Françoise Boivin

[Nuclear Terrorism Act, October 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I asked the parliamentary secretary a question a little earlier, and her answer surprised me. She said that it took five years for the government to introduce Bill S-9 and that it did not need Bill S-7 in order to comply with the international treaties that it had signed.

I would like to hear from my colleague about this. How does he explain this time frame, when we are being told here that the bill is so necessary and so important it must be passed quickly? This is certainly something that we are going to hear on a regular basis from witnesses suggested by the Conservative members.

[Nuclear Terrorism Act, October 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I quite liked the speech by my colleague from Toronto—Danforth, especially the last part, since the first part had to do with the technical aspects. We understand one another because have studied this matter at length. I was especially glad to hear him share his concerns over how democratic this process is. I do not want to issue a challenge to my colleagues, but this bill is not an easy read. I know what my colleague means when he says that it might be a good idea for the department or the minister, when he introduces this type of bill, to provide explanatory notes that are more complete than those that are usually included.

I would like to share something Senator Dallaire said during the review of Bill S-9 in the Senate. The hon. member will be able to make additional comments, because Senator Dallaire shared the same view:

I wish to concisely come back to the point of all these different bills coming at us. [We reviewed Bill S-7 this morning and now we are looking at Bill S-9.] We are covering the bases that are presented to us, but there is no feeling, even within reading the report, the 2010 report, of what the delta of gaps are in the security with regard to terrorism or anti-terrorism. It seems to me that it is fine to go through and do our legislative duty; however, without that framework, it seems to me that, as a committee, we are a bit ill-equipped to get a warm, fuzzy feeling that we are going down the road that we feel maybe should be done expeditiously enough by the department or by the ministries with regard to anti-terrorism.

It makes me shudder to read such quotes from people who have spent hours and hours studying the bill. I would like my colleague to say a few words about this.

[Nuclear Terrorism Act, October 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, another question comes to mind after listening to the hon. member for Delta—Richmond East.

How does the government plan to deal with the problems that could result from the fact that these new Criminal Code offences will have a broader scope than the offences included in separate international agreements?

[Nuclear Terrorism Act, October 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Delta—Richmond East, who managed to turn a rather dry, complicated and very technical bill into something more easily understood. I certainly appreciate the urgency and importance of this bill, which we will support at second reading.

Why has the government not made this a priority before now? For the past five years now, we could have been honouring our commitments under international treaties. Why did it take five years?

[Combating Terrorism Act, October 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, although my colleague from Toronto—Danforth claims to be a rookie, he gave an excellent speech. Judging from the content of his speech, he is far from being a rookie.

A number of witnesses appeared before the Senate committee, including Kathy Vandergrift, chairperson of the board of directors for the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children. She indicated the need to amend the bill to include mechanisms for people under the age of 18, given the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international agreements signed by Canada.

She said that she was concerned about the impact of detaining young people accused of going abroad to participate in terrorist activities. She said:

The Paris Principles emphasize using detention only as a last resort, not as the primary response to evidence of unlawful recruitment activities. Recent research in Australia documents the negative impacts of even short times in detention for the healthy development of young people.

I would like the hon. member to expand on this and to tell us whether or not he agrees with this point of view.

[Combating Terrorism Act, October 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am extremely concerned about the last thing my Liberal colleague said in response to the question asked by the member from the Green Party of Canada. This type of response is worrisome because it suggests that the provisions that need to be reviewed are actually charter-proof. This is no small claim because the provisions must still be justifiable in a fair and democratic society. These provisions were never used, so it does not seem as though not having had them at all would have been a problem. However, we are talking about doing away with rights, such as the presumption of innocence and people's right to be quickly made aware of the charges against them.

It seems that the hon. member is making quite the claim. I would like him to retract that claim or explain himself better so that we are not left with the impression that representatives of a supposedly pro-Charter party are cheerfully setting it aside.

[Combating Terrorism Act, October 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, as it is mostly members of the official opposition who have spoken to the bill, I think it is important to make a correction: no one in the House said that the fact that this provision has not been used is proof that there was no terrorism. It is very important to add that the existing provisions seem to have been enough.

I would like to ask the representative of the party that often wraps itself in the charter if we are to understand that the members of his party are voting in favour of Bill S-7 or whether, on the contrary, the fact that the committee's recommendations were not taken into account, including in the two cases he mentioned, indicates that they are not voting in favour of this bill.

[Combating Terrorism Act, October 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, no, it is not appropriate. My whole speech is on this. If it is that serious and that important, we do not start it in the Senate. We start it in the House with the representatives of the people of Canada.

[Combating Terrorism Act, October 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Burnaby—New Westminster asked an excellent question. As he said himself, it is a smokescreen. Personally, I think the legislation is a government smokescreen.

In other words, if you do not have any ideas, if you do not know what to do and if you do not know how to manage public finances, you try to scare people. You suggest that in Canada there are terrorists on every street corner, or just about. You just scare people.

As I have said before, since 2001, $92 billion has been spent on anti-terrorism measures. That is quite a lot of money. I do not even dare tell the House what could have been done with $92 billion in terms of addressing the inequalities in Canada, without jeopardizing the safety of Canadians. These provisions were not even used. It all costs money.

Thanks to this bill, we will probably have a chance to give in-depth consideration to all the billions of dollars that are being spent. We do not know where all this money is going, because there is no transparency on the government side. We do not know where the money has gone, what it has been used for, what measures required such astronomical amounts, what they prevented or even how they helped make the streets and Canada as a whole even safer than before. I have absolutely no idea where it has all gone.

This is indeed a smokescreen. If you do not know what to do and if you do not know how to manage taxpayers' money, you just scare people. You spend a lot of money and you make people think that you are doing something for them.

[Combating Terrorism Act, October 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I do in fact see it that way. I was struck by various testimony given in the Senate. That testimony will certainly be heard again by the House committee responsible for discussing the issue, whether it be the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights or the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

Kent Roach, the Prichard-Wilson Chair of Law and Public Policy at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, gave evidence to the committee as an individual in support of the bill. This is another example that will be used by the government to say that all these great scholars, all these great legal minds, all these great defenders of public rights agree with the Conservatives. We are not opposed to motherhood and apple pie, but at the same time some parts of the bill pose huge problems. For instance, the idea of punishing young people instead of rehabilitating them is of enormous concern to Professor Roach.

If the government is serious, then it must ensure that the bill is amended or improved and that the questions that the subject matter experts have about it are cleared up and that these concerns are resolved, so we can say that we are no longer behind the times, because he said that we lag behind many other countries because our official policy is that once a terrorist, always a terrorist.

All the same, I am not naive. I practised law for 25 years. You see all kinds of people. Nevertheless, I am still optimistic that there are good measures that can punish and rehabilitate the same time and take people's unique differences into account. We should not treat a young person or child as we do a 50-year-old terrorist with a 30-year career as a terrorist behind him who works in the terrorism market. They are not the same thing. There are children who have been indoctrinated by their parents, and the parents are authority figures to their children. It is hard for a child to say no to his father or his mother. All of these cases must be studied in depth.