Gary Lunn

[Points Of Order, May 12th, 1999]

Yes.

[Points Of Order, May 12th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, during Oral Question Period the Minister of Fisheries asked me to table the grey whale fishing licence that was prepared by the Government of Canada to be issued to the Makah tribal group of Washington State, U.S.A.

I am quite happy to provide this to him since he is unable to get it in any other way.

[Fisheries, May 12th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans just said that he has not issued any permits.

Let me read a grey whale fishing licence signed by the Government of Canada for the Makah tribal group. This is from last fall. The minister has declared on the record that as soon as they cross into Canadian waters he will issue a licence.

He is not coming clean. He is standing up for the Americans. He is allowing the Americans to hunt grey whales in our waters. We want him to stand up for Canadians.

When is the minister going to take a stand against the Americans and stop this insane American whale hunt?

[Fisheries And Oceans, May 12th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, in Victoria, British Columbia, the whale watching capital of Canada, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is issuing permits to the Americans to hunt injured whales in Canadian waters.

My question is quite simple. Why is the minister endorsing this insane American whale hunt and why is he not demanding a whaling free zone so that the American problem does not become ours?

[Fifty Ways To Leave Your Jailer, May 12th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, following the revelation that there are 1,000 convicts at large in this country we have come to the conclusion that there must be 50 ways to leave your jailer.

You can slip through the cracks, Jack, Break out of the can, Stan, You don't need to be coy, Roy, it's not hard to get free.

You can hop on the bus, Gus, And get lost when you can, man, And you don't need a key, Lee, to set yourself free.

You can walk through the gate, Nate, Or hitch a free ride, Clyde, There are so many ways, Jay, To set yourself free.

You won't have to kill, Phil, Because the system is lax, Jack, And there's no locks to pick, Dick, To get out on the street.

In no time you'll be gone, John, Say goodbye with a wave, Dave, You don't even need luck, Chuck, To walk away from the clink.

Forget the RCMP, G. They have no funding in B.C., It's so easy to get free, Under Lawrence MacAulay.

[Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act, May 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the insults can keep coming from the other side, but this is a very serious discussion.

Members of the RCMP are not laughing. The PSAC members are not laughing. They are watching this. Members of the Canadian forces are not laughing. They are watching every minute of this. Someone is going to be held accountable. It is their money. We have to do the right thing and put it in the hands of a private investment board where there will be accountability and the government cannot get its sticky fingers all over it.

[Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act, May 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I will retract that. But the government is taking their money. Those men and women are on the other side of the world fighting for Canada. At the very same time their own government is confiscating their pension plan funds to the tune of $30 billion, from the public service union, from the RCMP and from the armed forces. That is wrong. That is so dead wrong. Thirty billion dollars.

I hope when we stand up to vote on this that some of the government members will actually look at what they are doing. They have to be held accountable. They should be focusing their priorities on these very groups where the morale is so low.

It is so real in British Columbia. RCMP officers have come up to me individually to tell me how tight cash is. It is absolutely unacceptable that the government has cut back the budget of the RCMP so much that they cannot fill the vacant positions. They have grounded all boats. They have grounded the drug squads in Vancouver. They have cancelled overtime. It is not acceptable.

At the very same time, what is the government doing? We have seen examples. The one I just heard about today is a $55,000 grant for Bubbles Galore a sex fantasy porn film. Another one which comes to mind is the outright grant of $100,000 that went to some person to write a dumb blond joke book. The list goes on and on. It is outrageous that the government can even consider this.

[Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act, May 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, we are debating Bill C-78, the public service pension plan raid. At least that is what I would suggest the title should be.

As we have heard from many of the people who have spoken on this bill, what it all boils down to is the government getting its sticky fingers on $30 billion of private pension funds.

The money that the government insists on putting its sticky fingers on is being taken from the Canadian people who paid into this fund. Let us look at who it is taking this money from. It is taking $14.9 billion from the public service plan.

It was only weeks ago that we had to stand in the House all night to debate, while the government's only solution was to force these men and women across Canada back to work. That was absolutely unacceptable. Now, to add insult to injury, it is helping itself to the pension plan fund that rightly belongs to PSAC. That is absolutely wrong.

The government is taking $2.4 billion from the RCMP members' plan. It is ironic that I attended a community policing forum last week in my riding. I spoke to an RCMP member as well as the mayor of the town of Sidney, Don Amos. They are very frustrated with what is going. In that city there is a fairly large detachment of RCMP officers. As we know, in British Columbia we have 400 vacancies that are yet to be filled because there are no officers to fill them. The government will not allocate the funds to train people. There are four vacant positions in Sidney, the community in which I live. I am told by the mayor that those four positions are 100% funded by the municipality, yet there is nobody to fill them. They go unfilled.

I was told by one of the other police officers that they have been advised that they should be using all the gas coupons they have received to fill up their police cars. Morale is very low. What is the government going to do to add insult to injury? It is going to raid their money. That is absolutely unacceptable.

It is outrageous that the government sees this $30 billion surplus as its money. Thirty per cent of the pension plan fund is funded by the members. It is funded by the employees of the Public Service Alliance of Canada. It is their money and the government is confiscating it. That is unacceptable.

When the government does things like this it is clearly embarrassed about it. It is not putting up speakers. The last speakers on this bill have been my colleague from the NDP and another Reform member. The Progressive Conservatives and the Bloc are also speaking on this bill. Why? Because the government is embarrassed. We fully understand that it will most likely bring in time allocation or closure on this bill because it is embarrassed.

I cannot believe that we are fighting to get basic, core funding for a national institution, one of which we are very proud from coast to coast, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The government treats those people like the musical ride and nothing more. It makes them go around in circles and they do not get anything out. That is unacceptable. What is the government doing now? It is confiscating money from a fund which those members paid into.

It is the same thing with the PSAC members who went on strike for a long time. The government's only solution to that was to come down with a big hammer and force them back to work. These are the facts. They are indisputable. They are there. Why is the government so silent? Because it is absolutely embarrassed about it.

There is a very simple solution to this. The Reform Party has put forward numerous amendments. We will watch when they come up for debate. My colleague from Alberta put forward these amendments. There are a number of them. At the end of the day what we need is a pension investment board. Let us remove it from the government and politics and have it at arm's length from the government. It should be made up of experts in the field, in the private sector, who can manage these pension funds so the Liberals cannot get their sticky fingers on them and raid them. Then the Liberals will stand and say that they balanced the budget.

Who has balanced the budget? The union members. The RCMP members. Who else is the government robbing? It is robbing the Canadian forces plan of $12.9 billion. These are the men and women who are in active combat in Kosovo, putting their lives on the line in very scary situations. While they are on the other side of the world fighting for humanity, what is their government doing behind their backs? It is stealing their pension money. That is unacceptable. I will retract that.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, May 10th, 1999]

I have just been reminded that that will be over three years.

Again, I will bring this back to Judge Chaperon from Victoria, who is a youth court judge. That is her biggest frustration. The resources are not there so that when these kids go askew she can make sure they get the help they so desperately need.

In many cases they had disastrous family backgrounds which are absolutely beyond imagination. It is up to us as a society to make sure we can give them at least a fighting chance, get them into counselling programs or life skills programs or whatever they need. If they need psychological help we could provide it, but that is not there.

My colleague from the Progressive Conservatives also talked about Quebec and the opt out provision. I personally do not think that we should be giving a province an opt out provision. We need a national youth justice program. The reason it is fighting for it is that what is on the table is not adequate. It is not the answer.

At the end of the day there is no question we have seen the same Young Offenders Act. There will not be a lot of difference. There has been some tinkering, but there will not be much change in how we administer our youth justice system. We have lost the confidence of the Canadian people. We have lost the confidence of the public. We have to restore that.

There has to be accountability and a twofold approach. When we get them before the courts in the beginning we need a tough love approach. Let us deal with them. Our number one goal is to make sure that they never come back into the justice system again. I am not talking about incarceration. I am talking about tough programs and curfews that are mandatory so that they will not want to come back. It will not be an easy ride. It will also deal with the rehabilitative side.

Obviously there will be a second approach for the few that go askew and will commit these incredible and horribly violent offences. There will be accountability and we will deal with them in a severe way so it will not carry on.

At the end of the day we have to restore the confidence of the Canadian people in our youth justice system. Unfortunately the bill basically repackages the Young Offenders Act with a new outside but the same interior.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, May 10th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I would like to pick up where my friend from the Progressive Conservative Party left off. He made some very valid points and I will focus on a few of them.

What we have to focus on is that every single young offender, every single youth who comes before our courts, the ones who commit the most serious offences, who are incarcerated, are going to be released into society. I agree with him absolutely that we need funding for this.

The Young Offenders Act will be re-packaged. There will be a new bow put on the package, with a few new dressings on the outside and it will now be called the youth criminal justice act, but we will basically have the same thing.

I held a one-day seminar at a high school in my riding and I invited the head youth provincial court judge, Judge Chaperon, to participate in the seminar. She brought up a very disturbing fact that happens within our youth justice system, which boils down to what my friend was focusing on, and that is the lack of resources. Her biggest frustration is not being able to give the youth in our justice system the help they need. The resources from the federal government are not there, although, again, it mentions the $206 million.

She told me that over 50% of the people who are in the youth detention centre in Victoria have one form of psychological problem or another. However, they do not have the resources to give them the counselling and the programs they need to turn them around and to make sure they do not come back.

The government has the responsibility to make sure that it puts the resources out there so that the provinces will have the tools they need to provide the rehabilitation that is so necessary. Warehousing these youth, locking them up and not doing anything with them while they are in the warehouse, not ensuring that they are getting anger management, drug counselling and psychological counselling from experts before they are released into society, is a waste of time. We have to focus on that. That is one area in which the government has really been slack.

Another area, and my hon. friend also brought this up, is the involvement of parents in the youth justice system. I do not think the government has really done anything there.

Under section 7.2 of the old Young Offenders Act if a youth was incarcerated and the judge was going to release them the judge had a tool whereby the parent could be forced to sign an undertaking that they would report any breaches of the conditions. It could be a curfew, going to school or attending a certain program. It could be anything. If that young offender breached one of those conditions, it was absolutely imperative that the adult or whoever signed the undertaking report it to the authorities. It is not forcing parents to make sure they have control over their children, but when they lose control they must report it to the authorities.

There is a positive step. The old penalty was up to six months and the new penalty is up to two years. I agree with my hon. colleague from Surrey North. As he put it, maybe that will be the incentive required to make parents fulfill their obligation, because in many respects they are not. In the personal situation of my good friend from Surrey North that did not happen.

I think we need to go one step further. We need to make sure that we press charges, especially in the most violent cases where there is absolutely no excuse for them not to report it or where we can absolutely show that it was a blatant abuse of the system and they did not report it when they knew about. I would submit that is not happening now. That is something we should be doing.

My hon. colleague from West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast spoke about the importance of prevention. I really want to emphasize that. That is where we need to be going in our youth justice system. We have to look at prevention at the front end. We do not want our youth put into warehouses and locked up. We want to make sure they are productive members of society. There are programs, such as the head start program put forward by the hon. member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca in Motion No. 261, which would go a long way to achieving some of these goals.

At the end of the day we are now getting this new youth justice bill and I do not think it is going to change a whole lot, as my colleagues have stated. I do not think the government is putting the resources into it that are required. I do not think it is compelling the parents enough to participate in the process.

There should be a section in the bill which makes it mandatory for parents or guardians of all young offenders, at all levels, to be present in the courtroom. That is not happening now and it will not happen under the new youth justice bill. For any young offender who is before the courts, it should be absolutely mandatory that a parent be there to participate in the process. We know that young offenders are going to be released into society. If they are going to succeed, then they are going to need that parental support and we should be making it mandatory.

Again, I want to focus on the resources. I have practised criminal law within the youth justice system and my own experiences show that if we are going to make the changes necessary, then we have to make sure that we provide the resources necessary so that when our youth go askew, when they fall under the cracks, there is accountability and that our number one goal is not to warehouse them but to put them back into society in a productive manner. To do that the people in our justice system will need resources and tools. Under this bill they will not have them. The $206 million does not even come close to cutting it.