Jim Maloway

[Strengthening Aviation Security Act, October 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-42.

I do not think we can trace this one back a number of years with different bill numbers because this bill was introduced on June 17, the last day of the spring sitting, as the member for Eglinton—Lawrence said.

To wit, the new transport critic for the opposition, the member for Markham—Unionville, made his presentation this morning. He said that he had only seen this bill two days ago. I believe he said he thought it looked okay and was good enough to be sent to committee where we would have to study it and improve it. Then the Bloc critic, who I believe is also new to the transport committee, also made a speech. He seemed to think the bill was ready for committee, as well.

Now after question period we have a new round of speakers. We had two very good speeches from members of the official opposition who seemed to be on the other side of the bill.

Given that we only have another 45 minutes of debate today and given that all the parties will be having their caucus meetings tomorrow, it might be a good idea for members of the Liberal Party to revisit their position on this bill. If the critic is seemingly in favour of the bill and two other learned speakers for the Liberal Party are against it, clearly they have an issue to resolve within their caucus.

I would also say that the government might take heed here and look at taking a second look at this bill before it is defeated. Perhaps they could withdraw it and come back with a better solution.

Earlier today I asked the parliamentary secretary whether or not any efforts had been made in the area of reciprocity. On a world basis we only have to look at the drama which has been unfolding over the last week in the fight with the United Arab Emirates. The United Arab Emirates have said that it is going to kick Camp Mirage, our staging base, out of the country in the next 30 days or so because Canada will not let Emirates airlines land any more flights in Toronto than are landing now.

Clearly there is a linkage in this discussion between Canada and the United Arab Emirates. This issue has now become public. There is a tie-in between the base and whether the United Arab Emirates is allowed to fly more flights to Canada. Let us not kid ourselves, every international issue has similar aspects to it. This issue would be no different.

The member for Western Arctic, our long-time critic on transport, told me this morning that roughly 2,000 flights originating in the United States fly over Canada per day, in Canadian airspace. If we multiply that number by the average number of passengers per plane, that is a lot of people on flights in Canadian airspace every day, going to Europe and other places around the world. In contrast, the number of Canadian flights flying in American airspace per day, according to the member for Western Arctic, is only in the 100 range.

The question we have to ask is would a government that was on the ball, looking out for Canadian passengers and Canadian airline interests not try to drive a harder bargain and try to negotiate? It could say that if we are going to provide the information on a 100 flights per day, which would add extra costs to our airlines and to our government, then we want the United States to reciprocate and provide us with the information on that country's 2,000 flights per day. After all, our airspace is sovereign, too. Quite frankly, we also want to know who is flying in our airspace. That is what it really boils down to.

For a number of years the United States, and I think other countries too, have demanded a list of passengers prior to their boarding an airplane. Even before 9/11, I remember when I was going to Australia, before boarding the plane in Vancouver, the passport information had to be processed.

I believe a lot of that had to do with the whole issue of refugees getting on a plane, flushing their documents down the toilet and arriving in a new country without any documentation. It is the airline that is responsible for the costs of flying the people back. That has been an issue with the airline industry for a number of years. The airlines resent that they have to pay the costs of transporting people back when the new country refuses to take them. They want to make sure they have all the information and get what is known as pre-clearance for passengers.

After many years of allowing airlines to fly over our territory, things are being taken to a whole new level in saying that we are not satisfied with the airport screening devices, the locked cockpits and the air marshalls on board and we now want to know at any given time who is actually sitting in those planes in our airspace. That is what I believe is behind this situation.

What do the Americans think is going to happen? Do they think that somebody is going to blow up an airplane while flying in American airspace? Is that what they are thinking? I am not really sure what the rationale is. The fact of the matter is that regardless what the demands are from the Americans, the Canadian government has a responsibility to the Canadian public to reciprocate, to say that if the Americans want our information, we will take their information, and to negotiate what types of information we want to collect and whether it is worthwhile collecting.

For some time we have been talking about the value of keeping the no-fly list. Senator Ted Kennedy was on the no-fly list. I know the member for Winnipeg Centre would be very motivated to stand and speak to this topic because his name was on a no-fly list and he had to sort it out. He was sorting it out with a government that has a series of rules that do not allow him to sort out the problem. That is my point.

People get tied up in knots. Senator Kennedy got tied up in knots trying to get his name off the no-fly list. The member for Winnipeg Centre tried to get his name off the no-fly list when his name should not have been on it in the first place.

Then there is the situation where a person gets on an airplane and literally breezes through all the security measures that have been put in place.

I think we all remember on December 25, 2009 there was the situation of a 23-year-old, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, everyone knows that name, who got on an airplane in Lagos, Nigeria and flew to Amsterdam and then Detroit. He committed all the sins that are supposed to be picked up.

This is what he did. He bought a round-trip ticket with cash. In the old days it used to be one way, but the geniuses running our security services finally figured out that people should not be buying one-way tickets with cash. That was a sure sign something could go wrong. He bought a round-trip ticket with cash.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was flying to Detroit at Christmas where there was a lot of snow but he had no carry-on baggage at all. He flew from Lagos into Amsterdam Schiphol which is the ultimate in secure airports. It has every type of screening device that one could imagine and this guy boarded a plane without a passport. This is yet another big breach.

We have spent untold billions of dollars developing a system to ensure the member for Winnipeg Centre cannot get on a plane, to ensure Senator Kennedy cannot get on a plane, to ensure a six-year-olds cannot get on a plane and tied ourselves up in knots, and yet this young 23-year-old makes fools of us all and walks right through the system. Had it not been for his own incompetence, he would have killed several hundred people.

We clearly need to start looking at security in a smarter fashion than we do right now. I go to a number of cross-border meetings with American politicians and the whole issue of toughening the border is always raised. We hear how we are torturing ourselves and torturing our own citizens because the bad guys are not lining up at the border. When crossing the Manitoba border at Emerson or a Saskatchewan border point, the people who are smuggling marijuana and drugs across the border are not lined up in their car taking this stuff across the border. They are walking the drugs or driving snowmobiles across the border.

If all the local politicians and residents in South Dakota and North Dakota know that and Manitoba and Saskatchewan know that, why are we continually trying to toughen the border? That is the thinking in Washington. The unfair misrepresentation of Canada for several years has been that the terrorists came through Canada. I know the government has had to fight that, as we all have when we are down there on trips. We need to make it clear to the Americans that none of the 9/11 terrorists came through Canada. I know it is a hard battle.

If the government is going to involve itself in negotiations with the Americans, it should at least stand up for the Canadian side of the arguments and try to argue at least reciprocity. The government should not introduce a bill in the House and somehow unilaterally say that it will start providing this information or that information to third countries. We do not even know how much information will be transferred. There is some discussion that somehow information on the PNRs will be transferred. I do not know if that is the case and I do not know what the information is in total on the PNR.

I can say that if a name is misspelled by one letter on a ticket, it is possible for the agent to correct that by simply putting a note on the PNR. There are all kinds of notes on customers' PNRs on a whole range of things. Therefore, if that is the information that is being passed on, then all of these notes are presumably being passed along with the information already there.

In addition to that, we presume that the Americans have access to passport information. I know that when Manitoba brought in the new drivers' licence-like passports, there was a big argument about how private the information would be and how much information would be provided to the American authorities.

I think the public wants to be safe and, if they understand that the information being provided is safe and they know there is a good reason for the information, they probably would be willing to give up that privacy issue in favour of being safe on the airplane. However, the history so far has not proven that to be the case.

It is almost like the Keystone Kops. We read stories about six-year-olds and eight-year-olds being on the no-fly list and then we have the Abdulmutallab situation where the guy walks through all our defences. After what he did last December, we had to put in full body scanners that cost several hundred million dollars a piece. We then find out that those scanners will not solve the problem because smart terrorists will simply hide the plastic explosives in body cavities.

Body scanners, which have been installed in some airports but it will take another 10 or 20 years to have them in all the airports, do not pick up on explosives that are put into body cavities. Guess what? That is what the terrorists will move on to and now we need to deal with that issue.

There is one airline alone in the world that has dealt successfully with the whole issue of terrorism and it is the safest airline in the world on which to fly. I flew EL AL Airlines a number of years ago, but at the time, in 1970, EL AL was probably the most unsafe airline in the world. It had several skyjackings. I believe it had planes blowing up in the Sinai desert in 1970. After that point, the Israeli government and the EL AL officials changed the way they dealt with security.

When I went over there in 1987, it was a totally different experience than flying with a Canadian or American carrier. They put people through a three-hour interview and examination process. They did not stop with just checking people's bags to see how much liquids they had in their bags. They actually asked people what they were going over there for. They more or less did a type of psychological profile on people.

When we discussed that issue with the Americans, they said that it would not work there. They said that in order to balance the need to move masses of people very fast, they had to sacrifice a little on safety.

I now want to deal with the issue of the trusted shippers program. I was totally shocked and surprised to find out that there are 1,000 trusted shippers in either North America or the United States who can ship things. These people are shipping packages that are sitting in the cargo hold of the planes and a very small percentage, if any, are being scanned, tested or checked. It is an absolute disaster waiting for a place to happen.

The whole business of the trusted shipper program must be looked into and tightened up on because sooner or later somebody will put a letter or a package through this trusted shipper program with an explosive device and we will be reading about the terrible horror story and asking why we did not do something in advance.

The government should be spending its time on trying to make flying safer than it is right now.

[Strengthening Aviation Security Act, October 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed listening to the member's speech on this bill, and quite frankly, I agree with him.

I asked the parliamentary secretary earlier what sort of negotiations were done, given that the Americans have potentially 2,000 flights a day over Canadian airspace, flying to Europe and other parts of the world, whereas Canada has only 100 or so, flying over American space. There is certainly a lot of room for negotiation there, because in terms of the Americans providing all that information to us on a reciprocal basis, that would be quite onerous on their part. They would think twice about trying to push this point with us if it were going to put a lot of pressure on them from their airlines and residents who are flying.

He did not answer that question at all. He avoided the question.

The question really is: did the government just roll over and avoid negotiating with the Americans and just accept the terms they were given by the Americans?

[Strengthening Aviation Security Act, October 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the parliamentary secretary with regard to whether there is reciprocity here. Would the American airlines need to provide the same information for their, I believe, 1,000 or so flights a day that fly over Canadian air space on their way to Europe or other parts of the world?

I also would like to know if it is still the intention to provide this information for, essentially, domestic flights, point-to-point flights within Canada. Would the information on flights from Winnipeg to Toronto that fly over American air space need to be provided? I have read news reports indicating that those flights would be exempt under U.S. homeland security. I would like to know what the current status is of that information.

[Ending Early Release for Criminals and Increasing Offender Accountability Act, October 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, around 1970 a provincial government brought in the criminal injuries compensation fund to compensate victims of crime. To hear the Conservatives talk, we would think are pointing to a Conservative government having taken an action like that. It was Canada's first NDP government, led by Ed Schreyer, elected June 15, 1969, that brought in the criminal injuries compensation fund, a fund designed to compensate victims of crime. The NDP was the originators of benefits for victims of crime.

Therefore, the government has no monopoly when it comes to issues on victims.

[Ending Early Release for Criminals and Increasing Offender Accountability Act, October 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I think the proof is in the pudding here with the government announcing it is going to spend $9 billion on new prisons. In fact, a fraction of that amount could do what the hon. member has said.

A very high percentage of people who are in prison, particularly women, are dealing with addiction and mental health problems. Those people do not really belong in a prison; they should be in a mental health facility. They should have access to treatment programs whether they are in a mental health facility or in a prison. The government is not paying attention.

[Ending Early Release for Criminals and Increasing Offender Accountability Act, October 19th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I recognize that the Bloc has been a strong and long-time supporter of this measure. I recognize that is something it feels strongly about, and I think there would be a lot of support in the House for that particular measure.

I recognize the concerns regarding Earl Jones and other white collar criminals, where cases have been dealt with and will not be affected by changes to the legislation. That is sad because we, in this country, have a terrible record.

I mentioned last week that in the United States, its system has managed to put away 1,200 white collar criminals, including a couple of Canadians. The entire Canadian system has only effected 2 convictions and they are both against the same guy. We have put away 1 person who was guilty of white collar crimes in Canada, while the Americans have put away 1,200, and they think their system is not good enough. As a matter of fact, President Obama is re-regulating the entire financial services industry as a result of what happened two years ago.

We have a long way to go in this country to start operating on the basis of being smart on crime. On this side of the House, the Bloc, the NDP and the Liberals are all in favour of changes to our system and putting white collar criminals away for longer periods of time, but what we want to do is look at the entire criminal justice system and be smart on crime. We want to do things that work, not necessarily just blindly follow the American system, the three strikes and you are out system, with private prisons and warehousing people, which does not work. We disagree with that, but there are other areas of common ground here.

[Ending Early Release for Criminals and Increasing Offender Accountability Act, October 19th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the member is correct. We have seen the government put up one speaker on a bill and then simply let the debate take its course on this side of the House. It is not there to answer any questions on its bills.

However, there is an exception to that. We had, this spring, the Minister of Immigration actually give the House the respect it deserves. He was here for the entire debate. In fact, he asked the first question for every speaker on the immigration bill. I thought that was a class act on the part of the minister. Did another minister follow his lead?

Provincially, it is normal. If the finance minister has a bill before the House, the minister is there. In the Manitoba legislature, if any minister of any department has a bill before the House, the minister is there for the entire debate. He or she does not just simply do the introduction, walk away and not stay to ask questions.

The immigration minister sat here every hour. He listened to every speaker and he asked the first question, and that is what the government minister should be doing.

[Ending Early Release for Criminals and Increasing Offender Accountability Act, October 19th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I think if the member checks Hansard, he is going to find that he misspoke.

He really meant to say “stands up for victims”. I am sure he would apologize for that error. He accidentally said “stands up for criminals”, which of course is probably what he actually meant to say at the end of the day, but of course he did not intend to do so this morning.

I know the member is a very good member of Parliament. He is hard working and he follows the party line over there. He is probably the first one up in the morning, getting the orders from the Prime Minister's office, reading them and being right up to snuff on all the latest nuances.

I would guess that the member would be the number one MP over there doing that. I know he has read up on the latest news. I get my MP hits in the morning, and he gets his at eight o'clock at night, before some of the papers have even hit their deadlines. He is well-informed. I am sure he is just following the Prime Minister's orders.

[Ending Early Release for Criminals and Increasing Offender Accountability Act, October 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to continue today on the debate on what is now Bill C-39.

The bill is designed to improve public safety and notably by stating explicitly that the active participation of offenders in attaining the objectives of the correction plan is an essential requirement for their condition of release or any other privilege. It is also designed to deal with expanding the categories of offenders who are ineligible for an accelerated parole review and the categories of offenders subject to continue detention after their statutory release date when they have served two-thirds of their sentence. For example, offenders convicted of child pornography, luring a child or breaking and entering to steal a firearm are examples.

In addition, the bill would extend the length of time that offenders convicted of a subsequent offence must serve before being eligible for parole. Also, it would increase from six months to a year the waiting period for a hearing after the National Parole Board has turned down a parole application.

The bill would also authorize a peace officer to arrest, without a warrant, an offender who is on conditional release for a breach of conditions. It would grant the Correctional Service of Canada permission to oblige an offender to wear a monitoring device as a condition of release when a release is subject to special conditions regarding restrictions on access to a victim of geographical areas. It would increase the number of reasons for the search of vehicles at a penitentiary to prevent the entry of contraband or the commission of an offence.

The bill also focuses specifically on the interests of victims by expanding the definition of “victim” to anyone who has custody of or is responsible for a dependant of the main victim if the main victim is dead, ill or otherwise incapacitated. It would disclose to a victim of the program in which an offender has participated for the purposes of reintegration into society, the location of an institution to which an offender is transferred and the reason for the transfer. It also would entrench in the act the right of victims to make a statement at parole hearings, which is a new element.

The whole development of victims' rights over the years did not start with the Conservative government. It was not an idea that somehow the Conservative government developed in its policy rooms. The fact is that this is a long-term process. In fact, I recall in Manitoba, as far back as, I believe, 1970, when Premier Ed Schreyer, the first NDP premier in Canada, was elected on June 25, 1969. Within his first four-year mandate, he brought in substantial changes to the province of Manitoba and to the country of Canada. One of the initiatives that he brought in was a criminal injuries compensation fund, which may have been the first of its kind in Canada at the time.

Nevertheless, the criminal injuries compensation fund has been around in Manitoba now since 1970. Therefore, the Conservatives have absolutely no monopoly on victims' rights and victims' services in this country. As a matter of fact, the Conservative government, the champion of victims' rights, hired Steve Sullivan as the victims' ombudsman. When he started doing the job of advocating on the part of victims, the government, which appointed him, got rid of him by not renewing his term. That has some reflection on the government's real commitment to victims' rights.

However, over the years, beginning with the criminal injuries compensation fund and initiatives such as that, we have seen a gradual progression toward more rights for the victims. There was a time not so long ago, maybe 20 years ago, when it was almost impossible for a person to find out the resolution and the developments of their break-and-enters, for example. Many people have come to me over the years and told me how their house had been broken into and that they were told by the police to go home and forget about it and that they would deal with it. However, no information came their way as to what stage the case was at and the disposition of it.

That was changed not only under NDP governments but I am sure under Liberal governments in other provinces and, of course, Conservative governments in Manitoba. The Filmon government made some moves, as well as the Gary Doer government. Now there is an array of victim services available. After a break-in of a property, the victim gets a call from the police and a kit is dropped off indicating phone numbers that people can call for counselling, if required.

At more and more stages, people are being kept updated and informed of the processes, and we in the NDP support that. The member for Burnaby—Douglas and others in the NDP are on record as being very strongly supportive of victims' rights and services. So it is somewhat surprising; well, maybe it is not so surprising but it is unfair for the Conservatives to keep riding this horse. The Liberal critic yesterday spoke on this bill and I listened carefully to his speech, which was very good. He kept referring to the Conservatives' calling him a hug-a-thug.

The fact of the matter is that it is peculiar to the current Conservative government. I do not recall the Conservative government of Joe Clark, which of course was not around that long, or of Brian Mulroney taking this kind of approach. This seems to be something that is peculiar to the group that is in power right now, and I really do not think it has had a lot of results to show for its efforts in this area.

The government may think that somehow it is making progress by coming up with boutique-type bills that are not 100% necessary. For example, a lot of the measures that it is introducing in these bills are already covered under the Criminal Code. What it should be doing, as has been mentioned by many people in the House, is taking the time to revamp the entire Criminal Code, something that is long overdue. It is a very old piece of legislation that is hundreds of pages long. If the government were showing vision in this area, it would make an announcement that it is going to revamp the entire Criminal Code and invite the parties onside.

I remind government members that it was one of their own colleagues, Gary Filmon who they appointed to a federal board, who developed the approach, in a minority parliament, that he would involve all opposition parties on controversial issues. It was not only Meech Lake. That was a very good example of how a very smart leader operating in a minority situation confronted a very important decision in this country.

He did not make an arbitrary decision like the Prime Minister does and drive ahead at all costs. He involved the party leaders. He got Senator Carstairs, who was a leader of the Liberal Party, involved in the committee. He got Gary Doer, who was opposition leader at the time, involved in the committee. That is how they dealt with the issue of Meech Lake.

Even when it came to something as simple as a smoking ban that was controversial in those days, Premier Filmon reached out to opposition leaders and got them on board. He found that system actually worked. The government actually did that on Afghanistan just last year and it worked reasonably well. Why it continues to refuse to learn from history and previous good practices that would help the government, Parliament and the country is really beyond me.

We can allow the Conservatives to continue their beating of the drums, their calling the member for Ajax—Pickering a hug-a-thug and their cheap shots, but the reality is that the public is not buying it. I think the member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor agrees with me.

The Conservatives have been doing this now for almost five years, but where are the results to show? They have gone through a couple of elections. They showcase them, but they are all the same bills. They brought them in two, three and four years ago. Then they prorogued the House, then brought them all back; then they had an election, then prorogued the House again and then brought them all back.

Where are those great polling numbers that this policy is supposed to produce? It is just not there. The Conservatives are no more popular today than they were then. They should be looking at how they are running the government right now.

Let us look at the long form census, the debacle of this summer. The Conservatives cannot seem to get their agenda on track.

I had wanted to talk about the “Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety”, which is one of the reasons why the government is bringing in the legislation, but I know our public safety critic will be speaking on this bill later, and there are other members in the House who will deal adequately with that particular issue.

I understand the bill will be going to committee, because the Bloc has indicated its support for the bill. Hopefully at committee we will be able to make the adjustments and amendments needed to make this a better piece of legislation for the benefit of all Canadians.

[Petitions, October 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, my petition calls upon 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 now at its lowest level since 1972. It has fallen by 5 million people in the last seven years, from 16 million in 2002 to only 11 million in 2009.

Passport fees for an American family of four can be over $500. Fifty per cent of Canadians have passports but only 25% of Americans do.

At the recent Midwestern Legislative Conference of the Council of State Governments, attended by myself and 500 other elected representatives from 11 border states and 3 provinces, a resolution was passed unanimously and reads:

...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[s] 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 upon the government to work with the American government to examine a mutual reduction in passport fees to facilitate tourism and finally, promote a time limited two-for-one passport renewal or new application fee on a mutual basis with the United States.