Jim Maloway

[Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act, December 3rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the minister has announced that she will be putting $42 million more toward police efforts to essentially play cat and mouse with a bunch of criminals who will simply move to a different jurisdiction.

The question has been raised as to whether or not the government has looked at best practices in other jurisdictions. For example, Sweden evidently just simply blocks pornography sites, as does Germany. Other countries have other types of rules.

If we have that as an option, if we can simply block it, why do we not just stop torturing ourselves and spending all sorts of taxpayers' money chasing these people, when the odds are against our catching them in the first place because they move between sites and between countries. Why would we not simply block the sites if that option is available?

[Criminal Code, December 2nd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I want to join with the previous speakers in support of the legislation and also take the opportunity to thank former senator Grafstein for his great work, not only on this issue but on a lot of other issues, when he was in the Senate. I had the privilege of meeting him when I was elected in 2008. I certainly do wish him well in his retirement. My only regret is we could not have passed the bill while he was still here.

The fact is, as the previous speaker pointed out, this type of activity is already covered in the Criminal Code, but he is absolutely correct that once we make the move, once we take the measure of passing the bill, getting it through the House and the Senate, we will be the first country in the world to have taken this action. It is very important that we do this. While suicide bombings have been going on for many years, and I will get to that in a few minutes, they are actually increasing in numbers.

For example, the number of attacks using suicide tactics has grown from an average of fewer than five per year during the 1980s to 180 per year between 2000 and 2005 and from 81 suicide attacks in 2001 to 460 in 2005. A number of years ago, Israel seemed to be one of the favourite targets of suicide bombers, but there are many other areas of the world where these types of attacks occur. We have attacks in Kenya, Lebanon, Pakistan and Bangladesh. There has been a lot of recent activity in the former Soviet Union.

We have to come to grips with this. We cannot just ignore the problem and think that somehow it will resolve itself and go away. We can say, at this point, that there have been no attacks in Canada, but we know this will not hold forever. We can look at England in 1970. When I was hitchhiking around Europe, there was no indication of any suicide attacks or bombings until the conflict in Ireland caused all kinds of activities in England. There was the bombing of subway. I believe Lord Mountbatten was killed when his boat was blown up. This type of activity knows no political boundaries. It can move very quickly. It can happen anywhere.

On the availability of the materials, I am told that Semtex, which is a very cheap explosive and I believe manufactured in Czechoslovakia, is widely available around the world and very easy to obtain. All one has to do is have cheap explosives available and people out there selling it to these terrorist organizations, combined with the fact that we have round-the-clock media. Twenty or thirty years ago, we did not have CNN on site around the world. It does not take a lot of imagination to know that a small terrorist organization that wants to get noticed and wants to get its message out there has a willing press that it can exploit. It has cheap explosives available.

Some organizations have the financial wherewithal to help buy the materials, train the suicide bombers and take care of the families. A lot of people are involved in suicide bombing, and that is what is very good about this bill.

We are dealing with the promoters, the teachers, the inspirers of this type of activity. They are the real problem. They are the real cowards. They do not strap on the explosives and blow themselves up. They stay in the background. They are the people who recruit these poor kids, finance the families, brainwash them and convince them that they are going to become martyrs. Then they get them to blow themselves up on the basis that their families will be taken care of.

It is about time we started to look into the financing of terrorism. It has taken the experience of 9/11 to finally have the American government make a concerted effort to look at terrorism financing and to start cracking the Swiss and other banking systems that have been the holders of banking secrecy, where this illegal drug money has been laundered for many years and where terrorism money is being laundered, as well.

It has taken a long time for us to react positively to this situation. However, we are seeing some successes with the effort to crack the system of terrorist money flowing around the world. I think that will be a positive thing, too. However, in some respects it is a losing battle, because already we are seeing an expansion of this type of activity.

I did want to indicate that this is something that has not just begun recently. I went back in history to look at some of the previous instances of terrorism. We had Dutch soldiers fighting for control of Taiwan in 1661, who used gun powder to blow themselves and their opponents up rather than being taken prisoner.

However, most of the examples in history involved military people in military situations. We did not have the situations of innocent men, women and children in supermarkets and restaurants experiencing people who are civilians themselves, young people strapped with explosives, walking into a market or a restaurant and detonating a bomb, blowing themselves and everybody else up.

In my view, this is a totally different situation from all the military examples throughout history that I could cite. There were the Japanese kamikaze pilots who we all learned about in school. Once again, that was a military situation. That was soldiers of one nation fighting a war. They were paid to do their job. At the end of the day, it is an extreme measure, but they flew those bombers into the ships in a last ditch effort to save their country.

Once again, it is far and away a totally different situation than recruiting innocent people, brainwashing them and sending them out with explosives to kill more innocent people. That is an absolutely terrible situation. I do not see it getting any better over time.

When we look at the situation involving airplanes, who would have thought that the 9/11 attacks would have happened? In retrospect or hindsight, it is easy to see how this terror was done and to wonder why it was not done earlier.

Now we have a whole country, a whole world terrorized. Flyers are terrorized. We have tied ourselves up in knots, spending billions on security. At the end of the day, these terrorists have actually won. They have won something. They have managed to spread fear, and that is what their intention is.

We have taken a step here today. I applaud what the member has done. Let us just get this bill through both Houses.

[Criminal Code, December 2nd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I think the member would probably agree with me that suicide bombing is already covered under the Criminal Code. In fact, by passing this bill we will not only be establishing ourselves as a leader, the first nation in the world to specifically deal with this as a Criminal Code issue, but this should give leadership, at least on the part of Canada, to other jurisdictions in the world to perhaps look at doing the same sort of measure.

While we have not had a history of suicide bombing in this country yet, it is possibly only a matter of time before we do. We could have looked at England 20 or 30 years ago. People would have been shocked if they had realized what the future of that sort of activity was to become in England. People would not have believed it in 1970, right? We saw all the different activity we had there.

Would the member please expand on whether she believes it is a possibility that those activities could come to Canada?

[Criminal Code, December 2nd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the member is absolutely correct. In my time in politics, I have never seen a bill that has been supported unanimously by all parties in an assembly but has taken five years to get to this stage. In June, we were dealing with the issue of pardons for Karla Homolka and we managed to unanimously pass measures within a day and a half in this House that dealt with the issue.

One of the important parts of this bill is that we are attempting to actually punish the organizers, teachers and sponsors of suicide bombing operations because, in my view, they are the real cowards. They will promote it, encourage families to get involved in it and finance it, and they will build the explosives but are not willing to put on the vest and carry out the act themselves.

Could the member explain briefly how this bill would serve to get at the organizers, teachers and sponsors?

[Business of Supply, December 2nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, at the end of the day this is going to be a dead deal in terms of the pipeline being built because the tanker traffic is just too risky, based on the route we are talking about, as the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley indicated before.

In addition, the government has changed the Marine Liability Act under Bill C-7, tripling the amount for victims' compensation from $500 million to $1.5 billion. Since insurance is the grease that runs business, when the underwriters for reinsurance companies in London, England, discover how risky this tanker route really is, they are going to refuse to insure these ships.

As an example, for a number of years in Manitoba we had a problem getting ships into the port of Churchill. In that day, the premier and the cabinet had to go cap in hand to London, England to explain to the underwriters why insurance should not be denied. That is the only way we were able to get those ships through. When the underwriters find out how risky this route really is, how risky pipelines are, because pipeline accidents have been hidden over the years, the insurance industry itself will shut down this operation.

[Business of Supply, December 2nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley for explaining how complicated this issue is and how the tankers have to do 90° turns to get through the waterways that were virtually assured of having major accidents in the short run.

However, I also want to deal with the whole issue of pipelines. There have been established risks involving the pipelines over the years with numerous accidents. The usual cause is stress corrosion cracking where pipelines suddenly fail. We had a major explosion in Rapid City, Manitoba 10 or 12 years ago where it is a miracle that no one was killed.

The question really boils down to how we deal with this whole issue of pipelines that were built 30 or 40 years ago with very thin pipe in rural areas and now urban areas have developed around those areas. If those pipelines explode, we are talking about major loss of life.

Therefore, rather than looking to the future and building more of these pipelines, we should be going back and testing and replacing the old pipelines before we have a major disaster on our hands with a major loss of life.

I would like the member to answer that question.

[Petitions, December 2nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, dozens of Canadians have signed this petition calling on the government to end Canada's military 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 and, furthermore, refuse to put it to a parliamentary vote in the House.

Committing 1,000 soldiers to a training program still presents a danger to our troops and an unnecessary expense when a 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. In fact, polls show that a clear majority do not want Canada's military 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.

[Committees of the House, December 1st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Churchill and the member for Malpeque gave excellent speeches on this motion. Taxpayers are already on the hook for costs as a result of the closing of these six prison farms. Evidently the cost of replacing the milk that the prison farms produce in Ontario alone to 11 facilities is pegged at around $990,000. I assume that would be on an annual basis.

Prison farms also have a very valuable role to play in the Kingston area because there is a slaughterhouse and it is the only one between Montreal and Toronto. Many farmers in that area are concerned that they will lose the slaughterhouse facility. There are many ramifications that the government has not considered in taking on this measure, totally a wrong-headed measure and a measure that hopefully we can reverse once we get rid of the government.

[Committees of the House, December 1st, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for moving the motion.

I, too, had the privilege of visiting Rockwood prison farm back in the spring. In my opinion, that was a very successful program. In fact, the authorities were on the verge of closing it down and selling the herds and land. The member is absolutely 100% correct that this is a wrong-headed move on the part of the government.

How does he propose to turn back the clock on this? Once the land and the herds have been sold, how do we resurrect the program?

[National Hunting, Trapping and Fishing Heritage Day Act, November 30th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, that was a very silly comment, because the fact of the matter is that all of this has to do with the subject at hand.

I spoke to the member for Northumberland—Quinte West when the bill was at second reading, about the state of tourist camps and the hunting industry in this country, and I think he would be the first to remind the member for Avalon that we are trying to improve the product. We are trying to improve the hunting industry in this country. While we cannot have a direct effect on the strong dollar, we certainly can try to convince governments to reduce passport fees, for example, to encourage more cross-border tourism.

I want to deal with a number of other issues, but for the people who complained about hunters not being able to manage and conserve animals, we only have to look at the slaughter of the buffalo in the late 1800s. For many centuries, the buffalo provided the essentials of life for prairie natives. The fur and hides were made into clothing and shelter and the meat was a main source of food.

The tribes lived largely a nomadic life while following the herds across the Prairies, and at one time there were as many as 50 million buffalo on the North American plains. Even in the early 1870s, there were herds so vast that it took several days to pass them.

After that, the demand for buffalo hides surged when a tanning method was developed that allowed the soft hide to be made into tougher, more desirable leather. In addition to that, there was advancement with the repeating rifle, allowing hunters to kill buffalo in large numbers.

Following that, there was a mass slaughter of the buffalo population in the United States. By the end of the 1870s, millions of buffalo had been slaughtered for sport and profit. Killing buffalo had even become a pastime for sportsmen from Britain who travelled to the plains to take part in the hunt, not unlike what transpires today with people going to Africa to be involved in safaris.

In Canada, fur traders, plains natives and hunters helped slaughter about four million buffalo. When Canadian settlers started farming, the first cash crop for some were buffalo bones, sold by the ton for fertilizer. One would think that with that use of the resource, it could never be restored. The fact of the matter is it is positive testimony to the human experience that the buffalo population has been brought back. That is actually a very positive story that we can tell, as opposed to a very negative one of the slaughter of a whole species that could have been extinct, but we brought it back.

It has been mentioned by other members that as people have moved off farms and away from rural areas, moved to cities, they have become distant from this issue, even hostile to it. We saw that with the gun registry. People in cities are very willing to accept the gun registry, whereas people who live in rural areas, in small towns or on farms, who deal with wild animals and trapping and hunting issues, understand that—