Gerry Ritz

[Sex Offender Information Registration Act, March 31st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Prince George—Peace River for his summation and his great question.

He is absolutely right. This is one of the issues that people rally around. I know his e-mails have lit up. I know the petitions alone, which have been presented in this place, should convince the folks on the other side that this legislation does not go half far enough. There are too many loopholes built into it. It is bound to fail from the way it is done.

I know my colleague's riding and mine are very similar. We have been back and forth in each other's ridings speaking. What is lacking in this legislation is common sense. Our folks out there can see through this and say that it is a smokescreen. It is never going to hold up. We are designing laws for lawyers and constitutional challenges. It does not help victims in the least. As I said, there is no common sense.

Even if the registry does get up and running, there may never be a name placed on it. There is no retroactivity and there is no guarantee that all sex offenders will not apply for the loophole that says that it will be harmful for them to be on the list and win that argument, or tie it up in court for so long that people finally throw up their hands and decide this is not the way to go. It will never work.

It has been over two years since our colleague brought forward the motion and counting, and we still do not have anything on the books. Even when we do get this one, it in no way resembles what that motion intended to do. We are getting a half measure.

Now the government is in a hurry. It has to win the political spin war out there that somehow public safety is paramount but people see through this type of legislation. They know this will in no way address any type of public safety.

[Sex Offender Information Registration Act, March 31st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today. I spoke earlier on Bill C-20, the child protection bill, and I talked about a parallel bill that would come in later today. Bill C-23 is that bill.

Bill C-23 would put in place the national sex offender registry. The national sex offender registry has been called on for a long time in the country. There have been several different stabs at it. However it has never really happened. I guess the genesis of this came out of a Canadian Alliance supply day motion put forward by my good friend, my colleague from Langley—Abbotsford. On March 13, 2001, over two years ago now, the House of Commons voted in favour of that motion. The motion, which was very simple, read:

That the government establish a national sex offender registry by January 1, 2002.

We have missed it by a year and some. It did not happen. The Liberals ignored it. At their own peril, they walked away from it, yet there was a groundswell of petitions and support. People from our ridings across the country questioning what had happened to it. They asked where had it gone because they had not seen it this place. Finally the Liberals were pushed to act, and we have Bill C-23. Unfortunately, as many of my colleagues have pointed out, it is a half measure. There are some terrible flaws in this legislation as well.

A lot of it started back in 1988 when an 11 year old boy was murdered by a convicted pedophile who was out on statutory release, another wonderful thing that needs to be changed. The Liberals at that time started thinking about a national sex offender registry. That was 15 years ago. There have been a lot of problems and a lot of convicted felons since that time. A lot of folks who have been released on statutory release back into the very communities have reoffended and gone back to prison.

It is timely that we are finally getting around to this legislation. However there is a huge flaw. It is not retroactive. As my colleague from Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar pointed out, it starts off just like that, a white, blank sheet of paper. There is nothing on it.

How can that be when our prisons have these types of people incarcerated now? They are being let out. I had one on the streets of my riding a week or two ago. I have talked about this a couple of times in the House but it bears repeating. A fellow who is a multiple convicted felon, been away many times, keeps getting out and doing the same dastardly deeds. His victims are young girls ranging in age from 11 to a one and a half year old. How bad is that? Yet his name will not show up on that registry. He is a multiple convicted child predator.

There is a huge hole in this type of a document. That alone has called for amendments to make it retroactive and the government will not go there. There have been questions in the House to the Solicitor General and the Minister of Justice and they say that they cannot make it retroactive because of privacy concerns.

How much privacy do the victims have? They wake up screaming at night. These nightmares will continue on for their life. Yet the legislation, which is supposedly there to protect them and to help them get past this, is not retroactive. It does not take that burden away from them. It keeps them reliving those problems every time this clown is released back into society to reoffend.

Other colleagues have touched on the rate of recidivism. It is huge and unbelievable. These people do not even take any kind of counselling while they are incarcerated. They can say that they do not need it and walk away. They cannot be forced to take counselling. Their constitutional rights supercede the victims and the nightmare they continue to leave. It is absolutely upside down and backwards here.

The government says that it cannot make it retroactive because of privacy concerns and it will be constitutionally challenged. My good colleague from Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough who used to be a public prosecutor in Nova Scotia said that any new law would be challenged. They always are to test how strong it is.

Our courts need to have the backbone, and maybe we need to put it there from the House of Commons. It is the top court on the law. Maybe we need to inject that backbone into our judges right from here, with the toe of our boot if need be, and say, “ Here is the crime and this is the time that they need to do”. Get on with it.”

We see maximum sentences being extended and enlarged. However maximum does not mean anything. It is the minimum time that they serve that counts. It does not matter that the maximum is doubled, or tripled or maybe it is 16 life sentences. Nobody serves those sentences. They go to the minimum term. They get statutory release. They are up for parole at two-thirds of their time and all sorts of things. There is a huge amount of work that needs to be done on our whole justice department. This retroactivity totally negates the whole purpose of the bill.

The government will not implement retroactivity on the sex offender registry. It will not implement retroactivity on the DNA database. It will not go and get DNA from a lot of these bad guys because of their constitutional rights and the privacy laws. Then it implements something like Bill C-68, a firearms registry, which has forms that really invade my privacy. It set up a database that is a shopping list for every other criminal in the world who wants to find out what I have and where to come and get it, and my constitutional rights are challenged.

A good friend of mine, Dr. Ted Morton, has done an indepth study on the constitutionality of Bill C-68. He said that the government did not have a leg to stand on in regard to that bill, and he has listed it out. This fellow is a constitutional lawyer. He knows about what he is talking. That really starts to ring true when we see the people who have tried to become arrested under Bill C-68 and the government will not charge them because it knows it will get thrown out of court and totally destroy the whole premise of this public safety Bill C-68 hides behind.

We see those type of things implemented in here.

Even if a sex offender is put on the brand new list, there is another loophole. Through the courts, he can apply to not have his name listed if he feels that it would be detrimental to his health and safety. How absolutely ridiculous is that? Nobody in any court of law or at any kitchen table would ever agree with the premise that a criminal, a convicted felon, can apply to not have his name on there because it is injurious to his own privacy and safety. That is a loophole that nobody can believe.

Provinces have started to develop these registries. They have had to do it ad hoc because the federal government will not come forward with the proper legislation and funding to help them out. We can have pedophiles listed in Ontario who move to Saskatchewan and we lose them because there is not that continuity. This would address that if it were done properly, but we do not see that here. The big problem is the funding.

As I mentioned in a question to my colleague, the Canadian Police Association was here on Hill the last week and it probably lobbied him like it did everybody else. Its stand supposedly is pro Bill C-68. Maybe at the top end it. However ordinary folks who came to see me said that it was not a good thing. They want to see a DNA database. They want to see a sex offender registry that is retroactive. The government tends to not mention the CPA stand on those issues but it will give the CPA credit for being in favour of Bill C-68, at the upper end.

There are a lot of things wrong with this. The biggest issue that we take umbrage with is the retroactivity. To that end, I would like to propose a motion. I move:

That the motion be amended by replacing all the words after the word “that” with

“this House declines to give second reading to Bill C-23, an act respecting the registration of information relating to sex offenders, to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other acts, since the bill fails to require retroactive registration of sex offenders who have a 40% recidivism rate in order to avoid needing another offence before a repeat sex offender is added to the registry”.

[Sex Offender Information Registration Act, March 31st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the address of my colleague, the hon. member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough. He made mention of the long gun registry and the horrendous amount of money that has gone into it and is not really making anyone safe.

I know that when the Canadian Police Association members were on the Hill the other day, they were asking for help on a sex offender registry. They want to see one developed. The hon. member may have been lobbied as well. The government makes a big deal out of the support that the CPA gives it on the gun registry, but it forgets to mention that the CPA is asking for a commitment on a national sex offender registry. I wonder if the member would care to comment on that.

[Saskatchewan, March 31st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, last Friday Saskatchewan's NDP government tabled a budget that would be considered voodoo economics from any credible source. Residents of Saskatchewan are again trying to decipher the half truth in this year's government initiative.

The NDP in Regina continue to pretend its crown corporations are not part of the government books although they represent 40% of public business in the province. The NDP claims Saskatchewan will grow at an unprecedented rate of 6.8% next year. That is amazing considering the economy shrunk by nearly 2% last year and experts are predicting another difficult year for agriculture.

The NDP promised to put more police on the streets during the last election. Instead, it wasted over $110 million on a land titles scheme that failed to deliver anything. In “next year country” we are used to holding out for a better tomorrow. The NDP refusal to address rural property tax reform or tax relief of any kind until after the next election is ridiculous and just crass politics.

Next year's election will bring sensible economic planning because a new government in the form of the Saskatchewan Party under Elwin Hermanson will be elected.

[Criminal Code, March 31st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today to Bill C-20. The title of the bill, the child protection act, does not really cover what is in the bill. The speakers before me have pointed out the flaws in the bill.

There has been a huge outcry in my riding over these situations that have occurred that have brought about the genesis of the bill, Bill C-20, child protection. With the advent of the Internet and the world becoming a smaller place we are starting to see more and more abuses.

The concerns that my constituents have is that they are seeing more and more that Canada is becoming a safe haven for the perverts of the world because we will not stand up and protect our children.

There has been this huge public outcry that we need to go further, faster and really put something on the books that protects our kids. This bill does not do that. Unfortunately there are a few things missing.

The government and other governments before it always have these code words that such and such is a priority for the government. We have heard that time and time again.

We only have to go back to 1989 and the Conservative government at the time when child poverty was a priority for the government. It went on and it has been a priority for the Liberal government as well. Guess what? It is worse, not better.

Whenever we hear these code words that it is a priority, citizens beware. Somewhere in there someone will get left out which is what we are seeing in the bill.

There is an accompanying bill that we will be debating later this afternoon I am sure, Bill C-23, the sex offender registry. We see the same underlying so-called priority and direction of the government not really covering the fatal flaws that we have in our legislation now. The biggest concern with Bill C-23 is that it is not retroactive. It will not go back and address the folks who have committed these offences, are habitual criminals and who will reoffend. It does not go back and put them on the list because of privacy and constitutional challenges which is what the Solicitor Generals tells us he is concerned with. However that flies in the face of protecting someone.

Canadian parents are concerned. They have read the articles on Canada becoming a safe haven. They have seen the court cases that have not been heard, or have been adjourned, or have been thrown out or whatever. Because of the way our laws are written they will not protect our kids. The bill seeks to address some of those missing elements but it does not.

We still have a version of the outrageous argument that there is artistic merit somehow in child pornography. The Liberals have recognized that is not the right way to write that down so they changed it and put in some fuzzy words. Now they call it public good. How can it be for the public good when we label it as pornography and it involves kids?

We have heard arguments from some members of the House. My counterpart, the member for Palliser, stood up and said that there was no victim here. Well, there certainly is. The last speaker, the member for Cumberland--Colchester, made the point, and I agree with him, that there was long-lasting psychological damage. Certainly there is a victim in a sense.

Artistic merit, public good or whatever we want to call it, leaves a huge loophole for these worldwide offenders to come to Canada and say they are artists. Now the member for Dartmouth wants to give them a tax credit. That is how ludicrous some of the arguments are on this example.

We see these types of offenders, the lowest of the lowest, being given community arrest. They are put back into the very community where the crime happened and where the victim lives. There is an instance of that right now in North Battleford. A fellow named Gladue has just been given a conditional release and he is out in the community. The police are not supposed to say anything because of his privacy but, thank God, they have come forward and told the people about the problem. They put forward the usual rules, that he cannot go near a park or talk to kids, but how do we enforce that when he is dropped back into a community where kids live on every block and are on every corner? They walk past the buildings. How do we enforce those types of things? It is an anomaly that my constituents cannot get their minds around. We release this guy because statutory release says that we have to do it.

He has taken no psychological analysis or any programs while incarcerated that say it is safe to release him but they are saying no. His chances of repeat offending are like 80% to 90%. He is a time bomb waiting to go off but he is out in my community. At least the police have acknowledged that he is there and have told people to watch out for him, and rightly so.

The other loophole in the bill is that we do not see the age of consent moved from 14 years old. Canadians have said that their kids up to age 16 receive a government cheque called a child tax credit. Under the tax system children up to the age of 16 receive a tax credit but at 14 they can have sex? It just flies in the face of any rational thinking that the government would not move that age to 16, and it makes no attempt in the bill to do that.

I remember one day in question period that exact question was put forward by my colleague from Provencher, the former attorney general of Manitoba. The parliamentary secretary stood and said that the government could not make that move because there were cultural groups in Canada that required that age. Can anyone believe that; cultural groups in Canada that insist that 14 remain the age of consent? That is ridiculous. This is Canada. We have our own rules and regulations. We do not need a cultural group dictating that the age of consent stay at 14. It is absolutely ridiculous. It is not in here.

I know some amendments will be brought forward by my colleagues from Provencher and from Crowfoot, our justice critic, to this very bill. We know the chances of those amendments getting through are slim to none but we have to try. People are requesting it.

The police associations were here last week for the lobby day on the Hill. The government made a big hue and cry about how the CPA was all in favour of Bill C-68, the gun registry, and that we should spend the money because it was a useful tool. However it forgot to tell us that on that very same day the CPA said that there was not enough money for child pornography and that it needed more cash and more police officers on the line to fight it.

The criminals who perpetrate this type of thing have gone on the Internet, they have gone global, and our police officers have not been given the resources to fight it. The Liberals forgot to mention that little flaw in their thinking the other day.

It is fine to support Bill C-68. Everybody is welcome to do that in a democracy. However there are two officers in Toronto who have been forced to sit and watch this stuff through their whole shift to prove there is criminal intent here. How perverse is that? They have a psychiatric review themselves after six months but there is no psychiatric review for the people they arrest for this thing. It is craziness. We do a psychoanalysis on the policemen but not on the bad guys. We just shake our heads at how these type of things get in here. Court cases are tossed out. They are unenforceable.

The bill would increase the maximum sentence. It sounds great that the maximum sentence for doing something will be increased. Whether we use that or not has no bearing on the fact. It is the minimum sentence that needs to be increased. If the minimum sentence is 4 years now, let us make it 10 years. It does not matter if we make the maximum sentence 20 years because nobody qualifies for the maximum anyway. There are weasel words right in the bill that say it is protecting our kids by increasing the maximum sentence. It is the minimum that we need to increase, not the maximum. This really fails any kind of a test. There are so many things that are required that are just basic.

What about conditional sentences and the idea of community arrest? Prison time is called for so criminals can get the counselling and the psychiatric care they need if and when they ever do get released.

We have a lot of concerns with the bill. There is no truth in sentencing when we see the maximum increased, not the minimum. Nobody really tells us that the victims have no rights at all, that the criminals have all the rights. He can be statutorily released into the same community in which he committed the crime. These poor kids who are victims of this are stuck living with this person right in their midst.

This whole idea of minimum sentences not being increased and psychological assessments and analyses not being done on these perverted people in our society just flies in the face of anything called child protection. There is no possible way that my colleagues and I can support a bill like this. I know the committee worked very hard on this. It heard from a lot of community groups and lot of parents who said that these things needed to be in the bill. However we have seen no movement by the government to enforce tougher and harder penalties on these criminals.

We are not able to support the legislation simply because the government will not broaden out the scope of who will be covered, how they will covered and why they will be covered, and stop this whole influx of the global perverts who come to Canada because it is a free ride. That is not acceptable.

[Income Tax Act, March 31st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is a real pleasure to take part in this new version of our private members' business where we actually get to question the mover of the motion.

I am looking back at the member's speech of February 20 of this year in which she was talking about child protection and so on. I would like to quote from that speech, because she made a comment that we must not use the Criminal Code to censor art, but then went on to state:

I worry that the police chief of Toronto has been publicly criticizing the government and has been using child pornography as his reason to ask for more federal money for law enforcement.

The next part is the important quote:

It does not bode well for our freedom of artists if police believe that their funding will increase if they lay more child pornography charges.

With the hon. member asking for tax relief for artists and demanding that the artistic merit principle stand up with child pornographers, the question would be this: Is this an unintended consequence of her bill or does she really believe that artistic merit should be safeguarded and that child pornographers should actually get a tax break? That is unbelievable.

[Government Contracts, March 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the minister claims our military planners, he is blaming this on DND, requested a slower, smaller, lighter helicopter with less range and less capacity. Why would they want less than they have now? I am sure the Prime Minister can live with that but the forces deserve better.

The Minister of Public Works has never explained why the contract was split and re-bundled. Why was this unprecedented pre-qualification put in place? Will he clear the air now? Or is he prepared to spend his retirement in front of a judge, testifying in the next round of lawsuits?

[Government Contracts, March 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, in the past 10 years the maritime helicopter replacement project has seen $800 million in cancellation fees and increasing maintenance costs on our 40 year old Sea Kings. Today the government has embarked on a pre-qualification phase, something new, that it claims would speed things up.

Could the Public Works Minister explain how omitting best value and basing this pre-qualifier only on lowest price would get us the right helicopter?

[Business of the House, March 26th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, of course all of us in the House agree on the great job our men and women in the armed forces do and, in a lot of cases, do in spite of the rambling, old equipment with which they are forced to work.

There is an old axiom in real estate. There are only three rules in real estate: location, location, location. There is really only the same type of axiom in purchasing and procurement: best value, best value, best value.

We saw the helicopter issue debundled and chased around the block for 10 years under the Liberal government. We have now seen it rebundled. The government says that it has four inquiries of potential bidders, which is fantastic, but the big point it is making here is life cycle cost. I guess it just goes beyond all reason that we did buy the best ones in 1963 because they had to do double duty. They have extended their life cycle by double. Instead of a 20 year life cycle, they have been extended to 40 years. Therefore if we had bought the cheapest ones in 1963 they would not have lasted and performed as they have.

I would ask the government to make sure it gets past this lowest price compliance attitude that it has and think about best value for that life cycle that it will probably extend again.

[Business of the House, March 26th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise tonight to elaborate on my question about the issue of the new maritime helicopter procurement. At the time the defence minister replied to my question which had been directed to the public works minister, but the genesis of the whole issue is whether we are getting the best value for the new dollars we are going to spend.

After 10 years of foot dragging on this issue, the cancellation of the EH-101s which the previous government had ordered, we find the government is now in a hurry to be seen to be doing something but it has really given up the pretence that it is out to get helicopters as fast as possible. There have been 10 years of the government dragging its feet.

I am really concerned. Does the minister understand that the best price and lowest dollar is not necessarily the same as best value? We have to talk about the lifetime of the contract, the helicopters in place, maintenance of them and fleet commonality. A lot of those things come into best value when we start to describe it.

Best value is called for by the Auditor General, Treasury Board guidelines, the public works manual and of course the new finance minister in his 2003 budget. If the minister will not deny that bureaucrats are using lowest cost compliance to choose a contractor, then how can the minister explain the dumbing down of requirements for the potential new helicopter? I will run through the points where the government has weakened the bid.

Does the new chopper need twin landing gear? The old Sea King has it. Does it need to take off with a full load in zero wind conditions? The Sea King can. Does it need to fly more than two hours and twenty minutes? The Sea King, even at 40 years of age, can still do it. Does it need to carry more than one little torpedo if it is warm out? There is the load capacity. The Sea King can carry two now, formerly four. Does it need to cruise faster than 120 knots? The Sea King can still maintain and sustain 151 knots. Does it need to be able to handle new equipment in the years ahead? Apparently it is acceptable that its performance falls off.

What is listed as specs for the new helicopter does not even compete with the 40-year-old Sea Kings that we have today. The government has lowered the requirements to try to bring in a cheap price to justify the cancellation from 10 years ago. It is a terrible way to operate a procurement procedure.

Canadian taxpayers, and of course we in the opposition, would like an explanation why the government is looking for a helicopter that is slower, smaller, less safe and less capable than our 40-year-old Sea Kings.

A lot of it seemed to come to pass when the Prime Minister's Office made the cancellation. Now it seems to be muddling up the requirement process in the new procurement. It was debundled under the former public works minister who is now an ambassador. We hope he is doing a better job as an ambassador than he did as public works minister. He debundled it, split it apart. He took the airframe and got bids on that, and then got bids on the whole mission suite and the guts of the unit from someone else. Everybody said that was not the right way to go, that it was totally wrong-headed.

The government has rebundled it under the new ministers who are in place. That is a good idea but it seems to us to have more to do with the Sikorski-Bombardier partnership than it does with the common sense that is required in this type of procurement.

The bottom line is, who is holding it up? Why? Why are we flipping and flopping on this? Why is the government not talking about fleet commonality the same as it did with the Challengers?