Jim Maloway

[Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, October 29th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, this bill has been a long time in the works.

Members have spoken about the old legislation being around for 40 years. As usual, we seem to be behind the United States in this kind of development.

The hon. member would be aware that the government was opposed to a comprehensive system for labelling consumer products containing hazardous materials. It seems to me that this is something we should certainly have. For example, there are a lot of hazardous materials and products out there, unsafe electrical cords and so on that the public should know about. The government said that this would be too expensive and cumbersome to try to implement. There was no consensus to develop an alternative.

The question is whether the hon. member agrees that labelling, which the government did not deal with, is an important point. Another area that was left out is counterfeit products, which is a huge developing area. Still another is cigarettes. The cancer society has made presentations, but cigarettes were left out.

The question, then, is whether the hon. member thinks the bill is as good as it should be, given that the government left out what I think are three important product areas.

[Petitions, October 29th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, my petition calls on the Canadian government to negotiate with the United States government to reduce the United States and Canadian passport fees. The number of American tourists visiting Canada is at its lowest level since 1972. It has fallen by five million visits in the last seven years alone, from 16 million in 2002 to only 11 million in 2009. Passport fees for an American family of four can be as high as more than $500 U.S. While 50% of Canadians have passports, only 25% of Americans do.

At the recent Midwest Legislative Conference of the Council of State Governments, attended by myself and over 500 elected representatives from 11 border states and three provinces, the following resolution was passed unanimously, which reads:

RESOLVED, that [the Conference] calls on President Barack Obama and [the Canadian Prime Minister] to immediately examine a reduced fee for passports to facilitate cross-border tourism; and be it further

RESOLVED, that [the Conference] encourage the governments to examine the idea of a limited-time two-for-one passport renewal or new application;

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 a mutual reduction in passport fees to facilitate tourism, and finally, promote a limited-time, two-for-one passport renewal or new application fee on a mutual basis with the United States.

[Alzheimer's Disease, October 28th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the motion put forward by the member for Edmonton—Leduc. Motion No. 574 states:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should continue to address the rising financial and human costs of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia in Canada by ensuring, now and in the future, that its programs and policy development related to this issue continue to recognize: (a) the right to dignity and compassion of patients stricken by such conditions; (b) the emotional and psychological toll on family members and friends of patients afflicted by such conditions; (c) the increasing costs imposed on public health systems by the treatment of such conditions; and (d) the role played by such civil organizations as the Alzheimer Society of Canada and Neurological Health Charities Canada in furthering our understanding of the impacts of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.

It is important for members of the House to debate motions such as this one given that this is an important disease and one that is increasing in severity as the population ages. Members have suggested a number of interesting solutions in terms of dealing with the rising cost of medications, help for the families of people with Alzheimer's, and the whole issue of whether tax credits could be improved.

I have constituents in my riding who have Alzheimer's disease. In one specific case the husband has the disease. The wife always tells me how important it is for Manitoba home care to provide her with service once a week. It allows her to go out to do the shopping and the other things she has to do. She is tied to her husband the rest of the week because she never knows whether he will wander away when she is not around. This situation has put her under a lot of stress.

On January 4 of this year the Alzheimer Society of Ontario produced a report, to which other members have made reference in various debates in the House. The suggestion is that the rising tide of dementia is projected to cost Canadians $872 billion over the next 30 years. Clearly this is a problem that is ballooning and is something that we have to deal with as best we can.

The report released by the Alzheimer Society to mark Alzheimer's Awareness Month revealed alarming new statistics about the projected economic and social costs of dementia in Canada. The report, “Rising Tide: The Impact of Dementia on Canadian Society” says that if nothing changes, the prevalence of dementia will more than double in 30 years with the cost increasing tenfold. It goes on to say that today in Canada every five minutes someone develops dementia. In 30 years it will be one new case every two minutes.

The principal spokesman said:

If nothing changes, this sharp increase in the number of people living with dementia will mean that by 2038, the total costs associated with dementia will reach $153 billion a year. This amounts to a massive cumulative total of $872 billion over this 30-year period.

Recognizing the urgent need to start turning the tide of dementia, the new report also outlines a series of potential interventions that could help minimize the impact of the disease. For example, one of the four proposed interventions looks at the benefits of delaying the onset of dementia in people by just two years, with a potential cost savings of $219 billion over the 30-year period.

Hope lies in making changes today that will lessen dementia's crippling effect on Canadian families, the health care system and the economy. More than ever research is a critical contributor to this change.

I want to say that the member for Etobicoke North has made several speeches on this health issue and others. Her speech is well worth reading. I heard her tonight actually quote herself which is not something we normally recommend but in her case I accept it. She made such a good speech initially that it bears repeating. Every point in it is very important to the debate that we are involved in here.

The spokesman for the Alzheimer Society also said:

With an increased investment in research, we will learn more about prevention, possibly even discover a treatment to delay the onset of the disease and reduce its impact substantially.

Other findings from “Rising Tide” include pressure on the health care system. In 2008 more than 103,700 people developed dementia and by 2038, 257,000 new cases per year are expected. That will mean extreme pressure on families. The hours of care delivered by unpaid family members are expected to more than triple, increasing from 231 million hours in 2008 to 756 million hours by 2038.

I mentioned my friend in Winnipeg. There are dozens of people in this situation who are tied to their homes and their loved ones and are unable to get away. That is why we have to look at home care programs. Manitoba has one of the first home care programs in the country and it is an excellent program. I do not know what the situation is with respect to home care across the country.

I want to mention the whole issue of changing the way doctors are compensated. In the 1970s the Manitoba health minister in the Schreyer government looked at Minneapolis, Minnesota which had a different system of paying doctors. It was known as the “capitation system”, where there were a number of doctors in a given area and all of the patients from that area had to go to those doctors. People lost their choice in doctors but certain doctors would take care of an area.

As an improvement over that, in Europe doctors are paid on a similar basis to that type of capitation system. They are paid for the outcomes. Smoking is the easiest example to understand. If the doctor is able to get a patient to quit smoking, then he or she is paid on that basis.

On this basis the doctor would look at the symptoms for Alzheimer's for example and realize that if someone is around 65 years of age and the doctor can develop an exercise program to get that person to lead a better lifestyle, then the doctor's compensation would be based on that as opposed to the system that we currently have which I think we can all agree needs some improvement. Even doctors themselves would probably agree that it is time to take a look at a better system.

The member indicates that it is a provincial matter. Not exactly. The federal government has a large role to play in the area of health care. It is incumbent upon the federal government to get the provinces together and start discussing this whole issue about how we can better change the compensation system for the doctors so that they have a system where they can anticipate what may be wrong with the patient and develop a lifestyle change.

For example, if a person has diabetes, we know that diet is a big part of the rehabilitation program, but how many doctors actually put people on a proper diet and then follow up on it? From the patients I know who have diabetes, the doctor simply prescribes a bunch of medication and lets the person continue eating cheeseburgers and hamburgers which the person should not be eating. There is not that interest nor the incentive for the doctor to take care of the entire situation.

[Alzheimer's Disease, October 28th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the Alzheimer's Society suggests a number of ways to slow the number of cases of Alzheimer's and dementia, and one of them is to promote healthier lifestyles. including encouraging people over 65 to increase their physical activity levels.

I wonder if we should be looking at the English medical system to look at the way it pays doctors over there. It pays doctors based on the doctors getting patients to live better lifestyles. For example, if a doctor gets a patient to stop smoking for example, he gets paid on that basis for that outcome.

In this case, maybe we should pay doctors for getting people on healthier lifestyles and, if they get results, it should help us out.

[Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act, October 28th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, we are listening to Canadians.

Canadians told us they wanted to make this minority government work. The minority government surely is not listening to what Canadians want.

We have agreed with all the parties in this House to pass Bill C-11, which cleans up the problems in the immigration system right now. We have already indicated that we want to do something about smugglers, and there are already life sentences under current laws for smugglers.

Let us get the government out there and catch the smugglers first and give them their life sentences. We are right behind any initiative to do that.

[Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act, October 28th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, clearly the Auditor General has a unique way of investigating and determining what is or is not going on in government departments. None of those observations would surprise me in the least.

We had a system that was broken under the Liberals and was not appreciably improved under the Conservatives until the last little while when the current minister was able to get all the parties in this Parliament together and come up with a big success. Trying to get four parties in this House to agree on anything is almost impossible, but he did the impossible. He got everybody together. Everybody here was reasonably happy.

I listened to all the self-congratulatory messages here in June and I was really impressed. I thought it was too bad that we could not do this again. This is what we did collectively in this House through the auspices of Bill C-11.

I do not know why we do not just leave it there and work on this smuggling issue separately through law enforcement and the procedures currently in place. Again, we have life sentences for smugglers.

[Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act, October 28th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I invite the member to read the minister's speech on this subject. I thought I heard him say that they knew where the smugglers were or who the smugglers were, that there were three or four organized criminal gangs from Sri Lanka that had been involved in the drug trade and in arms deals and whatnot in the past, and now that the war has more or less come to and end they have decided to embark on human smuggling. So if they know who the people are, it should be a simple matter of having our police forces, and so on, talk to the foreign governments and try to do something about it from that end.

Clearly, the problem is over there. That is where the boats are being bought. That is where the boats are. They are recruiting the people over there. The money is being flushed through bank accounts in these foreign countries. So it is incumbent upon these countries to help us catch these smugglers. The government itself has indicated that it is going to appoint a special adviser on human smuggling and it is going to increase the presence overseas through operational activities, diplomatic outreach, partnership with other affected nations, and all those other great things that would catch these smugglers. So I invite them to get out there and catch them.

In the meantime, we have Bill C-11, which we put together through a co-operation of all of the parties in this House. Let us get it implemented and let us deal with the backlog in the immigration system.

[Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act, October 28th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that the member is very excited about his bill. The fact of the matter is that we are certainly determined to track down the smugglers. That is the real problem here. However, we do not believe that we should be punishing the migrants in the process. Let us put whatever efforts we can into tracking down these smugglers.

I already indicated several times that we have the availability of life sentences under the current legislation. Let us put some effort into finding the smugglers.

I have given the government credit. It has made some initiatives to deal with foreign governments and it has appointed a special adviser on human smuggling and illegal migration. Let us give this system some time. The problem did not just develop yesterday.

Australia has been dealing with this problem for several years. It has had detention systems and they do not work. The migrants keep coming.

The government, once again, wants to do something that does not work.

[Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act, October 28th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-49 today.

During question period today, the member for Winnipeg South Centre asked a question about the nominee program in Manitoba. This has been a very successful program, developed under the auspices of the NDP under former premier Gary Doer's leadership in 1999. In fact, the program became so successful that the province of Nova Scotia approached Manitoba to study how to replicate it. I hope and believe Nova Scotia has a similarly successful program at this time.

In answering the question, the minister made the point that Manitoba's population represented 10% of the population of Canada and that Manitoba received 30% of the nominees under the program. He pointed out that while the Liberals were in power, Manitoba only received 2,000 nominees per year. Under the Conservatives, it gets 10,000 per year. We like to think that the 10,000 we get in Manitoba each year is a result of the initiatives of the Gary Doer NDP government, which proved to be so successful.

I also want to point out that the Minister of Immigration has provided some of the only true leadership we have seen from his government in the last five years. In June he brought all parties in Parliament onside with an agreement on Bill C-11 to take care of the mess in the immigration system, which had developed over the years.

The argument rages still in the House as to whether the mess was in fact left by the Liberals or created by the Conservatives. The NDP has stayed out of that fight. They can continue to fight it out as to who is ultimately responsible, but the fact is it is a mess. As I said, the minister was able to get all party agreement in June to make big improvements to the immigration system.

What the minister did is something the government should replicate. There is a schizophrenia in the government. It seems to be incapable of going back to the last long period of minority government, the Lester B. Pearson years in the sixties, when we got a new flag, we amalgamated the armed forces, we brought in medicare and a lot of other things. The Conservatives have literally wasted five full years trying to fight its way through Parliament with no real effect.

However, there is one good example with the minister getting all parties together and getting a new immigration act in place. The government should be doing more of that. Instead, what has it done? The Conservatives have done some polling, and we are very clear about that. They keep mentioning the 65% public support for Bill C-49.

The bill is not being promoted by the Minister of Immigration. It is being promoted by the Minister of Public Safety. Once again, the Minister of Public Safety trumps the Minister of Immigration and the polling of the Conservative Party. The appeal to public sentiment is the overriding concern behind this bill.

We feel we should give some time for Bill C-11 to be implemented in the country. It was only passed in June. It has not had time to do what it has been designed to do. Now the government is trying to amend the bill before it even has its current legislation in place.

It is interesting to note that Bill C-49 has 12 clauses that deal with refugees. Only five clauses actually deal with smugglers. I think all parties in the House agree that human smuggling is a very bad thing and that it is a criminal enterprise. In fact, the government points out that it is a criminal enterprise that spans the globe, that human smugglers facilitate for a profit individuals entering Canada illegally. The figure of $50,000 is being mentioned.

Our party is totally opposed to this. We think the government should take measures to root out these smugglers. We know the smugglers are not here. The smugglers are in foreign jurisdictions. Therefore, the government has to bring in legislation to deal directly with an effort to get at these people in other countries. It has indicated it is dealing with that issue through diplomatic means and policing means. It is going to have to deal with the police in Thailand, in Southeast Asia and other countries around the world.

It has also been pointed out that there already is a life sentence under the immigration laws of the country for smugglers. Therefore, what is this all about? Why is the government bringing in a new bill with a graduated penalty system and minimum sentences when we already have a life sentence for people involved in this kind of activity, if they are caught.

By charging large sums of money for transportation, human smugglers have been making a lucrative business out of facilitating illegal migration around the world, often counselling smuggled persons to claim asylum in the country in which they are smuggled. Human smuggling can take place in many forms, including by boat.

Once again, as has been pointed out by many members, the government is making a separation as to how people arrive in Canada. It will deal with people who arrive by boat differently than people who arrive by airplane.

In terms of human smuggling undermining Canada's security, large scale arrivals make it difficult to properly investigate whether those who arrive, including the smugglers themselves, could pose a risk to Canada on the basis of either criminality or national security. The public security minister made pronouncements about criminals and terrorists, speaking about the recent arrival of the boat, stirring up public sentiment against them. The people who are brought in will be investigated. That is the whole idea behind what we are doing right now.

In addition, the government wants to give the Minister of Public Safety more powers. I do not know if that is such a good idea. In the short term perhaps with the current situation it might seem like the popular thing to do, because 65% of the people are against acceptance of the people on these boats. However, if we were to take it two or three years down the line and a boat load of people from another country showed up, perhaps the polling then would show that 65% were in favour of the people staying. What is the minister going to do? What is the point of having an immigration department in the first place if the minister is going to be overriding it and making decisions along the way? That measure may be wise in the short run, but may not be wise in the long run.

The government also wants to make it easier to prosecute human smugglers, but it has to catch them in the first place and they have to be caught overseas. Foreign governments have to be involved in the process as well.

I believe the government already knows who these smugglers are. The minister has indicated there are three or four groups at least in Sri Lanka that were previously involved in other criminal activities. These groups have now transferred their activities over to human smuggling. Half the battle is knowing who the enemy is.

The bottom line is we should be enforcing our existing laws as opposed to dreaming up new laws to become more popular with the public.

The government also wants to introduce mandatory minimum prison sentences on convicted smugglers. It wants to hold the owners and operators of the ships to account for the use of their ships in human smuggling operations.

The government is ensuring the safety and security of our streets and communities by establishing, and this is a good one, the mandatory detention of participants for up to a year or until a positive decision by the Immigration and Refugee Board, whichever comes sooner, in order to allow for the determination of the identity, admissibility and illegal activity of a participant.

We have some experience with Australia. My colleague from B.C. indicated earlier that he thought there were probably 20,000 refugees in the Australian system. I recognize it is a little warmer in Australia than here, but where will Australia put these people?

The government has announced that it will spend $9 billion on new prisons in the country. Will the government use these prisons as detention centres? Is it the government's intention to put people into detention centres? That is one of the initiatives in the bill.

The government hopes to reduce the attraction of coming to Canada by way of illegal human smuggling by doing several other things. It is going to prevent those who come to Canada from applying for permanent resident status for a period of five years.

I may be running out of time quicker than I anticipated so I do not know if I will have time to get to all the studies that have been done.

Studies done in England show that most immigrants do not have a clue of the rules of the country to which they go. They go to that country regardless of the rules. Are we expecting smugglers to start reading the new rules? What is the government going to do? Is it going to send the smugglers a list of the new rules and all the regulations that are promulgated through the bill?

The government is going to hold a refugee back from permanent resident status for a period of five years should that individual successfully obtain refugee status. The individual will be prevented from sponsoring family members for five years. I will have a lot to say about that at a later point.

The government is trying to reduce the attraction of coming to Canada by way of illegal human smuggling operations by ensuring the health benefits participants receive are not more generous than those received by the Canadian public.

The government is enhancing the ability to terminate the protected person status of those who return to their country of origin for a vacation or demonstrate in other ways that they are not in legitimate need of Canadian protection.

Another point raised by other speakers was whether the bill would survive a charter challenge.

The government is planning to detect and deter human smuggling overseas through the appointment of a special adviser on human smuggling and illegal migration. That may be a good idea. I do not know who that will be and what he or she might do, but hopefully there will be a way of monitoring or getting some sort of report from this individual as to progress being made. We would not want to add onto a bureaucracy that produces very little results.

In terms of increasing the presence overseas through operational activities, diplomatic outreach, partnership with other affected nations and engagement with multilateral bodies, anything that can track down the smugglers and put them in jail is probably a good idea. I indicated that we already have life sentences for smugglers. If we apply life sentences and put them in jail, the House will have our full agreement on that, but the preponderance of the bill actually deals with the migrants themselves and that is what the government is looking at.

Bill C-49 is called the “preventing human smugglers from abusing Canada's immigration system act”, but it is really basically an act to attack and punish refugees. As I indicated before, we would rather attack the criminals, the traffickers, the smugglers, and not the victims. The bill will concentrate absolute power in the hands of the minister to decide which refugees will be subject to these measures, with no clear definition of irregular arrival. It can apply to any group of refugees, immigrants or visitors.

Also, as I have indicated, Parliament already approved a strong and balanced refugee law a few months ago. The Conservatives should basically concentrate on enforcing Bill C-11, the law we have right now, and allow genuine refugees to stay and deport the bogus ones as quickly as possible. We are fully in agreement with that. Once again, we were part of the development group behind Bill C-11 in the first place.

We have also long called for the refugee determination process to be sped up, because it has taken too long in the past, and increased RCMP resources and secure immigration status of trafficked and smuggled victims so that they can testify against the real criminals. That was a concern that was indicated as well, that even if we do catch the smugglers, what are the realistic chances that witnesses would be willing to testify against them? We need to make sure that we have RCMP resources and proper safeguards to make sure that when we do catch these people, the witnesses are able to testify against them to put them away for those long sentences.

Our members have indicated that the bill will hurt legitimate refugees and those people who help them. It will prevent refugees from bringing their spouses and children to Canada for at least seven years, and women and children will be detained for at least one year, repeating the previous sad history of punishing and interning refugees and their children.

Bill C-49 is basically very deeply unfair to refugees because it fails to honour obligations under Canadian and international law, and other speakers have mentioned that. It deprives individual cases from the independent review that justice requires. It will involve huge costs and unnecessary detention. We talked about the $9 billion in prisons that the government will have sprouting up across the country over the next little while. It will do nothing to prevent human smuggling. More laws will not catch the smugglers who are overseas. Mandatory minimum sentences will not deter them.

Under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, smuggling is already punishable by life imprisonment and mandatory minimums have been shown not to work as deterrents. If we already have the possibility of life imprisonment, then how much further do we want to go in this area?

I recognize that my time is up and I would be willing to answer questions from members.

[Preventing Human Smugglers From Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act, October 28th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, earlier today, I believe a government member said that about 65% of Canadians supported this legislation. Clearly the government has done polling and held focus groups on Bill C-49.

The bill would give the minister great powers that future ministers may not actually want. To that effect, what is the purpose of having an immigration system if the minister will be making all of the decisions? What happens if a ship of migrants arrives and it is populated by a group of people widely supported by the public? How will they be treated? Will they be treated in the same way as the current group of refugees are being treated? Will the government at that point take a poll and, if those refugees are supported by 65% of the population, will it somehow make a different decision and treat those refugees differently?