Jim Maloway

[Ending Early Release for Criminals and Increasing Offender Accountability Act, October 18th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-39. Once again this is an example of the government having bills under different numbers at different times. Just last year we were speaking to this bill, which was Bill C-43 at that time. Now because the Prime Minister once again prorogued the House and shifted us back to having to start over again, we have no choice but to go through that process again.

Nevertheless, as previous speakers have addressed the bill today, we have observed that there are some parts of the bill we support, but we have some other issues with other parts of the bill. As has been indicated by the Bloc speaker, the Bloc will support the bill going to committee. One would hope that we will be able to resolve differences on these issues at the committee stage.

Bill C-39, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. The short title to the bill is strengthening Canada's corrections system act. It was introduced and received first reading in the House under the original Bill C-43 in June 2009. That is how long we have been dealing with this bill.

The bill is designed to improve public safety in a number of ways: first, stating explicitly that the act of participation of offenders in attaining the objectives of the correctional plan is an essential requirement for their conditional release or any other privilege; second, expanding the categories of offenders who are ineligible for an accelerated parole review and the categories of offenders subject to continued detention after the statutory release date when they serve two-thirds of their sentence, for example, offenders convicted of child pornography, luring a child or breaking and entering to steal a firearm; and third, extending the length of time that offenders convicted of a subsequent offence must serve before being eligible for parole and increasing from six months to a year the waiting period for a hearing after the National Parole Board has turned down a parole application.

In addition, it would authorize a peace officer to arrest, without warrant, an offender who is on conditional release for a breach of conditions and it grants the Corrections Services Canada permission to oblige an offender to wear a monitoring device as a condition of release when release is subject to special conditions regarding restrictions on access to a victim or geographical areas.

As the critic for our party pointed out, this is a very lengthy bill and there are many changes, improvements and amendments to the bill.

Also, 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, which has been dealt with by several of the previous speakers. For example, initially the bill would expand the definition of a victim to anyone who has custody of or is responsible for a dependant of the main victim if the main victim is either dead, ill or otherwise incapacitated. Also it would allow disclosure to a victim of the programs in which an offender has participated for the purpose of reintegration into society, the location of the institution to which an offender is transferred and the reasons for the transfer. These are additional benefits to expand the interests of victims of crime.

In addition, the bill entrenches in the act the right of victims to make a statement at parole hearings. As the member for Windsor—Tecumseh pointed out, this is a new section of the act. It is something that certainly will be appreciated by victims and victims groups in this country.

As well, a number of the clauses of the bill make minor amendments to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, such as linguistic modifications or re-formulations designed to clarify legislative intent. Some sections are also designed to make the administration of sentences more effective, for example, increasing the maximum number of members that may sit on the National Parole Board. A government member talked about the number of National Parole Board members being increased from the current 45, I believe, to 60. The difference is that they would be full-time members rather than part-time members. We do not see a problem with that.

I understand my time is up for today and that I will have further time to complete my remarks the next time we debate this bill.

[Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act, October 18th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, fundamentally it is a government based on free enterprise, and it really does not care about a lot of the activities it should be encouraging. I mentioned the dark fibre builds that can be done on a cooperative basis. School divisions in the United States 10 years ago were paying through the nose for slow broadband service through their telephone companies, and they finally decided to build their own dark fibre network. For a very low cost they built a dark fibre system. They used their entrepreneurial spirit to fill their own needs, while using extra capacity to lease space back.

It is this kind of activity that government should be fostering, but it does not fit the corporate agenda. It does not make the big telephone companies happy, or attract the big money on Bay Street. What interest does the CEO of a big telephone company or a big Bay Street company have in developing a dark fibre co-op in northern Manitoba or northern Saskatchewan?

On native reserves across the country, we could have inexpensive dark fibre builds. Why is it not happening?

[Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act, October 18th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I have always been amazed that governments do not see open opportunities to bring in consumer legislation, particularly when governments are looking to be relevant to their voters and populace. Consumer legislation is the type of legislation that costs the government nothing. We cannot get better results than bringing in consumer legislation that costs the government nothing, makes it look good, and not only protects the consumers but also protects business.

Business organizations tell us that they want to see regulation. Business want to compete with one another but they want to compete on a reasonable level playing field and they want some rules in place. They want to know what the rules are before they spend a lot of money developing their business plans.

If we allow spammers to come in and do whatever they want anytime they want without any sort of penalty, businesses will not be agreeable to that. Whatever we do, we need to have the same rules for everybody, but consumer legislation is something the government does not seem to pay a lot of attention to.

I know the member has introduced a lot of legislation dealing with consumer-type activities and I encourage him to continue doing that but expecting results from the government is something that maybe we should not have too high hopes about.

[Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act, October 18th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise on this bill, which is now Bill C-28 and was Bill C-27. As has been indicated before, it has been a very long time getting to this point, in fact, several Parliaments and elections, to the point where Canada is pretty much last in the line of modern developed countries that have such legislation.

I listened very carefully to what the member for Timmins—James Bay had to say. He talked about the lack of a broadband strategy on the part of the government and he is absolutely correct. There are many things the current government could have been doing. There are many things that the former Liberal government was doing when John Manley was industry minister.

There are a lot of innovative ideas in the marketplace. For example, a few years ago it was discovered that school boards, some in the United States, were able to set up dark fibre co-ops. In the past the school boards had been under contract with the telcos and were leasing their broadband from the phone companies. They turned the whole relationship upside down. By the school boards doing their own dark fibre builds, they were able to offer gigabyte Internet access and they sold space to the very telcos that they had been leasing from before.

There is nothing difficult about this. The reality is that the fibre can be laid out on the ground or it can be put through the air or through trenches. Trenching is the most expensive way of laying dark fibre.

In rural communities, for example the community of Churchill in my home province, the government does not have any difficulty because the government has crown lands to work with and rights of way at its disposal. A government that is interested in taking the bull by the horns can mandate in very short order that dark fibre be laid over crown land through pipes that the provinces own. It does not have to make the type of effort that private industry has to.

When a private telco wants to lay fibre, it has to negotiate with the landowners. It has to negotiate rights of way. It is a very involved process. The government has none of that to contend with.

Unfortunately, what has happened in this country is that over the years governments have bowed to the pressure of the telcos that want the good customers. As soon as the government tries to develop a proper broadband strategy, the telcos knock on its door and say that the government cannot do that because it is against the principles of free enterprise. The telcos want the right to offer this service in cities and urban centres where they can run the final mile very cheaply to people's homes. They want to be able to offer that to residents and to control the pipes to the hospitals and schools so they can make tons of money, but they do not want to do it in rural areas. They do not want to do it in the north.

That is the conundrum that governments have faced. While they could have taken charge in a more determined way, they have tended to piece off the private companies within their jurisdictions. They have allowed telcos to take some good sections and then the governments are stuck with the less profitable areas.

Even so, I still say that all is not lost. Fibre is cheap. Fibre is not expensive and is easy to build. We had four or five examples of co-ops and school boards in the United States that developed their own fibre. They took the cost of the fibre, turned it around and not only leased out their extra capacity but they still had enough capacity in their system to fulfill their own needs for free and at much faster rates.

What will happen when the final mile is completed and the thick fibre exists, rural hospitals, for example, will be connected. The last time I toured Brandon Hospital, which is in a city of about 50,000 people in my province, it was still sending the electronic imaging for medical tests by bus to one of the smaller hospitals in Neepawa, which I believe is the closest hospital. That should not be the case. Once we have a proper broadband strategy, those images will be sent electronically, rather than being put in a can and sent on a bus to another hospital. They will be able to be sent electronically to the hospital. That is what we are talking about here.

That is what the member for Timmins—James Bay was alluding to when he talked about the broadband strategy that we do not see the government making efforts toward. I am not a big fan of the previous Liberal government but when it comes to issues like broadband, at least there was a pulse in that government. We do not hear anything from the current government.

Let us take a look at the whole area of government online programs. Ten years ago, in 1999, the prime ministers of Great Britain and Australia would put their vision statements on a website indicating where they saw government online programs rolling out and developing over the next 10 years.

I remember putting a resolution before the Manitoba legislature that government programs should be online by the year 2010 and that they should be transactional. It was recognized that there was no point in putting all government information online. There would be tons of information online, some usable, some not, but the true goal was to offer government services on a transactional basis. For example, a student applying for student aid or a student loan would not have to ride the bus from Sudbury to Toronto, for example, to have the privilege of standing in line at a government office to fill out an application.

There was a student aid online program set up in Manitoba, probably 10 years ago, which worked from the very beginning. It worked from the very beginning because it was a low-hanging fruit that dealt with youth. If it had been a program for senior citizens who were less inclined to use computers, it might not have worked so well. However, it worked very well because we were dealing with people who understand computers, who have worked with computers in their daily lives and in school settings since they started school. It was natural for the government to put student aid online. That is an example of a program that worked very well.

Those sorts of programs should have been replicated right across all jurisdictions. We should not be offering them in one province and not in another. The provinces had to get together to talk about whether they could share these programs. I have always said that the national government, rather than individual governments, should pay for one national computer program to be used in all the hospitals across the country. We had software developers in my own province getting a grant from one arm of the government, the Department of Industry, to develop a software program and then turn around and sell it to individual hospitals. The taxpayers had the privilege of paying for a certain software program that was already paid for in part by the taxpayers through one arm of the government to pay multiple times as each hospital bought the program.

That made no sense at all to me. Where was the direction and leadership of the government. There were some signs under the latter part of the Paul Martin government that it was showing some interest in developing programs that could be used on a national basis.

We did encourage the provinces to get together and exchange programs, which worked to a certain extent, but it fell down because of the silo effect. People in their own little silos in their own parts of the government refused to co-operate with anyone else. We would hear arguments that it was contrary to the legislation, that it would need to alter it to the legislation in its jurisdiction or that it did not meet its capacities.

However, there were these off the shelf programs. For example, the Securities Commission in Alberta had a program that Manitoba could simply adapt because it was exactly what it needed. However, we found a lot of silo thinking where people would say that was specialized for Alberta and that they needed to have their own made in Manitoba.

In many ways we find ourselves working against ourselves and perhaps that is why the system is not as advanced at it should be.

A few minutes ago my colleague mentioned consumer legislation. In 2002 in Manitoba, we put together bill 31. I was asked to be the coordinator of it. We had to pull in all the people from four or five departments and we had that typical silo problem. Before we got them together in one room, we heard all the reasons that it could not be done or could never be done. We called them together in one room and asked them what their problems were. In a group environment they did not have a problem.

Therefore, we proceeded with a very big omnibus bill. As a matter of fact, it was designed and crafted under the Uniform Law Conference of Canada suggested wordings and it was the most comprehensive of its type in Canada at the time.

One of the things that got the bill moving a lot quicker was the idea of putting in some consumer legislation. We discovered that there were between one and four states in the United States that had laws that said that if people did not receive their product or service that they ordered on line that the credit card companies would be held responsible to reimburse them. That sounded very intriguing. That was 10 years ago. That was at a time when Internet commerce was still in its infancy and we were trying to encourage it in Manitoba. However, we did not want people to be afraid of it and think that somehow if they bought something on line and they did not get it they would be out their money and would not know how to retrieve it.

In bill 31, we made the credit card companies responsible for any Manitoban's purchases online and if they did not receive the product or the service, the credit card company would be responsible.

Can anyone guess what happened? We went to committee and we heard from the credit card companies. Some of them were not too happy about this but Visa, which is a very big organization, did not put up that much of a fight.

We put forward that particular piece of consumer-friendly legislation and we put forward other pieces of consumer legislation but the reason we brought in this legislation in the first place was to streamline the government and make it more efficient.

We were trying to use the common business identifier. In the old days, the federal government and the provinces were using their own business numbers. We had situations in provincial governments where people were not even paying their PST or GST to the government and, in fact, were in receipt of grants from other parts of the government. This was an intolerable situation and it is something that should never happen.

Therefore, by having a common business identifier and a centralized computing system, we were able to tell if a person had applied for a grant from a certain department and whether the person was in arrears on his or her PST or whether the person owed the taxpayers all sorts of money that he or she had not paid back through taxes. We were trying to put a stop to that. We were also trying to make the system easier to use for businesses so they could file their returns. We were cutting down the paperwork involved in business.

The Conservatives just love to talk about red tape. One of the first things Conservative politicians love to talk for hours about is reducing red tape. The former member for Portage--La Prairie, who was in this House for several years, made his career on cutting red tape in the Manitoba legislature. He also made his career on eliminating the pension plan in the Manitoba legislative assembly. I can tell the House that it was not a very happy group of former MLAs when he moved to the federal scene and proceeded to collect his own federal pension when they in fact had lost their own, but that is an aside.

Nevertheless, the legislation before us today is long overdue. As a matter of fact, we have a danger here that this legislation will need to be re-tweaked. As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech in response to some comments by the member for Timmins—James Bay, nothing in this bill involves any criminality.

We just had a case in the last two weeks where Facebook got a judgment against a Canadian guy for $1 billion. He did a huge amount of spamming on the Facebook system and has made a hero out of himself by getting all kinds of free publicity around the world. What has he done? He has simply declared bankruptcy. We could go to all this trouble of finally passing this bill after all these years and find out that it is totally ineffective when we have people running huge spamming operations in this country right under the noses of the authorities and then, when they finally do end up in court and get sued, they just simply declare bankruptcy and are gone or simply change countries.

Clearly, if we are passing legislation now, we should ensure there are enough penalties in here that will make people responsible and try to correct the behaviours that we are seeing.

However, as we indicated, there are bigger issues. This is an important issue and we need to deal with it, but the member for Timmins—James Bay talked about the other areas, such as the broadband strategy that is lacking from the government. The vision on broadband is very vital to this country and especially to the survival and development of rural Canada. There is also the whole issue of government online programs, which we hear nothing about from the government.

[Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act, October 18th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the member hit a very solid topic in dealing with the lack of the broadband strategy from the government.

I note that the violations are not criminal offences under the bill. Recently we had a situation where Facebook had a judgment against a Canadian spammer for I believe $1 billion. All the spammer did was declare bankruptcy and got out of the problem.

If we pass bills like this that simply offer a fine, in essence, and if the spammer simply declares bankruptcy, then what have we really accomplished? Perhaps a threat of jail time might have a better effect in forcing spammers to pay attention. I only say that on the basis of what happened recently with that court case.

[Petitions, October 18th, 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 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 over $500 U.S. While 50% of Canadians have passports, only 25% of Americans do.

At the recent Midwestern Legislators Conference of the Council and State Governments attended by myself and over 500 elected representatives from 11 border states and three provinces, the following resolution was passed unanimously. It 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[s] the governments to examine the idea of a limited...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 to promote a limited time two-for-one passport renewal for renewed application fees on a mutual basis with the United States.

[Criminal Code, October 8th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak today to Bill S-215. The subject of the bill in various iterations has been with us now for the last five years, which is hard to believe. In 25 years of having been in elected positions provincially and federally, I have never run into a situation where there is all party agreement and unanimous support for a bill and yet after five years we are still debating it.

Only a few months ago, in June, when the issue of pardons came up dealing specifically with Karla Homolka, it took Parliament a day or two days to pass a bill at all stages. It is somewhat of a mystery that a bill that would be agreed to by every member and all parties in the House would still be at the stage it is after five years.

The member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar has had more than one occasion to introduce this legislation. I read with interest her comments regarding the bill. She pointed out that the bill's title is an act to amend the Criminal Code, which is identical to Bill S-205 that was passed in the Senate on June 10, 2009. It was debated at second reading in the House in November 2009 and was then referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on November 29 and died on the order paper in December when her own leader, the Prime Minister of the country, prorogued the House for the second time since 2008. That adds to the saga of this particular bill.

Senator Grafstein was one of the initial drivers behind this bill and a strong supporter. He has retired now but I believe he will be very pleased when this bill makes it through. I honestly believe this will be the last time we will be debating this bill and that it will actually make its way through the final procedures to become law, and none too soon, I might add.

The bill seeks to explicitly include the act of suicide bombing within the context of the Criminal Code definition of “terrorist activity”. Suicide bombings have resulted in terrible consequences to thousands of people over the years and shows the utmost contempt for human life. Suicide attacks are committed with the intention to kill and maim innocent people and inflict excessive property damage, with the attackers prepared to die in the process.

We have seen over the last number of years some very substantial damage caused by suicide attacks, such as the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City in which 3,000 people lost their lives. Most of the suicide attacks over the years have dealt with smaller numbers of people dying. Nevertheless, each death is a very important discussion point because it causes untold misery for the families of the victims, as well as the families of the suicide bombers.

We should not kid ourselves. The people who are involved in these suicide bombings are, in many cases, poor people whose families are being paid and the people carrying out the bombings are, oftentimes, not willing participants but are doing it because it is a way of getting their families out of poverty.

Suicide attacks are becoming more common and statistics show that there are more happening now, not less. I will get into some of the history in a few minutes, but the fact is that this type of activity has been going on for literally hundreds of years.

In July 2005 there were the London bombings. In 2008 there were attacks in Mumbai, India. There have been bombings recently in Moscow and Afghanistan. Essentially populations that have absolutely nothing to do with the problem are being terrorized. How could a young child in a market in any way be blamed for issues that are going on in the world?

The definition of “terrorist activity” is currently in paragraph 83.01(b) of the Criminal Code. Bill S-215 seeks to amend section 83.01 of the code by adding the following after subsection (1.1):

(1.2) For greater certainty, a suicide bombing is an act that comes within paragraph (a) or (b) of the definition "terrorist activity" in subsection (1) if it satisfies the criteria of that paragraph.

The first part of the definition of “terrorist activity” incorporates in part criminal conduct as envisioned by the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings, one of the United Nations counter-terrorism conventions. Many speakers have pointed out that this particular legislation is supported by several former prime ministers of Canada and some well-known people in this country.

Distinguished Canadian criminal lawyers have told the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs that explicitly covering suicide bombing in the Criminal Code could help to prosecute and punish the organizers, teachers and sponsors of suicide bombing. There were some observations and comments made in the past that this type of activity is already covered under the Criminal Code. It is a very important distinction to know that what we are trying to do here is to prosecute and punish the organizers, teachers and sponsors of suicide bombing. They are not the people who go out and blow themselves up and kill other people indiscriminately in the process. They are not the people who go out and do it. They are the ones who organize it. They are the ones who finance it. They are the ones who teach and brainwash the people who actually do it. They are the ones we want to prosecute, lock up and get off the street and away from doing what they are doing.

This legislation would be the first in the world. In many respects it would be a beacon to other countries to follow suit. We are dealing with an issue that has not been a big problem in Canada, but it certainly could be. It could develop that way over time. By doing this we are showing leadership as a Parliament to indicate to other countries what is possible, what should be done, where they should be moving.

By including suicide bombing in the definition it would also serve to denounce this horrendous practice. It would also educate the public and draw attention to the issue that suicide bombings are repugnant to Canadian values. In addition to passing the bill, we would be showing some international leadership by being the first nation in the world to adopt this reference in the legislative definition of “terrorist activity”. In that I see no downside.

I am very surprised that before I even get to the history of suicide bombings, my time for debate has almost run out. I am sure members would be very interested in knowing that as far back as the 17th century injured Dutch soldiers were fighting for control of Taiwan and in 1661, they used gunpowder to blow up themselves and their opponents rather than be taken prisoner. During the Belgian revolution a Dutch lieutenant detonated his own ship in the harbour at Antwerp to prevent being captured by the Belgians. A Prussian soldier died blowing up a hole in a Danish fortification in 1864. We see that this activity has a long, long history going back many years and did not start just in the last couple of years.

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, October 8th, 2010]

What about all those white collar criminals?

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, October 8th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, other than Senator Percy Downe, I have not heard a Liberal in this House talk about the necessity of trying to collect taxes from people who are hiding money in tax havens.

We have a case here with the parliamentary secretary just yesterday talking about a crackdown on people who have overcontributed to the TFSAs, the tax free savings accounts, but not one mention was made of all the money the government should be trying to recover from people who invested in tax havens in Liechtenstein four years ago. As a matter of fact, the government was given the information that 106 Canadians had a total of more than $100 million stashed in Liechtenstein accounts. So far, Revenue Canada has collected not one dime of that money. However, in Germany, since 2006, it has recovered 200 million euros in back taxes from people investing in tax havens.

I would like to know why the members opposite are not pressuring the Conservatives to be more active on that file to collect those back taxes.

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, October 8th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the parliamentary secretary claimed that Revenue Canada is cracking down on people who made overcontributions to the new tax-free savings accounts, but he said nothing about trying to collect the tax on some $6 trillion to $10 trillion in tax havens around the world, Canadians who are investing in those things.

Four years ago the German government gave the Canadian government the names of 106 Canadians with a combined total of more than $100 million stashed in Liechtenstein bank accounts. So far, the Canada Revenue Agency has closed 26 cases, assessed $5.2 million in back taxes, interest and penalties, but has not collected one dime from these tax evaders.

Since 2006, the Germans have received 200 million euros from the people investing in tax havens. In fact, the United States government is chasing its own taxpayers.

The question is, why is the government not trying to get this money back? Who is it trying to protect?