Jim Maloway

[Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act, September 27th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the member regarding implied consent in terms of the business relationship vis-à-vis a non-business relationship.

I can understand that perhaps in a business relationship, the implied consent rule being two years is probably reasonable in most cases, but in the case of implied consent in terms of a non-business relationship, I am wondering about the member's views on the two year rule. For example, if a recipient made a donation or gift to an organization two years before the message was sent, and it was a registered charity, political party organization or candidate, it would qualify.

Also, if the recipient performed volunteer work for an organization or attended a meeting organized by it within the last two years, if it is a registered charity, a political party organization or a candidate, I am just wondering if we are being a little too tight with the two year rule for, essentially, non-business relationships. We get into the whole area of the political parties and the charities.

I wonder if the member has any observations about that. I know this bill has been to committee before. I am assuming that members of the registered charities, members of political parties or their representatives have made presentations, although I cannot be sure about that point. I would ask the member for any observations he would have and any comments about that point.

[Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act, September 27th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the minister for his speech today. I think even he admits that this bill is about 10 years overdue. However, if it incorporates the best practices of all the other legislation in the jurisdiction, then perhaps the wait might be worth it.

I am sure the minister will not be surprised that the passing of this bill will be a big surprise to a lot of small businesses in this country. No matter how much we know about things, there are thousands and thousands of small businesses that are not really in tune to what is happening in Parliament.

I would like to know what the minister's rollout plans are. Is the minister planning a soft rollout or a tough one? I know the penalties under this act are substantial, so I would not want to see great disruptions and burdens on small businesses as a result of the government's actions. Once the minister gets this legislation through, what plans does he have for the rollout?

[Petitions, September 27th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, my petition calls on the Canadian government to negotiate with the U.S. government to reduce U.S. and Canadian passport fees.

American tourists visiting Canada is at its lowest level since 1972. It has fallen by 5 million in the last seven years, from 16 million in 2002 to only 11 million in 2009.

Passport fees for multiple member families are a significant barrier to traditional cross-border family vacations and the cost of passports for an American family of four can be over $500. While over a half of Canadians have passports, only a quarter of Americans have passports.

At the mid-western legislative conference of the Council of State Governments, attended by myself and 500 other elected representatives from 11 border states and three provinces, a resolution was passed unanimously that reads, be it:

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

...we encourage the governments to examine the idea of a limited time two-for-one passport renewal or new application; and be it further

RESOLVED, that this resolution be submitted to appropriate federal, state and provincial officials.

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

[Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act, September 24th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to continue debate on what is now Bill C-22. I think this may be my last speech for a while, so all members can relax.

This is also a very important bill. Once again, it has been five years plus that we have been waiting for this bill, now titled Bill C-22. It was called Bill C-58 before the government prorogued the House. It is the child protection act online sexual exploitation.

There are some important points here that the members should know about this bill even though it has been knocking around now for five years and many speeches have been made about it. It is one of these bills where there really is not a lot of disagreement on the subject.

I personally am not really sure how it is going to play out. The reality is once we send it to committee, which should be fairly soon, and once the committee hearings are proceeded with, I really do not foresee many amendments to this bill and I do not foresee a lot of controversy with this bill. If anything, we may find that this bill is, in some respects, already out of date because it has been five years since we started discussing about it.

It is an act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service. Basically, an ISP is now going to be required to take action on this issue.

Bill C-58 was introduced in the House of Commons on November 24, 2009 by the Minister of Justice. Bill C-58, now Bill C-22, was intended to fight Internet child pornography by requiring ISPs, or Internet service providers, and other persons providing Internet services, for example, Facebook, Google, Hotmail, to report any incident of child pornography.

This requirement included several things, but one was that if a person providing Internet services was advised of an Internet address where child pornography may be available, the person must report that address to the organization designated by the regulations.

I know the member for Mississauga South is bound to ask me a question about the whole issue of the regulations. Once again, until the bill passes, the government sets up the regulations, and we actually will not know what the details will be of this particular part.

Also, if a person has reasonable grounds to believe that the Internet services operated by that person are being used to transmit child pornography, the person must notify the police, that is a logical thing, and also preserve the computer data.

In terms of provincial and international measures, in June 2008, my home province, the Manitoba Legislature passed a law requiring all persons to report to cybertip.ca, which seems to be a very successful longstanding website, any material that could constitute child pornography.

Ontario passed a similar law in December 2008.

Thank goodness Ontario and Manitoba moved ahead because if they waited for the federal government, they would have been waiting an awful long time to get the job done.

The United States and Australia adopted laws in 2002, eight years ago, and in 2005, Australia imposed this requirement on the ISPs.

In terms of the current legislation that affects this area, we have section 163.1 of the Criminal Code, which was passed under the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien back in 1993. This was actually a very good initiative in its day, prohibiting the production, the distribution, the sale, and the possession of child pornography.

The definition under the legislation is a visual representation of explicit sexual activity with a person who is or is depicted as being under the age of 18, the visual representation for sexual purposes of persons under the age 18, or any written material advocating or counselling sexual activity with a person under the age of 18.

Internet child pornography takes the form of images, sound recordings, videos, drawings of accounts of sexual assaults on persons under the age of 18. In 2002, Bill C-15A amended subsection 163.1 of the code, which prohibited the distribution of child pornography by introducing the term “transmits” and made available to prohibit the distribution of child pornography online. The bill also added subsections 163.1 and 163.1 (4.2) to the code making it an offence to deliberately access child pornography by visiting a website, as an example.

Bill C-15A also provided for a special warrant in relation to Internet child pornography under section 164.1 of the code. If there are reasonable grounds to believe that child pornography is accessible through an ISP computer system, the judge may order the ISP to provide the necessary information to identify and locate the person who posted it. In addition, the judge may order the ISP to remove the Internet child pornography in question.

With regard sentencing, child pornography offences are considered hybrid offences. The prosecutor may choose whether the accused should be charged with an indictable offence and be liable to a summary conviction. The offences of producing, distributing and selling of child pornography, if treated as indictable offences, are punishable by a maximum prison term of 10 years and a minimum of one year. On summary conviction, they are punishable by a maximum prison term of 18 months and a minimum term of 90 days.

The offences of possession and viewing of child pornography on the computer are punishable for indictable offences by a maximum prison term of five years and a minimum term of 45 days and on a summary conviction by a maximum term of 18 months and a minimum of 14 days.

In terms of statistics on this issue, according to Statistics Canada, which gathers all types of information on pornography and not just Internet child pornography alone, child pornography offences have increased significantly in Canada from 55 offences in 1998 to 1,600 in 2007. I have some statistics that indicate how serious the issue is in Canada, which I will get to in a couple of minutes.

It is currently estimated that there are over five million child sexual abuse images on the Internet. According to an analysis by cybertip.ca, from 2002 to 2009 54.7% of the images on Internet sites contained pornographic images of children under the age of 8, 24.7% were of children aged 8 to 12, and 83% were girls. Over 35% of the images analyzed showed severe sexual assault. Children under the age of eight most often subjected to sexual assault was at 37.2% and extreme sexual assault was at 68.5%. Older children were usually shown naked or in an obscene pose.

The fact of the matter is that this situation is just getting worse. We are seeing this whole problem snowballing and getting bigger on a day-by-day, month-by-month, year-by-year basis while we sit here and do not take action.

The cybertip.ca study showed that the Internet sites containing child pornography are hosted in close to 60 countries. We know which countries are hosting these sites. For example, in the United States 49% of the sites are hosted in the United States, in Russia 20%, in Canada 9%. When we consider that we have only 30 million people in the country and 9% of the sites are hosted in Canada, that is a very large percentage. In Japan it is 4.3% and in South Korea it is 3.6%.

These sites are very difficult to track down because all of the child pornography files hosted on a web page are not necessarily hosted in the same location. For instance, image A may be hosted in Canada while image B on the same web page may be hosted in the United States. The web page itself might be hosted in yet another country such as Japan.

Similarly, an illegal site can hide the host location through an anonymous proxy server or through server rerouting. There are a lot of technical terms here that the average individual may not be familiar with. Suffice to say that whatever laws exist, the criminal elements, and we are talking about criminal elements, try to be one step ahead. When there are tough laws in one country, they simply move to another country.

The Liberal Party critic for this area has spoken several times on this bill. He has pointed out countries that have simply blocked the sites rather than put money into fighting this problem. Maybe that is the answer.

I asked the minister at the time, who is no longer even a member of the Conservative caucus, why she was announcing that she was going to spend $42 million chasing these sites. I asked her whether this was new money or old money. That was a year ago. She was still a Conservative and a minister in those days.

In Hansard she tells me that she is going to get back to me on this issue. I have yet to hear from her or anybody else in the government as to whether the $42 million to track down these sites is actually new money or just the same old money being announced over and over again.

What I suggest is that rather than spend $42 million to chase these criminals, because that is who they are, we look at those countries that have simply blocked the sites. That is the problem solved right there, it seems to me. We would not have to keep throwing endless amounts of money at the problem.

Identical sites may also be simultaneously located on different URLs. In such cases, it can be very difficult to remove the child pornography. Even if the site is closed down, the offensive material may still be accessible on the Internet. Moreover, illegal sites regularly change location so that they can avoid being shut down.

I want to deal with the penalties under this act before I run out of time. The fact is that these penalties are not tough enough. For individuals, the penalties being proposed are perhaps accurate. However, when we start dealing with companies, and if one considers that criminal groups are running these sites, these fines are simply the cost of doing business. I think the fine for a third offence is approximately $100,000. I will get to that at the end if I have time.

As I indicated, illegal sites regularly change location to avoid being shut down. In a period of 48 hours, Cybertip.ca counted 212 IP addresses in 16 countries for a single website. A website can also change location in just a few minutes by utilizing a network of personal computers as zombies. These zombies relay the content of the website hosted on another server.

Cybertip.ca recommended that when zombies are detected, ISPs running the networks to which these computers are connected should be able to suspend service for those computers until the infected computers are restored.

Another reason this whole problem is snowballing day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year into a bigger and bigger problem is the fact that the computer hardware and software has gotten so much better.

I can recall, perhaps 10 years ago, when the Rolling Stones announced that they were going to do the very first concert on the web. Nobody had done it before. That was in the days when the cameras were operating at 15 frames per second. We all remember those images being choppy. It was certainly in its infancy. The Internet was very slow in those days. We did not have the gigabit ethernet pipes we have today.

What has happened is that today we have a much more technologically advanced system that is designed perfectly for these criminal elements to take advantage of. Taking advantage of it they are.

Governments are sitting around, basically proroguing Parliament every year. We are thrown a bill that is really non-controversial in the sense that just about everyone agrees with the bill.

We passed pardon legislation dealing with the Karla Homolka situation in June in literally a day and a half. If the government really wants to accomplish something here and get the bill through, it only has to sit down with the House leaders and make an arrangement to sit for perhaps a few hours extra in the evening, given that there is not a lot of disagreement about how important the bill is and how it should be passed and put into effect to deal with the issues.

Any person may inform an ISP or other person providing Internet services that a web page, host page, Facebook page, or e-mail appears to contain child pornography. The ISP or other person providing Internet services must then report the address of the site, page or e-mail in question as soon as possible to an organization designated by the federal government.

For example, under Manitoba law, the designated organization is the national reporting agency Cybertip.ca. I want to say that Cybertip.ca has played a very important role in this whole process so far.

After being notified by a member of the public or an agency that child pornography may appear through the Internet services it provides, the ISP or other person providing the Internet services may have reasonable grounds to believe that child pornography is being transmitted through its services. It may also reach this conclusion on its own. When this is the case, the ISP or person providing the Internet services must notify the police as soon as possible.

I am running out of time, but I want to deal with a couple of other issues. There is a provision in the bill that the police must keep the computer data related to the child pornography offence for 21 days. Several people have questioned whether 21 days is appropriate. It seems not only to me but to a number of other people that 21 days may be too short a period for that to properly happen.

I also dealt with the offences. In terms of individuals, the fine is $1,000 for the first offence, $5,000 for a second and a maximum of $10,000 or six months for a third.

For corporations, the criminals who are running these sites, it is only $10,000 for the first offence, $50,000 for a second and $100,000 for a third, which is no more than the cost of doing business.

[Eliminating Entitlements for Prisoners Act, September 24th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am always interested to hear from the member because he makes very insightful speeches on not only this but many topics.

I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance would be more than prepared to let him know this. In the last budget, and I am not sure whether it was in that 880-page omnibus budget bill that was presented before the House or whether it was in another part of the budgetary process, but the government actually did deal with part of what he just spoke of. It tinkered with the rules a bit to give incentive to people who wished to work an extra two or three years and they will get paid a little bit more than if they were to take early retirement. That is already on its radar and it was dealt with last year to that small extent.

I read an article about that issue where an analyst said that it was a bit of an incentive. People who stayed in the workforce an extra three or four years would gain a little bit but at the end of the day it really was not that much and therefore the incentive for staying probably was not worth staying the extra three years. It is not really quite enough. Perhaps what the member is suggesting, combined with what the government is already doing, might actually achieve the desired effect.

I do not think what has been done with the system right now will achieve the results that the government itself is looking for here. It did not offer a big enough incentive for people to stay in the workforce those extra two or three years.

The member is welcome to check with the parliamentary secretary on this issue because he has all the details. However, it was passed and I believe it is in force as we speak, or should be. What the hon. member has mentioned is certainly an added benefit that we should look at because I do not think what the government has done will give it the desired effect. I could be wrong but I do not think so.

[Eliminating Entitlements for Prisoners Act, September 24th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to continue with my speech on this bill. As indicated, I spoke yesterday on it for a number of minutes and I have about 11 minutes left, but for those who are listening in today and who did not have the benefit of listening to the presentations yesterday on this bill, I will recap and then point out some of the things that this bill would do.

It would suspend payments of old age security, OAS, and guaranteed income supplement, GIS, to all persons 65 years of age and older while they are serving time in a federal correctional facility, which, of course, would be a sentence of two years or more.

It would suspend payments of the spousal or survivor allowance to eligible individuals between 60 and 64 years old while the individual is serving time in a federal facility.

It would maintain OAS and GIS payments to spouses and partners of those who are incarcerated, and provide to receive these payments at the higher single rate based on the individual rather than the combined spousal income. It also would maintain the spousal allowance benefits to the spouses of incarcerated individuals.

The bill would allow the provinces to opt in by entering into agreements with the federal government to suspend OAS, GIS and spousal allowance benefits on the above terms to all individuals incarcerated for a sentence that exceeds 90 days in a provincial facility. This would take a process of having all of the provinces opt into this bill. Notwithstanding the above, the benefit payments could still be paid during the first month of the incarceration. Benefit payments would resume the month that an individual was released on earned remission, parole, statutory release or a warrant expiry.

In terms of some of the positive aspects of the bill, which speakers on this side of the House have noted, there is an inherent and undeniable logic to suspending payments designed to provide for the basic necessities of life in cases when the taxpayer is already funding the basic necessities of life, and that has been mentioned by almost all of the speakers to this bill.

Another positive aspect of suspending pensions for prisoners is that it does have a lot of support out in the public. It would save between $2 million a year and up to $10 million per year if all of the provinces and the territories were to opt in. The bill would also mitigate, to an extent, the financial impact on spouses by allowing them to receive OAS and GIS payments at the single rate based on their individual rather than a combined spousal income.

I did deal with an issue here yesterday to which I still do not have an answer. I asked at what point, what year and what government was in place when the OAS and GIS benefits were initially provided to inmates of federal institutions. I understand that the year was 1979 when Joe Clark was the Conservative prime minister. It was the Conservative government of Joe Clark that started paying OAS and GIS payments to federal prisoners in the first place. I asked whether, in developing this bill, the government had gone back to those days to determine the debates that had occurred and why the government in those days decided to provide these payments to the prisoners in the first place.

Was there Hansard debate available here in the House at the time? I am sure this must have come before the House of Commons for debate. If there is no Hansard available, then how did this measure start? Was it an administrative decision on the part of Joe Clark and the Conservative government to provide these pension benefits to federal inmates? Exactly what was the process? Was there a court intervention? Did somebody take the issue to court and win a court case and that is why the federal government made that move?

We know that when we get this bill to committee there will be an opportunity to ask these questions and more so we can get a full understanding of where this issue came from. Essentially, like a lot of the government's justice initiatives, it is basically knee-jerk. It is based on what the latest polling shows or what the latest press articles are. When an article comes out, the next week the government introduces a bill to deal with that issue. When in actual fact we know, and the member for Nanaimo—Cowichan pointed out very well yesterday, that what we need is complete pension reform in this country

We need to move forward. We have seen some good signals coming from the Conservative government that it is prepared to look at doubling the benefits of the CPP as opposed to taking the private route and rewarding private insurance companies on Bay Street. I applaud the Conservatives for that because that is to the benefit of Canadian citizens and not something we would necessarily expect coming out of a Conservative government.

In the area of the Criminal Code, it has been mentioned several times in the House that the Criminal Code that is 100-plus years old, that it is out of date and that it needs a lot of revisions. It is time for the government to take a total view of things and make an announcement that the Criminal Code will be revised, get all the parties involved and embark on this process.

I still go back to what has not been accomplished under this minority government. When we compare the minority government period of Lester Pearson from 1962 to 1968, those six years, to this government which is pushing five years, it is only a year away from actually exceeding being probably the longest minority government in history and it has very little to show for its now five years in office.

During the same time, the Pearson government had resolved some very controversial issues. It brought in the new Canadian flag, which was very controversial to the members of the Conservatives at the time. It unified the armed forces, also extremely controversial, melding the air force, the navy and the army together in one unit. It brought in the Medicare Act. That government did a lot of things and the present government could be doing the same thing.

I look to Manitoba as well, under the Conservative government of Gary Filmon, where, in a minority situation, it got a lot of things done because it was trying to make parliament work.

However, here we have a group that is undecided as to how it wants to proceed. It develops a wedge politics attitude and every issue it looks at it wonders how it can drive wedges between the opposition parties and create division within the country. That is not how Lester Pearson ran the government.

I do not know how long it will take for the government to figure this out but I hope it does it soon because it may not be around that much longer. I would hate to see the Conservatives wake up years after the fact and realize that if only they had done this. I can see the Prime Minister, 10 years from now, saying, “I was the Prime Minister for five years and I could have done X, Y and Z but I let the opportunity pass”.

Once again I would call on the government and the Prime Minister to take the initiative, to do the comprehensive revisions to the pension system in this country, to initiate major changes to the Criminal Code and, by doing so, will develop a national vision for the government, which it does not have at this time.

As was pointed out yesterday, our member for Burnaby—New Westminster has a motion, Motion No. 507, tabled before the House where he requested that the government prohibit the payment of old age security and guaranteed income supplement payments to individuals serving life sentences for multiple murders, except for the individuals released from prison, and allocate the proceeds to a victims compensation program administered by the provinces. This is a very sensible approach in that it would cut the payments to mass murderers, 19 of them in the system right now, and it would take the proceeds from their pensions and put them into a compensation fund for the victims where it rightfully belongs. That would go a long way to helping victims in this country. It shows vision and it shows leadership, something that is severely lacking from the government on this particular issue.

We are offering solutions that try to contribute to the problems in the country.

[September 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, this minister and this government are not standing up for consumers at all. They are apologists for the industry, are completely in the pockets of the industry, and basically take their direction from the industry representatives.

We do not even have statistics in Canada. We do not keep statistics as they do in the United States, so the minister and the parliamentary secretary cannot even tell us how many delays of over three hours or under three hours there are.

The approach they have taken right now with Flight Rights Canada has allowed the airlines to put these rules within their codes, but in actual fact, there is no legal requirement for the passenger to collect if the airline does not voluntarily pay. The airlines have--

[September 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, a few months ago I asked the minister a question regarding the major improvements the Obama administration made in terms of air passenger rights. In November it imposed the first tarmac delay penalties in North America. Basically after a three-hour tarmac delay, the airline has to pay $27,500 per passenger in fines. Pretty much out of the gate, Southwest Airlines was fined $200,000 for overbooking flights.

I asked when the Canadian government would catch up with Europe and the United States and start protecting air passenger rights. The minister's response was simply that he had a meeting with me in the next hour and that was it.

Coming out of the meeting the minister did ask if I had any information about how many flights actually were stuck on the tarmac for more than three hours. I pointed out to him at the time that in fact he does not have that information in Canada because Canada does not keep information like that. The United States actually does. We can make reference to numbers of flights that have kept people on the tarmac in the United States for considerable periods of time.

For the information of the minister and parliamentary secretary, up to October 2009 there were evidently 864 flights that held people on the tarmac for three hours or more, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Using 2007-08 data, there was an average of 1,500 domestic flights per year carrying 114,000 passengers that were delayed more than three hours.

The fact of the matter is that these new rules that were announced last Christmas and that came into force around April 1 have already shown terrific results, results that should compel the government to take similar action. For example, in May and June of this year, tarmac delays exceeding three hours numbered a total of eight times compared with 302 occurrences during the same two months in 2009. This is the first evidence we have that President Obama's directive to transportation secretary Ray LaHood last December is actually having an effect.

I would ask the parliamentary secretary to take that under advisement and recognize that the United States has leaped way ahead of Canada. From being behind Canada, it has leaped way ahead by imposing fines on airlines that keep people imprisoned on airplanes for more than three hours.

Having said that, I still like the approach that we have taken here with my air passenger bill of rights that would allow for compensation directly to the passengers. In the United States the airlines are fined and the money goes to the government. In Canada we should have an approach where the money goes to the people who are inconvenienced, the passengers on those planes.

I would like the minister to respond to these points.

[Health Care System, September 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Motion No. 513 this evening. I would like to read it again into the record. I actually think it is a very good motion. In fact, it is proposed by the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo. It reads:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should encourage and assist provincial and territorial governments, the medical community and other groups to lessen the burden on Canada's health care system through: (a) an increased adoption of technological developments; (b) a better recognition of the changing roles of health care professionals and the needs of Canadians; and (c) a greater focus on strategies for healthy living and injury prevention.

Based on that particular motion, I really cannot understand why anybody would have a big problem with this resolution. This is a very complicated and complex problem which is gaining in cost. The health care system is eating up such a high percentage of provincial budgets.

I remember when I was first elected, and even before that when I was assistant to a minister in the Schreyer government in Manitoba in the 1970s, the health minister of the day had himself been a long time member of the legislature. He would tell me that we could not sustain the growth in the cost of the health care system. That was 30 years ago, but in those days we were looking at different concepts, different ideas, and one was a capitation system that had been working quite well in the Minneapolis area. We were looking at that. We approached the doctors on that issue and got a bit of resistance.

Things have changed, however slowly, over the years, to the point now where I am told we have doctors in England, for example, who are compensated and get paid on the basis of the health outcome. I think that is what we should be looking at. Rather than people with, for example, diabetes, going to the doctor and receiving their prescriptions and their medications, as is the case now, presumably these patients go to see the English doctor, who would be approached on the basis of compensation, that if the patient's nutrition could be changed, if the doctor could get the patient to lose weight and stop smoking, then that doctor would be compensated for each of those positive outcomes. Perhaps that is what we have to look at.

My Bloc friend will know that in the last week there was a news report from Quebec that the Quebec government evidently gave some sort of incentive to people to take the non-smoking treatments, the patch. Perhaps the federal government should be looking at that, some sort of incentive to get people to quit smoking and stay in that state of having quit smoking. Once again, a lot of good ideas come out of the province of Quebec and that is one I think we should be looking at here.

That deals with the member's third item. The greater focus on strategies for healthy living and injury prevention are just some examples of what we have to be looking at. I realize that we are dealing with silos. We dealt with government online programs in Manitoba and across the country, and federally we do here too. The government's biggest problem is breaking down the silos that exist in its departments. Government members think they are making decisions as a government, but just two or three levels below their ministerial offices, they will find out that people are doing, in some cases, the opposite of what they are asking them to do. It is very frustrating. That is why we have a very difficult time.

I will just give one example of electronic health records. I had been to numerous United States legislature conferences in the midwest, which consisted of all of the states, 11 states from Illinois to North Dakota, for probably six years or so. Every year we discussed progress regarding electronic health records.

There they have a real incentive for getting electronic health records in place because of the liability issue. There are so many accidental deaths caused by people not reading the chart properly and having the wrong information because of bad handwriting. I know Dr. Gerrard, the Manitoba Liberal Leader and MLA, had some statistics a couple of years ago in the Manitoba Legislature indicating an atrocious number of people who died in the hospitals because of mess-ups in medications due to bad handwriting. The electronic health record will go a long way to preventing that from happening.

In the United States there has been a lot of effort made in that area. A recent report in Canada indicated that after a huge amount of money had been spent over a number of years, we only have 11% or 15% of the records in an electronic fashion. Why is that?

I think if the Auditor General were to look into it a little further, she would find that a lot of it has to do with the saddles, the reluctance of people to work together.

Another really good example is the area of computer programs. A number of years ago when Paul Martin was still the Prime Minister, we had a conference here in Ottawa on the IT issues. Reg Alcock, who was a minister at the time, made sure that I was invited to that and I did go to that.

The federal government was looking at giving the provinces money. Reg was saying that we cannot just hand them the money without indicating how we want it spent. Reg wanted the money to go to the provinces to be used for technological changes, to purchase gamma ray machines and new equipment.

He was concerned that, in fact, the money was being sent there but it was not going to be used for that, that it would be used for some other purpose, perhaps still within the medical system, but it was not going to be used for what the federal government wanted it to be used for.

I think that is a big part of the problem here. I suggested at the time that the federal government should mandate a national program, an IT program for computer programs. Let us say there is a certain program developed for hospital usage, then that program should be offered by the federal government and simply provided to the provinces. The same system should be in place right across the country in all the hospitals.

We had a department of industry, trade and commerce putting up money for software developers. I toured its facility one day. What did we find out? We found a software company that was just thrilled. The government had paid half the cost of developing a program. It was a receivables program for the hospitals. The owner told me he was so happy that he had sold it to five or six hospitals.

The taxpayer has paid for the development of the software, and now has the pleasure of paying again, over and over, as each hospital buys that particular program when, in fact, the program could have been developed once and sent out to the hospitals.

This is a case where one arm of the government is really acting at odds with another part of the government. For example, when we were dealing with online programs dealing with a simple matter like the Securities Commission, we found in Manitoba we could have taken the system for free from Alberta or B.C. But, no, the Manitoba department involved in the Securities Commission came in and said, “No, we want to develop our own because we have specific legislation”.

It had all sorts of reasons why it could not take this free software program from Alberta. I think this is where the federal government has a strong role to play in directing the policies of health care in the country, by offering these options. The federal government could say, “Here is a software program”.

The province could have it for whatever the cost is so that it does not have to go and develop its own programs. Then there would be 10 different provinces developing 10 different programs that cannot talk to one other. That is a very big problem. We could spend hours on this whole area of compatibility problems with software programs and so on.

We need to have some sort of standardization. In the old days when the railways were made, it was necessary to have a single gauge across the country to make the railway system work

[Eliminating Entitlements for Prisoners Act, September 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-31. This is a controversial subject that has certainly prompted the government to spin itself into action when it became public information that Clifford Olson was receiving OAS and GIS benefits. However, no mention has been made at all about how, why and when these benefits were originally made available to federal inmates. I for one have been trying to find out just how that came about. My information is that the benefits were given to federal inmates under a Conservative government in 1979, the government of Joe Clark.

I would like somebody on the government side to stand and tell me why the Conservative government proceeded to give federal inmates OAS and GIS benefits back in 1979. Perhaps there is some Hansard of the day that we could refer to. Perhaps there was a directive. Perhaps it was done as a result of a court decision upon which the government had to act. However, certainly in the fullness of debate that we would expect in this House over a bill, or any bill for that matter, that information should be made available.

In dealing with the actual provisions of Bill C-31 and other related measures, the member for Nanaimo—Cowichan, in her presentation, pointed out that the NDP member for Burnaby—New Westminster did introduce into this House Motion No. 507.

I want to read Motion No. 507 for the members. It reads:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should prohibit the payment of Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement payments to individuals serving life sentences for multiple murders, except where the individual is released from prison, and allocate the proceeds to a Victims Compensation Program administered by the provinces.

That particular motion, which was introduced by one of our NDP members, is currently before the House and I am certain that it will be debated in due course.

However, in terms of the provisions of the bill, as we know from the debate this afternoon, the bill would suspend payment of the OAS and the guaranteed income supplement to all persons 65 years of age and older while they are serving time in a federal correctional facility, and that, as we know, would be a sentence of two years or more. The bill would also suspend payment of the spousal or survivor allowance to eligible individuals between 60 and 64 while that individual is serving time in a federal facility.

It also maintains the OAS and GIS payments to spouses and partners of those who are incarcerated and provides to receive these payments at the higher single rate based under individual not combined spousal program.

We also know that the CPP provisions would stay in place. They would not be affected by this bill.

Also, the bill would maintain spousal allowance benefits to the spouses of incarcerated individuals.

It would allow the provinces to opt in by entering into agreements with the federal government to suspend OAS and GIS and spousal allowance benefits on the above terms to all individuals incarcerated for a sentence that exceeds 90 days in a provincial facility.

The member who just spoke showed some concern about how this would work vis-à-vis the provinces. He was fairly clear that the federal component would not be a problem but when we were dealing with the provinces he has some concerns.

I believe all these issues can be dealt with when this bill goes to committee. We are dealing with second reading here. We are dealing with the principle of the bill. However, as the members know, when we get into the committee structure, many more aspects to this bill will be dealt with and amendments will be made at that time.

Notwithstanding the above, the benefit payments would still be paid during the first month of incarceration. The benefit payments would resume the month that an individual was released on earned remission, parole, statutory release or warrant expiry.

In terms of some of the positive aspects of the bill, and I think we have heard some comments this afternoon about that, there is a certain logic to suspending payments designed to provide for the basic necessities of life in cases where the taxpayer is already funding the basic needs of necessities of life. Suspending pensions for prisoners meets a test for a lot of Canadians. We have heard from Canadians on this issue in large numbers.

We know that $2 million would be saved immediately under the program and up to, I believe, $10 million a year if all of the provinces and territories were to opt in. We also know that the bill would mitigate to an extent the financial impact on the spouses because it would allow spouses to receive the OAS and GIS payments at the single rate based on their individual rather than their combined spousal income.

I want to retreat to the motion that was tabled by the NDP member for Burnaby—New Westminster, Motion No. 507, where he specifically deals with the issue and very narrowly focuses the resolution on the issue of payments to individuals serving life sentences for multiple murders, of which I understand there are approximately 19 people in that category at the current time. Except where the individual is released from prison, it allocates the proceeds to a victims compensation program administered by the provinces. We would not only have the benefit of stopping payments to serial murderers but we would have the added benefit of taking the money and presenting it to the victims.

If we are a Parliament that believes in help for victims, it seems to me that the member has thought of a proper approach to this problem by earmarking the OAS and GIS amounts to a victims compensation program administered by the provinces. To me, that is a much more sensible approach to the problem as opposed to the broader forum that this bill implies.

Having said that, I do not have any problem at all with this bill going to committee. I do not have a problem with it in principle. In the committee, the debate will follow through and get to all of the issues. Hopefully we will consider the suggestion by the member for Burnaby—New Westminster to confine it to multiple murderers, that we take the money and put it in a compensation fund to help victims, which is where it should go, and that perhaps we can make some amendments to the issue.