Jim Maloway

[Serious Time for the Most Serious Crime Act, December 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I think the jury is still out on whether they like it or not. I do not think he has done the absolute ultimate in studies on that point.

However, while he is consulting with the families of victims on this point, maybe he should ask them what they think of his idea to phase in the bill in 15 years. I am sure that will make them happy.

While he is at it, would he please give us the answer as to why the Conservative government, in 1976, started sending—

[Serious Time for the Most Serious Crime Act, December 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I hate to help the government here, but the truth of the matter is if we are to reinstate the bill and try to describe what it bill would actually do, we should call it the “eliminate the faint hope clause in 15 years”.

While we are at it, when the member stood to ask me a question, and I know he is very well informed, I thought he would at least tell me why the Conservative government of Joe Clark started sending pension cheques to Clifford Olson and other convicted criminals back in 1979. I am waiting for an answer.

[Serious Time for the Most Serious Crime Act, December 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill S-6 and the amendments that made their way through the committee in recent days. After reading the transcripts of the committee, I see that it was a fairly acrimonious environment for the members in that committee.

The government wants to make three amendments. the first one being to restore the title. Its slogan on this bill is “serious time for the most serious crime act”. I cannot say that is just peculiar to the Conservative government because I have seen that sort of sloganeering in my own province lately, in the Manitoba legislature. I guess the new trend is to somehow take a bill, attach a person's name to it and give it a good slogan that can be pushed to the public in an election campaign.

The Conservatives seem to think that dealing with crime is all about electoral success and image. However, they raise a lot of expectations when they take on challenges like this. I believe that if we were to do a poll of the public after this bill passes, the majority of the public will believe that somehow the faint hope clause has disappeared, thanks to the government. However, that is not the case at all. It will take 15 years because the law will not be retroactive. It will not apply to anybody who is convicted of murder today. It will only apply in the future. And, because it will only take effect 15 years into the sentence, a lot of us members of this House will be long gone when this legislation sees the light of day.

In committee, I sensed that the Liberals thought they could manoeuvre their way through this process by sitting out the vote and allowing the bill to pass and that, by doing that, they would not get hurt in the election as a result of what they had done, and then, in the future, if they were to form the government, they would simply revisit the whole issue and bring back the faint hope clause. That is the brain trust over there in the Liberal leadership in figuring out how to deal with this. I have seen a lot of manoeuvring before but this one has certainly used a lot of imagination to sort out.

Nevertheless, the expectations that the government has brought upon itself for this legislation and other legislation will fall short at the end of the day when the public realizes that there will be more and more stories over the years about faint hope clause applications. People are going to say, “We thought they eliminated that”. The government will then need to explain that somehow it is 15 years.

It is not only this bill that causes a lot of confusion on the part of the public. Just recently, as a result of information that Clifford Olson was collecting pension cheques in jail, the government got excited and produced a bill, obviously not checking things out too closely, to eliminate pension cheques for prisoners convicted of murder. The government did this without doing any research, obviously, because if it had researched it, it would have found that it was the Joe Clark Conservative government in 1976 that started mailing pension cheques to Clifford Olson every month.

The government needs to reflect on the confusion that will be out there in the public. The public has this image of a minister stuffing Clifford Olson's pension cheque into an envelope, licking it shut, licking the stamp and mailing it every month. While the public is having difficulties making ends meet, the government is sending these pension cheques. It was a Conservative government that brought it in. It was the Conservatives' idea in the first place.

I have asked the government many times to explain what went into the decision-making. What sort of studies did it have? What was it thinking, as the member for Winnipeg Centre asked? What could the Conservatives have possibly been thinking when, in 1976, it decided to send pension cheques to prisoners in jail? We ask the question but we get no response. Nobody over there can explain or wants to try to explain why this happened.

I want to get further into the legislation that is being dealt with here and talk about another one of the three amendments the government is attempting to deal with here.

Part of the second amendment deals with the issue that if a person convicted of murder does not make an application within the maximum time period allowed by this section, the Commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada or his designate shall immediately notify in writing a parent, child, spouse or common-law partner of the victim that is a convicted person and did not make an application.

If it is not possible to notify one of the aforementioned relatives, then a notification shall be given to another relative of the victim. The notification shall specify the next date on which the convicted person will be eligible to make an application under subsection (1).

That was there to be helpful to victims. The member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin has explained many times and has given the statistics of the number of people who are eligible. I believe he indicated it was around 900 people who are eligible under the faint hope clause, and maybe only 100 or so apply and then fewer than that actually make their way through the process.He points out, and truthfully so, that there are no re-offenders out of the process.

What we are trying to do is make things as easy as possible for the victims of crime but the government is trying to eliminate that. A government that pretends to support victims' rights is acting against something here that would be seen as supportive of victims' rights.

There was a victims' rights advocate, who the government got rid of because he did not agree with the government. He did not think it was moving far enough and fast enough on victims' rights. We have a criminal injuries compensation fund, which was brought in by the first NDP government in Canada under Ed Schreyer back in 1970-71, and it has been providing benefits to victims of crime for the last 40 years. Ontario also has such a fund but there is no fund at a federal level.

Where is the tough on crime government? Where are the Conservatives? They have been in power for five years.They say that they believe in services that help victims of crime but where is the criminal injuries compensation fund on a national basis that would be there to help victims of crime? That is the approach the government should be taking but that is not the approach it is taking. It is all about public relations.

[Serious Time for the Most Serious Crime Act, December 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member whether he thinks the government is guilty of a little bit of false advertising.

The provisions under the faint hope clause bill will not take effect for 15 years. The Conservatives will be coming into the election in a few months proclaiming that they have gotten tough on crime and they have eliminated the faint hope clause and people are going to be very disappointed when they find out it is going to be 15 years before any part of this act takes effect.

Meanwhile, month by month, every month Conservatives are putting pension cheques in envelopes, licking stamps and sending pension cheques to Clifford Olson, a process that started under the Conservative government of Joe Clark in 1979, and they have yet to explain why they are still doing it or in fact why they started mailing those cheques in the first place.

[Serious Time for the Most Serious Crime Act, December 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, is the member aware that the removal of the faint hope clause would not have any practical effect for 15 years? The Conservatives have led the public to believe that somehow they are going to be removing the faint hope clause, but the public does not understand that nothing will happen for 15 more years.

Would the member comment on whether he has discovered why the Conservative government of Joe Clark in 1979 started mailing pension cheques to murderers in prison? Has he been able to investigate that yet?

[Petitions, December 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition calls on the Canadian government to negotiate with the United States government to reduce Canadian passport fees.

The member for St. John's East explained how tourism has dropped over the last several years and how passports can be expensive. For example, it can cost $500 for an American family of four.

At a mid-west legislators conference held this summer, I was able to get a resolution passed unanimously in the Council of State Governments, consisting of 11 border states and three provinces. The resolution called on the Prime Minister and the President to examine a reduced fee for passports to facilitate cross-border tourism and it encouraged the governments to examine the idea of a limited-time, two-for-one passport renewal or a new application fee. It was further resolved that the resolution be submitted to the appropriate federal, state and provincial governments.

To be a fair process, passport fees must be reduced on both sides of the border. Therefore, the petitioners call on the government to work with the American government to examine the mutual reduction of passport fees to facilitate tourism, and secondly, to promote a limited-time, two-for-one passport renewal or new application fee on a mutual basis with the United States.

[Petitions, December 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present today.

The first is signed by dozens of Canadians to end Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. In May 2008, Parliament passed a resolution to withdraw Canadian Forces by July 2011. The Prime Minister, with the agreement of the Liberal Party, broke his oft-repeated promise to honour the parliamentary motion.

Committing 1,000 soldiers to a training mission still presents great danger to our troops and unnecessary expense when our country is faced with a $56 billion deficit. The military mission has cost Canadians more than $18 billion so far, money that could have been used to improve health care and seniors' pensions right here in Canada.

Polls show that a clear majority of Canadians do not want Canada's presence to continue after the scheduled removal date of July 2011. Therefore, the petitioners call on the Prime Minister to honour the will of Parliament and bring the troops home now.

[Airline Industry, December 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the government is driving billions of dollars away from the Canadian airline industry. In Winnipeg alone the airport authority believes more than 50,000 Manitobans a year stream across the border for cheaper flights.

A January 9, 2011 flight from Winnipeg to Los Angeles, priced at $342, is only $97 from Fargo, taxes included. The government's taxes, the highest in the world, account for up to 70% of the total fare. It is hurting Canadian airlines, taking $3 billion more every year than it puts in.

Why will the government not help the Canadian aviation industry compete?

[Canada Post Corporation Act, December 9th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-509 and I congratulate the member for sticking with the effort that he has put into it. He is nearly at the five-year mark now in trying to get this bill through.

I find it particularly interesting that we have a bill here that is supported by all members of the House and it takes five years to get it through the House, and it is not even there yet. In the next seven minutes we will be finishing the first hour of debate on third reading and, because of the government's policy in making certain that we proceed into the second hour, this bill will not be up again, unless it is traded up, until March.

We all know that by March we could be involved in another election. I know that when the House is prorogued private member's bills are reinstated when the government starts up again, but I believe elections do kill all bills. That is my understanding, contrary to what I read in the notes.

I find it amazing that we had all parties supporting the bill and after five years, although this bill could have made it through today, it will now be March before it makes it through, and then it has to go to the Senate, and hopefully no election will occur.

I am confident that we will be back here debating this bill again. I wish that were not the case, but certainly it is.

In reviewing some of the background on this bill I looked to the member for Brandon—Souris, whom I have known for a long time. He is a hard-working member of Parliament. Part of his backgrounder from 2009 indicates that since 1939 libraries in Canada have been able to exchange books at a reduced postal rate, historically known as the “library book rate”, originally funded directly by the Government of Canada. In 1997, a ruling by the World Trade Organization required that the cost of the program be incurred by Canada Post.

I was not aware of that. I have spoken on this bill before and I had read all of the background information, but I was not aware that it was a 1997 ruling by the World Trade Organization that required the costs to be incurred by Canada Post.

I was very pleased to hear the government member say this evening that Canada Post has agreed to continue the reduced rates for yet another year.

I do know that the member has had a difficult time in attempting to ascertain the cost of this initiative. The fact of the matter is that when we do produce legislation before the House one of the things we do, whether we are in government or opposition, is attempt to try to quantify the cost to the treasury so that we can understand the extent of the issue.

The member has indicated this evening that we are looking at a potential $5 million cost item here. In previous discussion on the matter, we looked at the Ottawa Public Library, for example, where the postage increases would be in the neighbourhood of $70,000. We did the math and multiplied that by the 2,000 libraries across the country. Of course, that would be a very large increase for these libraries to absorb.

One of the other positives that the member has added into the bill is the provision that other types of media would be covered. I recognize that today we are dealing with many types of media other than just books: CDs, CD-ROMs, DVDs. These types of materials should weigh a lot less than transferring actual books from library to library. This type of activity should lower the cost to the libraries over time.

The abilities that the libraries will have once they are connected with high speed Internet is another element that may have been discussed in the debates, although when I reread all of the Hansard at the second reading debate, I did not see any talk of it. We have seen a program over the last few years, starting with the previous Liberal government, to tie in municipalities, hospitals and libraries as well into high speed Internet connections so that the material can be transferred that way.

In the future I would think that books that are not actually scanned in to the Internet already will be put on line, certainly books in regional and rural libraries over time. That will be one way to be able to access material right across the country and across the world.

However, that day is not here yet. We know, for example, that in the member's own riding of Brandon—Souris, the Brandon hospital has the capability of putting X-rays on disks and sending them to Winnipeg, because the high speed connections are there. At least that was the case the last time I toured it, which was a year or two ago.

However, to deliver material to the hospital in Russell, I believe it was, the material had to be taken off, put on a diskette, taken to the bus depot and sent off to the Souris hospital so that the doctors could then decipher the material and read it. However sooner or later a high speed connection will be made and the Internet will be connected through to that hospital in that particular town, and the material will be sent directly through those connections. At that stage, there will be less and less reliance on Canada Post for transferring materials between libraries.

This is something that is very important. It really gets down to the history of the country and the connection with our rural roots. It is not long ago—

[Canada Post Corporation Act, December 9th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the member for sticking with this bill.

Last time I spoke to him about this issue, the member indicated that the Ontario regional library might be looking at an increase of perhaps $70,000. If we multiple this by the 2,000 libraries across the country, we would be looking a very huge increase.

Fundamentally, the member's problem was that he is unable to get information from Canada Post. I was hoping to speak with him before we started the debate tonight.

The question I have for the member is: Does he have any new information that he can give us as to the potential scope of the cost of this measure?