Jean Rousseau

[Employment Insurance, December 10th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, Ms. Therrien first blew the whistle on the quotas and the government claimed that there are none. It took leaked documents to prove that there are. It is incredible.

Meanwhile, Ms. Therrien continues her courageous crusade—perhaps the minister should go out there and check on the situation—by revealing how the government has a bias against specific groups and targets them. She knows what she is talking about. She received those instructions. The Conservatives want people to believe them, even though they have been shown to be in the wrong.

Are they going to end the practice of treating entire groups of Canadians like criminals? The minister should go out into the field to see what is really happening.

[Corrections and Conditional Release Act, November 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-483 deals with an extremely delicate matter. On this side of the House, one of our main concerns is having a free society, a great place to live where neighbourhoods and streets are peaceful and safe. We are quite concerned about public safety.

This bill affects victims, the families of victims, the correctional system and conditional release under the justice system. It is a very delicate subject.

We have before us Bill C-483, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (escorted temporary absence). This bill has parameters and limits that sometimes are quite broad and other times are narrow.

We are convinced that this amendment of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act has merit. However, there are certain problems because the Conservatives are once again using a private member's bill to develop and spread their repressive ideology. Once again, rehabilitation is not a consideration.

There are certainly cases in which parole and supervision are not options. However, in some cases, people are sincere and should perhaps be supervised. They should be supervised after the first offence, however, before they commit first degree murder. These are people who may have a lengthy record, but they could be rehabilitated and reformed so that they can reintegrate into society. Many people are sincere, but are they in an environment where they are receiving the supervision they need? That is the question.

This is the fourth time in one year that we are seeing a private member's bill designed to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. These are sensitive topics. The government is the one that should have introduced a bill to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.

The system has its positives and negatives. For many years, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have made cuts to human resources, financial resources and infrastructure.

That is why we could have used more than an hour at second reading to discuss this bill in the House. It would have been worth spending more time discussing a reform of the corrections system and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.

Nevertheless, the NDP will support this bill at second reading, because we believe in the principle of having the Parole Board of Canada making the initial decision about whether a detainee should be allowed a temporary absence before being paroled.

However, it is not realistic to require the board to make all of the decisions regarding these absences, which could be granted to 2,880 detainees, to be exact. That is why I said that the Parole Board of Canada will be short of time and resources.

In reality, since the Conservative government took power, it has made some draconian budget cuts to all sectors of correctional services. Corrections officers have been repeatedly trying to update their old terms of employment, since the environment is changing. I wanted to say, “evolving”, but that is not true.

The prison system is not evolving. Serious and violent crime is on the rise, as are all sorts of other crimes. More and more people are being imprisoned for terrorist activities, and there are more and more crimes related to cyberbullying. Crimes are increasingly varied and serious and affect several segments of society.

The corrections system is in constant flux. People who work in the system should be given an environment, the financial resources and the infrastructure to be able to do their job. The same is true for the Parole Board of Canada. Clearly, it does not have the necessary resources to carry out the tasks in this bill.

The Conservatives cannot continue slashing the parole board's budget while asking it to do more. As a result of other legislation passed by the Conservatives, the backlog of pardon applications to the Parole Board of Canada has reached 20,000, and they would like to do more. I do not know how many years it would take to process 20,000 applications. Clearly, the board is not able to keep up with everything being asked of it. If this bill is not amended, it will not work, and implementing it will be impossible.

I talked about the critical importance of rehabilitation. I would like to share a story with you. It took me a while to decide whether to share this story because it is about a family I am close to that lost a loved one who was murdered by a repeat sex offender. Nobody ever took a real interest in that offender, so he ended up committing several crimes. The whole time he was in the system, he never had a chance at rehabilitation. It ended with murder.

That person did not have a chance to use the resources available in the justice system, to get therapy, to get the kind of supervision he needed to reintegrate into society. Not even once. It ended with murder. A family's loved one was murdered. For all intents and purposes, life for the victim's family is over. After something like that, people can never get back to normal. I am not talking about the victim or the prisoner; I am talking about the victim's family. After such a tragedy, family members lose their bearings and life no longer has any meaning.

However, in a modern, industrialized and prosperous society, it would have been quite easy to provide resources for rehabilitation, whether to address recidivism with regard to alcohol, drugs, spousal abuse, sexual offences or cyberbullying. Governments are not coming to grips with the situation.

Rather than coming up with bills containing more repressive measures, we must address rehabilitation and education. It would just be a matter of engaging with people on the ground before it is too late. However, here we have yet another bill that takes away decision-making authority from prison wardens. They do an exceptional job with the resources they have. They are there on the ground and they are capable of making decisions. This power is being taken away from them and given to the Parole Board of Canada, which is already overloaded.

As I said, the goal of the bill appears very noble, but it will be impossible to make it work on the ground. The resources available at the moment make that impossible.

I am asking the government to co-operate. Then, when the bill goes to committee after second reading, I am asking the government to accept the amendments, be they from the NDP or from the Liberal Party.

People who have worked on the ground have suggestions that will make the bill easier to implement, so that the society we live in can be safer for everyone.

[Respect for Communities Act, November 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to the speech by the hon. member for Pontiac. Like others before him, he talked about the environment these people need to be rehabilitated and reintegrated into our society. We marginalize these people, who are left to fend for themselves, and that is causing great havoc in our societies today. They need supervised environments to be rehabilitated. In fact, that is their first contact with society. They need a structured society, something that will give them hope. That is often their last chance.

Could my colleague elaborate on that aspect?

[Business of Supply, November 5th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, something in particular in my colleague's remarks stood out for me. Our constituents are asking serious questions, and "ethics" is the word that comes up most often because they are wondering who is going to pay for this. Once again, there will be no accountability from the Prime Minister or his office. It is absolutely unacceptable that yet another shameful scandal is unfolding, a scandal that calls into question the credibility of every elected official, at every level. However, nothing is being done by the Prime Minister's Office, which is now at the centre of this situation.

I would like my colleague to speak more about that. Our constituents are concerned and want accountability.

[Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act, November 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleague, the young member for Sherbrooke. Yes, we are working for this generation and for all future generations.

Private companies, as in the case of Lac-Mégantic, are a very good example. So far, we know that up to $60 million or $80 million will be spent on the site. However, the MM&A was insured for $25 million only. It is unbelievable. We have not finished digging and decontaminating the site.

We must demand more protection for our constituents. To do so, companies that ship such hazardous materials need to have much more extensive coverage, especially when they go through the downtown core of a number of communities across Canada.

[Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act, November 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, when a sector of economic activity is developed, all the components and all the related activity sectors must be put in place. If it is a pipeline, it will be a pipeline. However, it must always be developed in harmony with the environment—every time. If we do not consider the environment today, tomorrow there will be nothing left for future generations.

This is why the NDP will always defend the environment first. Without a sound environment, the kind of environment we need, there will be no future opportunity to develop anything in Canada or anywhere else on this planet. Everything must be done in harmony, and that means that we must work together, not separately.

[Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act, November 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I think that the member suffered from a lack of oxygen in the past few minutes, because I said specifically that we were in favour of developing natural resources, but that development had to be carried out in accordance with sound environmental practices. It must be carried out in co-operation with other groups, including groups that care about maintaining Canada’s prosperity. Our country has always been prosperous and we on this side of the House want our prosperity to continue. We must ensure that Canada continues to grow and also that there are jobs for everyone.

We will not be able to reach this goal if we destroy the social fabric. The social fabric is not just employment insurance and old-age pensions. It also involves the environment. It also involves helping the poor and our veterans.

In order to reach this goal, we need to have sound economic growth in which everyone takes part. Our unemployment rate is much higher than we think, because people are fed up with this government and they drop out of the system.

[Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act, November 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I would especially like to thank my colleagues who took part in this debate throughout the course of the day and who pointed out many times that this government is incapable of drafting simple bills. Bills can be complex but yet easy to understand. They can contain a series of measures that can be implemented so that the public feels safe about the hazardous goods being shipped across the country.

It seems challenging. As I said when I put a question to my colleague, the government has trouble disseminating real information. It often leaves the job of disclosing information to businesses and then we need to invoke the Access to Information Act. That can take weeks or months, when sometimes the information is needed immediately. In an era when information can travel at the speed of light thanks to social media or telecommunications, we must rely on procedures that can take weeks or months.

I experienced firsthand the tragedy in Lac-Mégantic and five months after the fact, we are still not sure what some of the railcars were carrying.

How then can we trust the government when it tables legislation respecting Canada’s seas and skies? How can we trust the government and feel safe? This government lacks credibility. The short title of this bill is: Safeguarding Canada’s Seas and Skies Act. This bill will enact or amend five acts that cover different subjects. Again, we are being served up a kind of minibus bill. It is not an omnibus bill, but rather a minibus bill.

Well, we have no intention of climbing aboard this Conservative minibus. We will continue to fight for Canadians who want to feel safe by knowing what materials are being transported by rail and by sea. Canadians are concerned about the environment.

It is always the same story. Members of the scientific community are muzzled at a time when the public is deeply concerned about the environment. Many Canadians from coast to coast are worried about the environment. They are asking questions. Why is the Conservative government acting this way? Why is it not concerned about the environment?

It is not that we are opposed to the development of raw materials and natural resources, far from it, but we want to make sure some will be left for the decades and centuries to come. We want future generations, my children and my children's children, to have a healthy environment, clean air, fresh drinking water and fertile land for agriculture, whether it be in the Eastern Townships, Quebec or elsewhere in Canada.

When we see bills such as this one, questions come to mind. Is this government aware of and even vaguely concerned about the environment? I wonder. My fellow citizens ask me what planet the Conservatives are living on and what they are thinking.

Earlier, my colleague from Dartmouth—Cole Harbour quoted Commander Cousteau, but I could also cite Hubert Reeves and Albert Jacquard. In the 1980s, they raised environmental concerns based on the type of capitalism they were already seeing at the time. They said that the greatest threat was focusing on this damned economic growth regardless of its collateral effects.

The aim was always greater productivity regardless of the collateral effects of economic growth and productivity growth, always staggering and without concern for the environment. The more we consume, the more we keep on consuming.

Yes, in the 21^st century, we must still rely on fossil matter and fossil fuels, on development of the oil sands, development of shale gas and various other forms of fossil fuels. Development is one thing, and we can already see the Conservatives are not very concerned about the environment when it comes to developing certain sites. We want to consume more and we want more growth. That is all well and good, but we need more vehicles in order to do that. More hazardous materials are travelling on our railways, on the railway lines and highways.

Supertankers are starting to navigate our great St. Lawrence River, historically one of the most beautiful on the planet. They contain up to two million barrels of oil. A spill from one of them and we would completely forget the Exxon Valdez, whose impact on the biodiversity and drinking water of the Alaska coastline is still being felt 25 years later. It is incredible to think that we can develop raw materials and transport them anywhere without any concern for public safety, the safety of Canadians across the country.

Climate change is obvious. With respect to the airline industry, the insurance industry is the one that would like to dictate how "war risk" incidents are redefined. In agriculture, some insurance companies are already reluctant to see those kinds of crops in certain areas of the country since it is clear that the sector is at risk because of climate change. Unbelievable. It is sad to hear that. It is sad to realize the truth of that considering that we are a democratic institution that should discuss the real issues, like the environment, and yes, natural resource development.

In fact, that is currently the engine and lever in our economy. The NDP is very proud, just like many workers, the hundreds of thousands of workers in these industries and industries that depend on those large businesses. However, we must be mindful of our everyday actions and of the regulations we put in place because we are talking about our land, our drinking water supply and our air.

Back in the 1970s, we were trying to fight acid rain here because the automobile industry parked it in our driveway. We spent over 20 years fighting acid rain, and we were successful. In the past 10 years, the trend has reversed. However, under Liberal and Conservative rule, scientists and anyone who denounces these things have been muzzled. The government has even said that people who care about the environment, activists, are terrorists. I cannot believe people say that. It is unbelievable that people who want to protect their land, their seas, the sky and the air we breathe are treated like terrorists. It is as if some of the hon. members across the way are sometimes not getting enough oxygen.

It gives me great pleasure to do my work here. I understand that it is now time for me to answer my colleagues' questions.

[Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act, November 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my colleague.

How is it that the government is tabling bills like this one, bills that contain many often disparate components, when at the same time it has trouble disseminating information? We have just been discussing materials that are being transported without our really knowing their exact nature. How can we trust a government that refuses to disseminate information and that brings in seemingly disparate measures? How can we feel safe when all of these materials are being transported by land, sea or air?

[Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act, November 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, congratulations to the hon. member for her excellent remarks and for showing the mindset of the Conservative government. The government is drafting bills without considering the other bills that are in progress. In other words, the government is not able to see how its actions fit in the big picture. Of course, the research centre the government is trying to close in Quebec City would be useful for scientists in other fields, including the safety of oil tankers in the St. Lawrence River.

Could my colleague explain why this Conservative government is not looking at the big picture? It is coming up with bills left, right and centre, with the sole purpose of catering to the elite and to the business community.