Jack Harris

[Employment Insurance Act, March 15th, 2012]

It is called responsibility. I have heard before that it is called responsibility. Therefore, the parents are responsible, the children should suffer and we are prepared to see that happen. That is the kind of logic and lack of compassion that we are hearing from the other side. I hope every Canadian is watching this and hearing how people think over there. I am afraid to repeat it because it seems to me that it is actually true.

As I say, I am glad to have a chance to talk about this but I am very sorry that this kind of bill is before the House. I hope that other wiser heads over there with more compassionate and charitable views actually prevail and say that if people commit crimes, they will go to jail. The judge decides how long they will be there. I do not want members opposite saying that people should be deprived of the opportunity to rehabilitate because they happen to have been in jail.

[Employment Insurance Act, March 15th, 2012]

I hear the member say they should have thought of that before they committed the crimes. So we are going to visit the sins of the father upon the children. That sounds to me like a bad movie. If I do something wrong, my children should not have to pay because the government—

[Employment Insurance Act, March 15th, 2012]

He cares about victims. He cares enough about victims that he wants to create more. He wants the children of people who end up in prison to suffer. He wants to ensure that when people get out of prison, who would otherwise, under the current law, be eligible to either receive employment insurance that was interrupted by the incarceration or who had earned an opportunity to participate in an employment program or skills training program, they will be deprive of that, just cut them off. They were in prison and therefore are somehow pariahs on society and should have no chance to use the benefits of the Employment Insurance Act to rehabilitate themselves, to look after their families, to quality for upgrades in skills so they can get better jobs and to be more productive members of society.

No, we want more victims. We want those people to be victims and we are prepared to see their children be victims also. That is shocking. And they say that this in the name of victimhood.

[Employment Insurance Act, March 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if the member was listening carefully but I said that it was an act that would amend the Employment Insurance Act.

This is a matter for debate, but I have no doubt that this legislation would further penalize people who have either committed an offence or may be only awaiting a trial to determine whether they committed an offence. Bill C-316 would unfairly add additional penalties on people and treat them unequally. An individual who may have paid the premiums and was collecting employment insurance would lose that benefit instead of having it postponed, the way it is now. It is an unfair bill.

What is really unfair about the bill is that it is so contrary to the notion of members opposite who talk a lot about their concern about crime and victims of crime, never mind the Christian charity or any other kind of charity toward people. One would think that the Conservatives would be concerned about the rehabilitation of offenders, particularly the kinds of offenders we are talking about here, most of whom serve a sentence of less than a year for some first offence or minor offence. One would think they would want them to be rehabilitated so they could get back into the workforce to be able to support their families.

What are we saying here? Do we want to ensure that people who happen to be in jail for six weeks or three months are deprived of the ability to collect employment insurance when they get out of jail? Who depends on that employment insurance? It is the individual and his or her family. Are we going to deprive the family of three months of employment insurance income because someone went to jail? The individual may have been deprived of income while in jail but that is part of the consequence of being in jail.

I do not know who will vote for this legislation. I did not hear the minister get up and say that they will vote for this because it is a government measure. However, we will find out how mean-spirited, negative, uncharitable and uncompassionate those members are if they support the member's bill. The member did a disservice to his party by bringing the bill before the House. This measure would further penalize individuals who commit crimes for which they are serving usually relatively minor sentences in jail.

We know that many former inmates have considerable difficulty finding work after release from prison, which is why we have the John Howard Society. I do not know if the Conservatives are against the John Howard Society helping prisoners to reform themselves and rehabilitate themselves, something that society wants and desires and we should be encouraging.

We should be encouraging that for two reasons. First, because we want everybody to be a good citizen, even people who have committed an offence. We want them to have an opportunity to reform. Second, because we want to protect society. We want these individuals to be productive members of society so they do not commit further offences and create further victims. I think that is a common goal. I do not know why anybody would want to turn the screw a little tighter, hurt them and their families, and deprive them of a benefit that they are entitled to under law because they paid their premiums. Instead, the government wants to turn the screw a little tighter.

We know that incarceration has a lasting negative effect on how much an individual earns, lowering his or her average annual income already. The average income of a household with children and a parent in prison declines by 22% over the period of incarceration and after the parent is released from prison the household income remains 15% lower than before that parent was committed.

What are we doing here? Are we saying that we will penalize not only the individual but the family even further? What would be gained by that? Is that a deterrence? No. It is a continuation and enforcement of misery on somebody who is already poor. Is that what the government wants to do? I do not know if the government is going to support the bill but we will find out.

That, obviously, is what the member wants to do. Maybe he has talked to his colleagues or maybe has not. I have not heard all of the speeches here. However, it will be a very sad day if the government passes this legislation. I do not think people on this side will support. There are some in that corner. I see one hand in the Conservative corner that is voting with the government.

[Employment Insurance Act, March 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak, but I am not very pleased to speak to this bill because it is Bill C-316, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act, which would seek to further penalize individuals who find themselves in jail as a result of the commission of an offence, or perhaps they are awaiting trial and may even be acquitted of the offence.

The hon. member opposite has seen fit to take a piece of legislation that is designed to ensure that people who have earned through paying premiums the right to employment insurance and deprive them of some of those benefits in addition to whatever penalty they receive.

In fact, what it says is that there are two people who are equal before the law, one of whom happens to qualify for EI and the other does not. It wants to make the system work as follows. If people happen to be in receipt of EI, they are going to be punished differently and more heavily than another person who is not in that circumstance--

[Search and Rescue, March 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, changes in the military's emergency protocol after the tragedy of Makkovik is some acknowledgement that there are problems within Canada's search and rescue system. Indeed, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and Newfoundland and Labrador's representative in the federal cabinet, has said there are problems “Right from ground search and rescue, the RCMP, the province, the national defence, all the different elements that are involved in the search and rescue”.

Does the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs stand by his call for an inquiry into every aspect of search and rescue and if not, why not?

[Petitions, March 14th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to present a petition from a large number of residents of St. John's and other parts of Newfoundland and Labrador who are opposed to the decision to close the marine rescue coordination centre in St. John's. They are concerned that the government needs to understand and acknowledge that the closure of the centre will mean the service will suffer and lives will be put at risk.

As I was looking through the list of names, I noted that one of the petitioners was actually a survivor of a marine rescue at sea and also appeared before the defence committee when it visited St. John's last year.

This search and rescue centre in St. John's is responsible for 900,000 square kilometres of ocean and 28,000 kilometres of coastline, and that is just in the Newfoundland and Labrador region. This is a big and important country and we need to protect our citizens. These rescue coordinators have local knowledge of the coastlines, of the people involved and of the dialect and language that has been spoken. It is very important that this rescue centre be kept open. The petitioners so ask this honourable House.

[Search and Rescue, March 12th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, while the Conservatives are spinning their wheels on the F-35, too little is being done about search and rescue. It is three years to the day since the terrible helicopter crash that killed 17 people in the Newfoundland offshore. We know the dangers but the government still does not get it on search and rescue. It has delayed the purchase of search and rescue planes yet again. There is no progress on response times, we have inadequate search and rescue in the north and not enough helicopters to get the job done.

When will the Conservatives finally make search and rescue a real priority in the country?

[National Defence, March 9th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Minister of National Defence announced changes to the Canadian Forces protocol when communicating with ground search and rescue operations as a result of the tragic loss of Burton Winters in Labrador.

Clearly this is some acknowledgement that problems exist in Canada's search and rescue system. As his grandmother wrote in a letter to the Prime Minister, “Burton has sadly become a poster boy of just how inadequate emergency services are within our coastal Labrador communities”.

Will the minister honour the memory of Burton Winters and call a full and independent inquiry into this incident?

[Safe Streets and Communities Act, March 9th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is from the riding of Pontiac. I could reflect on the name of his riding, the name of a great aboriginal person. It is reflected in the name of the member's riding and in our country.

I hear what the member is saying about how the Algonquins deal with accountability within their community. That is a tradition that ought to be respected, not only because it is a tradition and a solution that comes from the aboriginal community itself, but also because it is one that is more likely to work.

Let us assume that an aboriginal young person has committed a crime and the Criminal Code says that the crime deserves a certain amount of time in jail. The young person would be taken out of his or her community, would not have a conditional sentence, would not have a healing circle which might work for the young person, and would not be accountable to his or her own community in that the young person would be put in a jail somewhere else. I think that is wrong.

I do not think it will work. It is wrong for the reasons I have stated, but it is also wrong because I do not think it is effective and I do not think it will work.