Jean Crowder

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, October 17th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to talk about the previous government's track record on softwood lumber. The Liberals had years to implement loan guarantee agreements, and in the dying days of their very fragile government, they suddenly had an epiphany.

Although it was not me specifically who talked about Canadians bringing down the former Liberal government, I want to remind the member that the former prime minister had actually already signalled an election. An election was mere weeks away. Whether it happened in January, February or March, we were going to have an election. Canadians are the ones who determined the fate of the Liberal Party.

It is important that we also remember that we have a responsibility here to make sure that we are talking about forestry workers in this context, not old history.

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, October 17th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the New Democratic Party. We are opposing Bill C-24 vigorously. We feel that this is a bad deal for Canadians and I certainly want to talk about it being a bad deal for people from British Columbia.

I want to start by talking about a couple of things. One is how tirelessly the member for Burnaby—New Westminster has worked on this file. One of the things the member has called for is public hearings in which a committee could go out and hear from people from coast to coast to coast. I think it is a grave failing that this has not happened.

That process would have allowed industry, workers, communities and first nations to talk about the very real impact in their own communities. It would have talked about what it is like to be faced with either already lost jobs or the looming prospect of job loss.

It would have provided the committee with an opportunity to hear from municipal councils concerned about the fact that many of our smaller communities in British Columbia are heavily reliant on the forestry sector for their municipal tax base. It would have allowed the committee members to hear directly from council members and from citizens of those communities about what it feels like in their own communities to be worried about their municipal infrastructure being at risk because of the fact that their tax base is threatened.

I think it is a great loss for committee members and for the House not to get that on the ground experience from community members.

I think the other glaring omission in this piece of legislation, and on the current Conservative government's part, is the fact that there are not adequate funds to address the transition currently happening in the forestry sector. Many forestry workers have already lost their jobs. There is a very real need for education and training funds, for pension bridging, for assistance to older workers who may not be able to find employment, and for some recognition that many workers will also need assistance in relocating to other communities. We need an active transition fund in place.

There used to be a program called industrial adjustment, which worked closely with industry, labour and communities when communities were going through transitions. The federal government cut that very good program a number of years ago. There is now no mechanism to get that kind of community driven process. It is the community driven process that can talk about the problems in the community and identify the very concrete solutions that will make a difference.

The other piece that is missing is the whole issue around loan guarantees to industry. We know industry is suffering right now with the lack of certainty in the softwood lumber field. It was incumbent on the past Liberal government and certainly is on the current Conservative government to look for a loan guarantee program that would help industry over this very difficult period. Because no matter what, whether this agreement goes through or not, by the time industry gets cheques in their hands, some of these industry players will already have closed their doors. Then where will the help be for communities suffering from the transition?

There are a couple of other issues I want to touch on in today's debate. I am sure other members have quoted from the article I will mention, but I have a direct link to my own community about this. It says that the softwood deal will spur more raw log exports. It is an article written by Ben Parfitt from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. He says:

Nearly two-thirds of the 82-agreement is appendices, including one outlining which Canadian products are subject to export taxes.

It is a “dizzying” list, he says. He talks specifically about a glaring omission:

Throughout the appendix, however, one searches in vain for the word “logs”. Yet the on-again, off-again dispute with the US has always been about how provincial governments price publicly owned trees, not whether they somehow underwrote the costs of specific manufacturing processes.

Later on in the article he talks about a “flash forward”. This is really critical for my riding:

Flash forward. Despite the policy changes, the US insists with the current deal on capping our market access. And Canada and BC--to their lasting discredit--have agreed. Once the caps are exceeded, costly export taxes kick in. Except, that is, on logs. Now look at BC's coast. One company--Western Forest Products--directly controls nearly half the logs on public forestlands. It, along with other coastal companies, already has log export approvals from the province.

Now, thanks to the scrapping of provisions linking forest tenures to sawmills, we face the prospect of increased log exports should further coastal sawmills, as is widely anticipated, close. And why wouldn't they? The “reward” for processing US-bound lumber may be a 15 per cent tax when certain export or price thresholds are exceeded. The corresponding tax on logs is zero.

I have raised that issue because in my riding raw log exports have been a major, major problem for a number of years. There has been a valiant and diligent group of people called the Youbou Timberless Society, a group that sprung up as a result of the Youbou mill closing four years ago. A great number of the people from the Youbou mill never did find permanent full time employment again, which has had an incredible effect on the community of Youbou and the surrounding area of the Cowichan Valley.

One of the chief proponents behind the Youbou Timberless Society is a man by the name of Ken James. These people have been working very hard over a number of years to raise the awareness of the impact of raw log exports on our community and other communities on Vancouver Island and in British Columbia. They decided to count the number of trucks that were leaving the area with logs. They did a tally on Highway 18, between Lake Cowichan and Duncan, and tallied 157 logging trucks in 10 hours.

Over four days, from 6:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m., Youbou Timberless Society members counted slightly less than 1,000 trucks in my riding, 1,000 trucks loaded with logs. Not all of them were leaving the riding, but many of them were leaving the riding with logs to be processed somewhere else.

Where is the responsibility to our community to make sure that the resources from our community are processed closer to home, producing jobs so that people can support their families and pay taxes? As we know, people who make a good dollar actually pay taxes and are the ones who fuel our economy. They are the ones who make sure our hospitals and our schools stay open. They are the ones who make sure our roads get paved. It seems reasonable and fair that we actually look for ways to make sure that we process the resources from our proud province and from our grand country of Canada as close to home as possible.

Later on in that same article, again quoting James, statistics quoted show a corresponding rise in raw log exports from about a half a million cubic metres in the early 1990s to an annual three million cubic metres since the provincial Liberals took power in 2001. That is an outrageous increase in resources leaving our community and our province. That is a direct loss of jobs and of quality of life.

One of the other items that is omitted, really, in this softwood lumber agreement is first nations. On August 10, the First Nations Leadership Council wrote a letter about the Canada-United States softwood lumber agreement, stating:

--the new SLA [softwood lumber agreement] makes only one reference to First Nations in Article XVII anti-circumvention item 2.(f)...payments or other compensation to First Nations for the purposes of addressing or settling claims....

That is it. That is the only mention of first nations in the softwood lumber agreement.

That is an important issue in British Columbia, because of course in British Columbia, as many members of this House are well aware, there are extensive treaty negotiations under way. Some of them have been under way for decades and one can only dream that they would actually get settled in our lifetime.

The fact is that there are these treaty negotiations under way and many of them are not nearly close to being settled. The leadership council had asked, given the new relationships and transformative change accord and a number of other unresolved land questions, that there be some consideration in the softwood lumber agreement, and in discussions leading up to it, of the impact on first nations in British Columbia. Of course that was not done. There seems little opportunity at this point in time to do it.

This is one of the things that public hearings would have helped to address. It would have given first nations leadership an opportunity to appear before the standing committee to talk about the impact on their communities.

I urge this House to reject this flawed agreement. I urge this House to look for creative solutions which would ensure that our communities stay healthy and viable, that we retain the right to process our resources close to home and that we retain the say over our industry.

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, October 17th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's speech was very passionate. I know that he is a strong advocate for people who are suffering the effects of poverty.

In the context of this softwood lumber agreement, could the member for Sault Ste. Marie talk about the fact that what we see with this very bad deal is many companies forced into closure impacting not only on the mill workers but also on the workers who support those industries, all the secondary spin-offs? There are the transportation and fuel industries and then there are the tertiary industries as well, such as the restaurant and service workers.

I know that many of the communities in northern Ontario are suffering from the impacts of the spin-offs from softwood lumber. I wonder if the member could comment specifically on what he sees as the very real impact that goes out to the second and third levels from the direct workers in the forestry sector.

[Aboriginal Affairs, October 17th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about decades of neglect here.

The Assembly of First Nations said yesterday that poverty breeds hopelessness and despair and without comprehensive programs for education and language and a re-energized focus on aboriginal people, the incarceration statistics will only get worse.

Forty one per cent of people under the age of 25 are part of that prison population, a lost generation.

The government has been long on promises and short on delivery. When and how will it develop a real plan to tackle the poverty gap in aboriginal communities?

[Aboriginal Affairs, October 17th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, despite some earlier exchanges, the fact remains that far too many first nations, Métis and Inuit peoples are in Canada's prisons and real answers are needed in the House.

Aboriginal people in Canada account for 3% of our population and yet 18% are inmates. Aboriginal men account for one-fifth of the prison population and aboriginal women make up a shameful one-third of prisoners.

Now that the minister has the cold, hard facts and a list of solid recommendations, when will we get a real plan to tackle this obvious discrimination?

[Kelowna Accord Implementation Act, October 16th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand in support of Bill C-292 and the New Democrats will be supporting this private member's bill. However, it is a sad statement that we need to bring forward a private member's bill to deal with some very serious and pressing issues in first nations communities from coast to coast to coast.

Lest we think that these conditions are new ones, the conditions that are currently in place in first nations communities are a result of decades of neglect and need to be laid, not only at the doorstep of the current Conservative government but also points to a failure of the previous Liberal government to deal with these issues.

I want to talk about some statistics that the Assembly of First Nations has put forward and the fact that it has launched a “Make Poverty History: The First Nations Plan for Creating Opportunity” campaign. The conditions it is talking about have not arisen since January 2006. These conditions have accumulated over decades. I will only talk about a few of these numbers because they are depressing and a shameful legacy for this country to be talking about the kinds of conditions that exist in first nations, Inuit and Métis communities across the country.

Let us talk about children. We often talk about family values and how important children are to our country. We talk about needing to protect our children and yet in first nations communities one in four children live in poverty compared to one in six Canadian children. The rate of disabilities among first nations children is about one in eight and is almost double the rate among Canadian children, and over one-third of first nations households with children are overcrowded.

Let us talk about homes. In my riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan many homes on first nations reserves are contaminated with mould and yet we seem to have very little action that addresses the crying need in these communities to have safe, clean, affordable housing. About one in three first nations people consider their main drinking water supply unsafe to drink and 12% of first nations communities have to boil their drinking water and mould contaminates almost half of all households.

In my own community there is a band called Penelakut on Kuper Island and its water source is below a decommissioned dump. The reserve has cases of rheumatic fever and the physicians in the area say that they have not seen rheumatic fever since they were in third world countries. Some of the band members talk about turning on their taps and having brown stuff come out.

I live on Vancouver Island where we have some of the cleanest water in Canada. The Cowichan Valley says that it has the cleanest water in Canada and yet the people of Penelakut cannot access clean water on a regular basis.

Let us talk about our communities and how we rank internationally. According to the AFN “Make Poverty History”, applying the United Nations human development index would rank first nations communities 68 among 174 nations. Canada has dropped from first to eighth due in part to the housing and health conditions in first nations communities. Most first nations, 80%, have personal incomes below $30,000 per year and half of all households have total incomes below that level. When people do not have the incomes to even attempt to improve their living conditions, how can we expect people to bring themselves up out of poverty?

Much has also been made about how much money is spent on first nations people. The section entitled “Fiscal Imbalance: The Truth About Spending on First Nations” states:

Per capita spending on First Nations is half the amount for average Canadians (between $7,000-$8,000 compared to $15,000-$16,000). Spending on First Nations through core federal programs is capped annually at rates lower than inflation and population growth.

A recent Auditor General's report talked about the fact that funding only increased at 1.6% per annum whereas population increased significantly more than that.

Those were just a few statistics of the reality in first nations community and it is no different for the Inuit peoples in the north, the Métis people and the off reserve and urban aboriginals.

In any other country we would be pointing to these figures, facts, conditions and quality of life and saying that it was a shameful statement on that country. In our own country we continue to have those conditions and we ignore them daily.

The Conservatives have said that the Kelowna accord was signed on November 25 and that it was scratched out on a napkin somewhere. That is a total disrespect for the 18 months of work that went into the Kelowna agreement, 18 months of people from across the country coming together to lay out a framework and address the very serious and pressing needs in communities.

In my province of British Columbia, the premier and the then prime minister took it to heart. They saw the agreement as being something real and something that Canadians, including aboriginal peoples, wanted implemented. In fact, they signed a tripartite agreement. The first nations leadership from British Columbia, the prime minister and Premier Campbell, in good faith, signed the agreement called the transformative change accord and it was between the Government of British Columbia, the Government of Canada and the leadership council representing the first nations of British Columbia.

This agreement was done with a great deal of responsibility, fiscal, social, environmental and economic. People recognized that what happened in Kelowna was a framework that would allow people to move forward. It was a commitment on the part of the Liberal government of the day and the first nations peoples and they fully expected the future government to honour that commitment.

Recognizing that people wanted to see accountability and responsibility, the agreement laid out specific items. It laid out benchmarks for improving relationships by supporting a tripartite negotiation forum to address issues having to do with the reconciliation of aboriginal rights and titles. Numbers of treaties and increased awareness by public diversity were talked about. Benchmarks were laid out for closing the education gap and for improving housing.

Nothing in that agreement said that it was a fictional exercise in Kelowna. People expected some action but instead they got a Conservative government that rolled back the work that had been done.

The Conservatives have indicated their commitment by rolling back the Kelowna accord, by failing to invest in those key areas that first nations peoples said were critical and essential to their health and well-being and they have further demonstrated their lack of commitment by failing to look at the declaration on human rights for indigenous peoples.

I just want to go back to my own riding for one moment. The Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group is a group of six nations that has been involved in treaties and it is currently looking at the dire circumstances in many communities. Under Canada's community well-being index used to examine the well-being of Canadian communities, the six Hul’qumi’num communities score between 448th and 482nd out of 486 communities surveyed in British Columbia. They could not get much farther down the list in terms of well-being. It is a shocking statement that this continues in this day and age.

The Kelowna accord was a good first step but it failed to address land claims, treaties and specific land claims. I would urge all members of the House to support the private member's bill but I also would encourage every member of the House to push for much more fair and equitable treatment in the country.

[Petitions, October 4th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am presenting a petition signed by a number of people in my riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan who ask for annual funds to build high quality, accessible and affordable community based child care systems.

[Aboriginal Women, October 4th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, October marks Women's History Month. This year's theme is Aboriginal Women: The Journey Forward.

Bev Jacobs is a Mohawk from Six Nations and a member of the Bear Clan. She is the president of the Native Women's Association of Canada. I have met with Bev regularly since I became an MP and she inspires me with the dedication she brings to the issues affecting aboriginal women.

Today Bev Jacobs led aboriginal women and their supporters in rallies across Canada to remember their 500 missing sisters as part of the Sisters in Spirit campaign to document violence against aboriginal women.

Bev Jacobs has also been a leading voice in denouncing Canada for its poor record on the rights of aboriginal women.

This week she hosted the UN special rapporteur on human rights, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, who disapproves of Canada's plan to derail the adoption of the United Nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples.

I ask my colleagues to join me in celebrating Bev Jacobs and the journey forward for aboriginal women in this country.

[An Act to amend certain Acts in relation to DNA Identification, October 3rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to the bill before the House.

As the member for Windsor—Tecumseh pointed out earlier, there are a number of challenges with the bill. On one particular matter, I have asked a number of questions but really have not had a satisfactory answer to them at this point.

One of the things that was pointed out earlier was it appeared there was a piecemeal approach being taken to developing various justice bills right now. It seems like it is a bit of a roll of the dice, that this one sounds good to the Conservatives so they pull together some information and put it forward. Then they put another bill forward and another after that. It does appear to be a very piecemeal approach to a justice system and to a Criminal Code that need overhauling.

Part of the process for the DNA registry was that a parliamentary review would happen at the five year mark. That five year mark expired back in 2005. We are in 2006 and still no review has taken place. The previous Liberal government did not get to this review and the current government still has not announced any intention of doing so. Rather than have Bill C-18 come forward, perhaps it would have been an opportune time to have this comprehensive review in place.

We often hear members in the House talk about accountability, streamlining and efficiency. Instead of duplicating work, it would make far more sense to take this opportunity to conduct the review on the previous DNA registry, look at where the gaps might be and then look at developing legislation to address those gaps.

In this case we have the proverbial cart before the horse. We have legislation before the House that members will spend substantial amounts of time debating and then it will go on to committee. We will call witnesses, we will bring people in from all over the country and then the bill will come back before the House. At some point, we will have a review, which will then necessitate that we call witnesses, that we have the information come before a committee and so on.

The Conservative government constantly talks about streamlining and efficiency. If that is the case, it has missed a golden opportunity to do precisely that in this legislation.

Another thing that a number of members have talked about, and it is well worth repeating, is the fact that there was a previous private member's bill put forward called Lindsey' law. It would have specifically set up a separate registry for examples of DNA that were found at crime scenes, which at least would have the potential to be samples of individuals who were deceased.

I will quote from the member for Windsor—Tecumseh. He said, “We have this tragedy in this country of family members, loved ones, close friends missing that type of relationship, persons disappeared and having no way of using the DNA technology that we have and that is very useful to trace those people”. Again, this is a conversation that people have been having for a number of years. This was an opportunity to address that crying need. Many men and women have gone through the suffering of losing loved ones. It would have been an appropriate time and place to actually address that very issue.

There have been a number of other shortfalls identified in the bill. One of them is the retroactivity. Another one is the potential for constitutional challenges. Certainly some concerns were raised in 2000 about the constitutionality of the DNA registry. To date that has not been challenged, but there is potential for that to come forward. If the bill goes before committee, I encourage members take a close look at the constitutionality aspect of it.

Some members have raised some questions about how this information can be used such as whether adequate protections will be in place, or whether we can have a repeat of the very sad set of circumstances of information being released to foreign powers and it being used in ways that may not be within Canadian values or how Canadians want to see information used.

There is some general agreement that the DNA bill has some very good elements within it. It is an important tool that can be used, but we want the safeguards in place to ensure that privacy of Canadians is protected and that information is used in an appropriate way.

I take this opportunity to talk about the Law Commission. One of the members talked about the fact that it did not want to abrogate its responsibility and that it falls within the purview of the House. The Law Commission would not make decisions on behalf of the House. It would provide advice to the House and help it to develop policy. It could be an arm's length body that could look at a range of issues that the House does not always have an opportunity to examine. It is a very sad comment that the Law Commission will not be available to provide this kind of advice and guidance to the House.

When those cuts were introduced, a number of us spoke to the fact that there was no consultation or debate. The Law Commission going by the wayside is another example of no consultation, no debate or looking at the usefulness of the information provided in the past. I know a number of us have used reports from the Law Commission to inform our own debate and to help us put together opinions. It has done some very good work on issues such as same sex marriage and proportional representation. The Law Commission could have been a very valuable tool for the House in providing some advice around the necessary reforms required in the Criminal Code and other justice bills.

There are a number of issues before the House.

I want to come back to the privacy and rights under the charter. There are some concerns and questions raised around privacy and charter. With regard to one of the provisions, the member for Windsor—Tecumseh has raised this before, but it is incumbent upon me to raise it once again. This is only an example because there are several other provisions in the bill that will allow the DNA data bank to release information where the sample being examined is not a match that requires top standard. We have various standards in this regard and we obviously have provisions where there is no match at all. We have provisions where there is a match up to a full 100% and then we have gradations in between.

Although it is a valuable tool, there are concerns about how the matches are determined and how they will be used. It is very important that some of those privacy issues and highly technical issues be addressed. I am sure the committee will have a substantial number of witnesses brought forward it to ensure all of those very highly technical concerns are addressed.

There have been some examples in the past where DNA samples were taken improperly. How they were tracked and then subsequently destroyed are important issues for the privacy of people.

When we talk about Maher Arar, although this not DNA, it is an example of how information has been inappropriately used and it does not instill confidence in the Canadian public. In Mr. Arar's case information was gathered inappropriately and then used inappropriately. That very shameful piece of Canadian history has shaken people's faith in how information is gathered, how people's rights are protected, how that information gets shared with foreign governments and what happens to Canadian citizens once that information is out there. We know Mr. Arar was subject to torture. We also know the Canadian government did not move as swiftly as it could have done to protect his rights.

Although it was not DNA, the case of Mr. Arar is an example of how our Canadian government failed to protect the rights of our citizens. That raises a concern for Canadians. They want to ensure that when DNA information is gathered, it is appropriately stored and appropriately used. It is important for us to ensure that the systems we put in place to protect the rights of Canadians are well established, very transparent and clear. Canadians are certainly looking for transparency and clarity in their government. We expect this legislation to continue that transparency and clarity.

We have seen some value in the overturning of wrongful convictions, and a number of cases have been cited. It is also another example of how the DNA data bank can be a useful tool to protect the rights of citizens. We have had some high profile cases where perhaps a more effective use of a DNA data base could have ensured that people were not jailed in an unjust way and did not spend years in jail for crimes they did not commit. There is clearly a valuable tool in the bill, which is not only accessible for the criminal justice system, but for people who have been accused of crimes as well.

Overall, the bill going before committee will give people an opportunity to look at the privacy and charter issues, the storage issues and some of the possible constitutional challenges that could arise from the legislation. I would encourage the committee to look at the review process, which was supposed to be under way. That review could inform the committee and other members of the House. It also could avoid some of the duplication about which people are very concerned. It may also lead to looking at the overview of the criminal justice code that often has contradictory clauses. I believe it has been a number of years since the criminal justice code was overhauled. It would seem timely, given the number of bills coming before the House, that this critical step be undertaken.

Although we have seen the proliferation of justice bills before the House, perhaps we are not using our time here as efficiently and as effectively as we could be. We might want to look at the review as a way of dealing with the proliferation of bills before us.

A number of important points have been raised by members. I am sure the members of the justice committee have been taking careful notes.

[An Act to amend certain Acts in relation to DNA Identification, October 3rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the fact that a review is time consuming, but it does seem that we are actually duplicating work by approaching the numerous justice bills that are coming before this House and before the justice committee on a piecemeal basis.

The member for Windsor—Tecumseh also referenced the Law Commission and as we know, as a result of the Conservatives' cuts that were announced last week, the Law Commission is on the chopping block.

The Law Commission has played a very valuable role in Canada in regard to the development of policy and perhaps provided an arm's-length view that provided some advice to this House. The member had previously suggested that the Law Commission could play a valuable role in looking at the overhaul that is needed of the Criminal Code.

I wonder if the member could comment on that specific role that perhaps the Law Commission could play in this House.