulted in widespread discrimination against the Tamil minority and repeated government-sponsored pogroms against the Tamil people.

Over the last 25 years of this conflict, over 70,000 people have been killed by government forces, the vast majority being Tamil civilians. Over half of the Tamil people have become refugees, most with multiple displacements: 800,000 in the west, 100,000 in India, and one million internally displaced people in Sri Lanka.

There is an unacceptably high level of political repression, restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly, press censorship, electoral abuses, low percentage of Tamil population eligible to vote, and even fixing of elections.

The level of human rights abuses and war crimes directed at the Tamil people is something that the world needs to stop immediately. There have been reports that can only be described as ethnic cleansing, shelling of civilian areas, disappearances, long-term detention without trial, torture, rape, the use of food as a weapon of war, large-scale arbitrary arrest, and the passage of oppressive laws.

There is a humanitarian crisis going on in Sri Lanka. Several NGOs, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Committee of the Red Cross, have raised serious concerns about the ongoing humanitarian crisis taking place in north and east of Sri Lanka.

Since the Sri Lankan government unilaterally broke the six-year-old ceasefire brokered by the Norwegian government in January 2008, there has been a steady escalation in the armed conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Over the past month, the Sri Lankan government has been pursuing an aggressive campaign to wipe out the Tamil Tigers, and innocent Tamil civilians in the north and east of Sri Lanka are caught in the crossfire.

Despite calls by the international community for an immediate ceasefire, the Sri Lankan government has categorically rejected the notion of a ceasefire and is bent on pursuing a military approach to the conflict. As a result, fierce fighting between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE continues to this day.

A humanitarian catastrophe is taking place in the northeastern part of the island as over 300,000 Tamils are entrapped within the conflict zone, cut off from basic necessities such as food, clean water, shelter and medical care. Each passing day brings more news of civilian casualties.

Issues of grave concern include the following: first, attacks on civilians in so-called safety zones.

Over the past several months, there has been an increase in aerial bombardment of Tamil villages in the north and east of Sri Lanka, resulting in unprecedented civilian casualties. The demarked safety zones have habitually come under attack by the Sri Lankan government forces.

On January 22 over 300 civilians were killed when the Sri Lankan air force bombed a civilian site in a declared safety zone. On February 9 thousands of civilians fled as an entire area demarcated by the government, again as a so-called safety zone, came under mortar, artillery and rocket fire. Since the beginning of this year, almost 6,500 people have been killed, Tamil civilians, and 14,000 have been injured. These are statistics as of April 24.

Second, the Sri Lankan government is blocking humanitarian aid. For months, the Sri Lankan government has been blocking all international humanitarian aid from reaching civilians in the conflict area.

In September 2008 the government ordered all international aid workers to leave Tamil areas, with only the Red Cross and World Food Program remaining. With the escalation of violence, the Red Cross has stated it is prevented from operating in the area. In a news release dated February 10, the Red Cross stated:

Most of the region's population is now displaced and completely dependent on outside aid, yet none has reached the area since 29 January.

Third, there are massive abuses at government detention centres. Amnesty International has reported that individuals who have left LTTE-controlled areas are being “held in de facto detention centres, or so-called welfare villages and are vulnerable to abuses by government forces”.

Human Rights Watch has criticized the treatment of civilians fleeing the conflict zone and described the detention camps as no better than war prisons. The Sri Lankan government has announced plans to open up more permanent detention centres and force 250,000 trapped civilians to reside in these internment camp facilities for the next three years.

Fourth, there is a lack of medical care in the conflict area. In direct violation of international humanitarian law, the Sri Lankan government has repeatedly shelled local hospitals in the conflict area. A top government health official has confirmed the attacks on a hospital and health care workers, and that has been corroborated by international aid agencies.

The only working hospital in the war zone was evacuated and forced to close down due to repeated shelling. The shelling has continued to affect the provision of medical care, and makeshift hospitals sheltering patients have also come under attack. The Red Cross has reported that medical convoys transporting the sick, injured and wounded have been hit by shelling and aid workers have been killed and injured evacuating the wounded.

Article 18 of the IV Geneva Convention states:

Civilian hospitals organized to give care to the wounded and sick, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict.

The Sri Lankan government is violating this preceptive international law and committing war crimes in the process.

Fifth, there is suppression of the media. Reporters Without Borders have stated that Sri Lanka is the third most dangerous country in the world for journalists. Since 2006 over 14 journalists have been killed. As the conflict has escalated, government censorship of media has also intensified. Amnesty International reports that newspapers have been closed down, employees intimidated and attacked, and websites blocked.

There is a consistent and persistent campaign by the government to silence media and critical voices. In January the editor of The Sunday Leader was assassinated in Colombo after publishing editorials that were critical of the government's approach to the armed conflict.

In particular, we are concerned about the forceful abduction and arrest of the editor of Uthayan, the only Tamil daily functioning from the Jaffna Peninsula. According to eyewitnesses, he was forcibly taken by men into a white van while attending the funeral of a close relative. These so-called white van abductions have become the means by which the Sri Lanka state curtails any divergent opinions. He has not been released despite calls by international press agencies as well as human rights organizations.

This is the country to which we in the New Democratic Party are saying we should not be deporting anybody. There are civilians in Sri Lanka who are being murdered by the thousands as we speak. This is the country that the government opposite, the people on the other side of this House, think ought to be defended and supported. This is a disgrace.

This country is dangerous. It is reminiscent of past episodes of turning back refugees, such as South Asians at the British Columbia border or those fleeing the Holocaust. Canada should not be complicit in this. Not only that, but Canada has to protect people in Canada at the moment, all residents of Sri Lanka, and keep them in this country until the conflict is stopped.

Beyond that, we must press the government of Sri Lanka to call for a ceasefire immediately, to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the sovereignty claims of the Tamil population, and end the oppression of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka.

The world is watching. It is time that we took action on this to protect these people.

[Criminal Code, April 24th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, a few days ago representatives of the Canadian Teachers' Federation visited me in my office in Parliament. They talked to me about poverty in students and children, particularly young children aged 5 to 11. They reminded me that the House passed a resolution in 1989 to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000. It is now 20 years later and the poverty statistics for children in Canada are exactly the same. We have made no progress.

When the Conservatives try to talk about prevention programs, I would remind them that it would start with ensuring that our children have the ability to go to school and pay attention and live lives of dignity. Why? Because children, as the teachers told me, come to school poorly dressed and hungry. They cannot pay attention. They are distracted. They are ashamed. Their parents move around and they have to change schools, so they do not have educational stability. What happens to these kids when they do not get that early head start in life? What happens to these kids when they are 14, 15 and 16 and do not have an educational future in which to look forward?

These conditions lead many children, who have poor prospects for the future, to despair. Every dollar we invest in our young people, in our children in programs like head start, as my hon. colleague just pointed out, is true crime prevention. It is an investment in our future that all parliamentarians should support, and I urge them to do so.

[Criminal Code, April 24th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know that I did say, or would say, the government has spent nothing on prevention, or is not committed to any prevention. What I said was its attention to prevention is weak and insufficient, and I would urge the government to do more.

I point out that we passed a motion in the House, democratically, that urged the government to increase EI benefits to 60% of wages, and the government has refused to implement that. What does that mean? Recently I read that the incidence of domestic and spousal assaults had gone up. I am told by social scientists and experts that this always happens. There is always a correlation between increased spousal assaults and violence in the home when there is increased financial insecurity.

When the government had a chance to put more money in the hands of families that need it right now, it said no.

My friend points to two treatment centres in Canada as being their response to prevention of crime on a national level. That is grossly insufficient and it is no answer to Canadians.

[Criminal Code, April 24th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I fundamentally agree with what the hon. member has said. The gist of the New Democrat position has been and continues to be that we take a comprehensive approach to this very complex problem.

Prevention is the key aspect that is always missing from the current government's position on crime. In fact, it is even worse than that. It is my understanding that the amount of prevention moneys that were available in 2008 were not even spent in their entirety.

The government, besides not putting money into specific crime prevention programs, also completely fails to recognize the underlying social causes that lead to increased criminal behaviour.

Again, the member is quite right that the bill is not comprehensive. In fairness to the government, I do not think it is intended to be. It is part of a suite of bills that the government has put forward. I would put this statute in that context. What is missing from the government is that the suite of bills the government has put forward is not complete. It is a one bedroom apartment when what we need is a complete house of legislation.

I also point out that the bill has a bit of an aspect of window dressing. Its main aspect of making gang related shootings and killings a first degree murder really does not help much. It would probably be the case now that any gang related murder would be planned and deliberate under current legislation. We would press the government to bring in meaningful legislation in that regard.

[Criminal Code, April 24th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to support this bill at third reading.

Bill C-14 proposes to amend the Criminal Code in several important ways. It facilitates the prosecution of gang related and organized crime and it makes our communities safer by introducing several new initiatives.

Specifically, Bill C-14 makes murders connected with organized crime activity automatically first degree and presumptively planned and deliberate. It creates three new offences: one, intentionally discharging a firearm while being reckless about endangering the life or safety of another person; two, assault with a weapon or causing bodily harm to a peace officer; and three, aggravated assault of a peace officer.

The bill also extends the maximum duration of a recognizance to two years for a person who has been previously convicted of an offence involving a criminal organization, or intimidating a justice system participant. The recognizance conditions have also been clarified, which is another positive attribute of the bill.

In simple terms, this bill is aimed at reducing gang related violence, reducing drive-by or public shootings, and protecting our justice system officials, notably our police officers who have to deal with gang activity on a daily basis.

The bill is timely. It is helpful. It is a measured and defensible response with aspects that all Canadians can and should support, but it is not sufficient nor will it alone address all of the aspects of violent crime and gang activity that we need to address.

I would like to place the bill in the context of my own riding. I live in and represent the riding of Vancouver Kingsway, a riding that straddles the east and west sides of Vancouver. All Canadians have seen the violence that has erupted in Vancouver and in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. In the last four months alone we have had over three dozen shootings and at least 15 deaths. We have had public shootings in our streets, at homes and in shopping centre parking lots. Two women have been shot; one was murdered in a car in front of her four-year-old son. This outburst of violence, of gunfire, of deaths, many of which are obviously gang related, deserves a swift and strong response from all parliamentarians. We New Democrats are prepared to support such a response.

Indeed, just six months ago, New Democrats campaigned on renewing and strengthening our federal crime program. New Democrats called then and we call now for: 2,500 more police officers across Canada to be added to our forces; improved witness protection programs; more resources for prosecution and enforcement; toughened proceeds of crime legislation; better coordination between RCMP, border services, provincial and municipal police forces; and better and more prevention programs to divert youth at risk. Just as important, indeed it is critical that there be an understanding of and commitment to the concept that crime does not just happen, that it is a product of the health, or not, of society at large. Crime is connected in many ways to poverty, to unemployment, to weakened family units, to inadequate social supports.

It is this last component that I believe sets the New Democrats apart from the other two national parties. New Democrats understand that only a balanced and multi-faceted approach to crime will pay dividends and actually work to reduce it. New Democrats believe we must be tough on crime, but we also believe that we must be equally tough on the causes of crime. Punishment, prisons and locking people up longer alone will not solve our problems.

Last week on April 16, I held a forum on crime, gangs and violence in my riding. I invited all of the community to attend. I specifically invited the administrators, teachers and students of all four high schools in Vancouver Kingsway: Windermere, Gladstone, Sir Charles Tupper and Eric Hamber secondary schools. I would like to thank the administrators and staff of these schools for their dedication to their students and the work they do day in and day out that actually helps build and improve those young people's lives.

I held the forum at Windermere High School. We screened a locally made film called Warrior Boyz, a wonderful film directed by Ms. Baljit Sangra and co-produced by the National Film Board. This film was shot in Surrey, British Columbia. It examined the real lives of youth in gangs, at risk and ex-gang members, youth 15 years old, 18 years old and adults. This was a dramatic, sensitive and nuanced look at the lure and realities of gangs to our youth.

After the film we had a vibrant and robust discussion. I listened to the views of the citizens of Vancouver Kingsway. I listened to the voice of teachers. I listened to the voice of parents, the voice of social workers, the voice of ex-gang members and the voice youth. What came out very strongly was that if we truly want to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour, we need to take a balanced, intelligent and caring approach.

We need to strengthen support for families, they said. We need better jobs so that parents can work less and spend more time with their children. We need stronger economic health across the board for all Canadians. We need universal, accessible, affordable, quality day care. We need youth programs and community centres. We need more money and support for our education system to provide programs for music, art, drama and athletic programs to keep our youth active and engaged. We need better access to universities, technical schools and apprenticeships to give our young people hope for the future. We need policies that nurture our youth and adults, not punish them solely.

An ex-gang member came to my forum spontaneously. This was a hardened criminal who had spent many years in prison, and he spoke eloquently. He now actually is reformed and speaks to thousands of youth every week in British Columbia. He spoke of the causes that led him into a life of crime and into gangs. He told us that his was a life of deprivation as a child. He was a victim of domestic abuse. The first hug he said he ever received was from a gang member in a federal penitentiary. His first sense of belonging happened in prison.

What is the message from all of this? The Conservative approach of only cracking down on crime while reducing social supports for our families, our youth, our teachers, our social workers, our workers themselves, is wrong. It will not work. It is not what people across this country or the people who came to my forum want.

What people do want, what they need and what they have a right to is to be safe and secure in our communities, safe and secure from crime, and safe and secure from economic deprivation. Our children have the right to play safely in our schoolyards and parks. Our seniors have the right to walk safely in our streets and in their homes. They also have the right to dignity and a life of economic security. Women have the right to be safe everywhere, at home, at work and in our streets. We all want a Canada that is peaceful and free of guns.

This week has been a strange week in Canadian politics. As the Conservatives claim to get tough on crime, as they say they are cracking down on crime, they are trying desperately to make it easier to own and transport guns in this country. They say they want to reduce crime, but they adopt policies that make families poorer, attack women, do nothing to build stronger social, educational and health supports in Canada.

I will give an example in my riding. The government in its budget, in its so-called economic action plan, refused to increase the funding for the only federal program that supports employment for at-risk youth, kids who left school, kids who are on the street, kids with substance abuse issues, kids in poverty.

This caused the closure of the Baristas program, a wonderful program, in co-operation with Starbucks and the Pacific Community Resources organization, that trains at-risk youth to work in Starbucks. It teaches them money handling skills, customer service skills and organizational skills. This program, which was delivered on Broadway in East Vancouver, shut down two weeks ago because of the government's inaction.

This example shows in stark terms the shortsightedness and fallacy of the Conservative get tough approach. These youth do not need a handout, they need a hand up. They need support.

The government cut this program and wants to jail youth, when there are other ways to make these people secure. Instead, these youth who need help learning how to survive are being turned away from positive directions in this regard and are left with very few alternatives.

The bottom line is healthy, economically secure and supported individuals and families do not turn to crime. While we will never eliminate crime entirely, we need to recognize the clear link between strong social supports and reduced deviant behaviour. New Democrats recognize this, but the government does not.

I am pleased to move the bill forward. As I said at the beginning, we should and do have no tolerance for gangs, guns and violence. We need to express our most serious opprobrium as national legislators. The bill does that.

New Democrats will continue to do our part to get tough on crime. We will also continue to bring the voice of intelligence, compassion and reason to address the causes of crime so all Canadians can move forward in safety and security.

[Chinese Canadian Community, April 24th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, a number of prominent leaders in the Chinese community will be gathering in East Vancouver tomorrow. Their purpose is to recognize the noble history of Chinese Canadians, note their incredible contributions to our nation, and discuss current issues facing their communities. This important forum is organized by Canadians for Reconciliation, led by their president, Mr. Bill Chu.

On behalf of the federal New Democrats, I want to congratulate these citizens for their initiative and commitment to enriching our cultural and historical understanding.

New Democrats particularly wish to express our deepest admiration for the important contributions that all Chinese Canadians have made and continue to make to building Canada. Their accomplishments are even more impressive when we consider the backdrop of discrimination and racism that Chinese Canadians have faced throughout the last 125 years.

All Canadians owe a debt of gratitude for the social, cultural and economic benefits that the Chinese community has brought to Canada. Our country is a richer and better place because of them.

[Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, April 22nd, 2009]

Madam Speaker, the free trade agreement was first signed in 1988, so we have had 20 years to measure some of the effects of that. I remember the debate distinctly at that time. One of the promises made about free trade was that it would bring prosperity and an elevated standard of living for everybody.

I wonder if my friend could comment on what has happened to the distribution of wealth in this country since 1988, specifically on the health of our nation's children and poverty rates, and whether in fact the wealth that was created in that time has really been directed in those areas. I would like him to elucidate a bit more about the present state of health of the forestry sector in British Columbia. Could he tell us how free trade has helped that industry?