Jim Maloway

[Business of Supply, June 10th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I would like to know what the member would have to say to his very own Conservative senator from Alberta who is leading the charge against the national securities regulator, and who points out that over time, there will be a job loss in Alberta, and that a national securities regulator will not be sensitive to the financial community as it exists in Alberta right now and where it plans to go.

This is a question that, over time, Alberta will lose jobs. We know that this will be headquartered in Toronto. Everybody knows that. The fact that the Conservatives say they have not decided yet is just a big joke. We know that is where it will be headed and over time those jobs will move from Montreal, from Edmonton, from Winnipeg, and will be concentrated in Toronto.

What would he say to the people in Alberta about that?

[Business of Supply, June 10th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, it is very clear that the federal government is simply taking advantage of the economic crisis to push this argument. We all know that the idea of a national securities regulator has been around since 1935 with the royal commission. That was some 75 years ago. It has been discussed. There was a five-year study done in 1973. In 1988 there were more initiatives in this area and then again in the mid-1990s. There is nothing new here.

The fact is the passport system, which many members have spoken about, only came into effect in 2006. Manitoba joined the passport system in 2006. It has been mentioned many times that the passport system works very well in this regard. The Manitoba government is 100% in favour of it. However, the Manitoba government has been dead set against the idea of getting involved with a national securities regulator for about 10 or 15 years now.

This is not only a Quebec issue; it is a Manitoba issue and an Alberta issue. In fact, last week, some major corporate executives in Alberta came out strongly against this idea because there would be job losses in Alberta. For those members of the Conservative Alberta caucus, who are looking over their backs at the wild rose chasing after them, they ought to pay some more attention to this. A lot of business people in Alberta are not supportive of what the government is doing. The government is gradually losing touch with the voters who it claims to be representing.

[Business of Supply, June 10th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I think the member has correctly pointed out in his speech that the United Kingdom and the United States have a single regulator, and they still had to bail out their banks.

This really gets to the point that while Canada has tough laws to combat fraud and unfair practices, what we need is proper enforcement. I have always observed and said that if we keep hiring the regulators from the companies that they are supposed to be regulating, then we will essentially have an insider system, a system that is basically asleep at the switch. That is essentially what has happened here.

It is not so much the structure that we are dealing with; it is the people who are in the structure. Regardless of which system we have, if we do not hire enforcement-oriented people, and we simply hire industry insiders to be the regulators, then we are going to continue to have these problems.

The fact of the matter is that either side can present good arguments. There are jurisdictional issues here. This issue has been going on for many years. I predict that it will be decided in favour of the provinces because that is where it has been for the last 100 years.

I would like to ask the member, would he like to comment on that whole question about the type of enforcement, and whether or not it is the people who are doing the enforcing that is the problem?

[Business of Supply, June 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am really surprised by the government's priorities. It is closing down prison farms and pushing the Canada-Colombia free trade deal. Now its next big topic is a centralized national securities regulator, which by the way, it has to refer to the Supreme Court before moving it forward. As the member pointed out, it has spent $300 million already on something that may be largely unnecessary.

This matter is not only about Quebec. The province of Manitoba for at least the last 10 years, maybe more, has definitely been looking at this issue and is definitely opposed to it. The province of Alberta is very concerned about what will happen to its financial services sector as a result of this. My question would be where B.C. is in all of this. Why is B.C. not interested in questioning this whole idea? Why is it only Quebec, Alberta, and Manitoba at this point?

Fundamentally, it is not necessarily the structures that count; it is the people running the structures. The different regulators in the United States and Canada have all been asleep at the switch. They tend to hire people from the very industries they are there to regulate. That is not the way we should be setting up our securities commissions.

[Petitions, June 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is signed by dozens of Canadians calling on the government to match funds personally donated by the citizens of Canada for the victims of the earthquake in Chile.

On February 27, 2010 there was an 8.8 magnitude earthquake in southern Chile. The Chilean Canadian community has been having social events since that time to raise money. The question is still being raised as to when the Prime Minister will give the same treatment to the victims of the earthquake in Chile that he did for the victims of the earthquake in Haiti and match funds personally donated by Canadians to help the victims of the earthquake in Chile.

[Petitions, June 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present today.

The first petition is signed by dozens of Canadians calling on the government to come to its senses and stop the closure of the six Canadian prison farms. All six prison farms, including Rockwood Institution in Manitoba, have been functioning farms for many decades now. They are providing food to the prisons and the community.

The prison farm operations provide rehabilitation. They provide training for prisoners through working with and caring for plants and animals. The work ethic and rehabilitation benefit of waking up at 6 a.m. and working out of doors is a discipline that many Canadians can appreciate. Closing these farms will mean a loss of the infrastructure and will make it way too expensive to replace them at some future date.

Therefore, the petitioners call on the Government of Canada to stop the closure of the six Canadian prison farms across Canada, and furthermore, to produce a report on the work and rehabilitative benefits of prisoners of the farm operation and on how the program can be adapted to meet the agriculture needs of the 21st century.

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, June 9th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, it has been four years since the Bush administration signed an agreement with Colombia and yet the U.S. Congress has not ratified it. That should tell us something. For four solid years the United States of America has not seen fit to ratify its agreement with Colombia.

When the Conservatives were in opposition, they decried the whole idea of the Liberal government bringing in closure. The Liberal government brought in closure, I believe, 150 times. When the Conservatives were in opposition, they said that if they formed government they would not bring in closure. They have gone back on their word. They have broken the trust of the people of Canada. I ask them to come clean and admit that.

[Canadian Human Rights Act, June 8th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-389 presented by the member for Burnaby—Douglas. I know he has worked on this bill since 2004, for six long years, and this is the first time it has been debated in the House. I have listened to some very excellent speeches on the bill. We are in the second hour of debate.

Bill C-389 would add gender identity and gender expression as prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act and sections of the Criminal Code dealing with hate propaganda and sentencing for hate crimes. We are following up on a recommendation made as early as 2000 by the Canadian Human Rights Act Review Panel.

The bill would help protect transsexual, transgender and gender nonconformist people in Canada from the very severe discrimination they face in numerous aspects of life such as discrimination in employment, a staggering unemployment rate, housing, obtaining government and social services, including health care, official identification with consequences for banking, education and other services, business and other areas, as well as incitement to hatred, assault, sexual assault and murder.

Various studies have quoted in detail the discrimination by which trans people are subjected. Currently the Northwest Territories is the only legislature in Canada to have passed such a measure, while other cities of Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver offer certain protections.

Although some provincial human rights commissions have found that transsexuals are already protected under grounds such as section disability, it leaves the issue invisible and it may not cover everyone who is discriminated against because of the gender identity or expression. Explicitly prohibiting discrimination on both grounds, gender identity and gender expression, will ensure a broad coverage of people who are discriminated against due to their nonconformity with social ideas of gender. It would also conform to Canada's international statements on the issue and would follow the lead of more than 100 U.S. jurisdictions that offer such protection.

In 1986 in Manitoba, the attorney general of the day, Roland Penner, attempted to introduce initially to the NDP government caucus of which there were 30 of us at the time, and it was a majority government by only one or two members, a bill to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in the Human Rights Code. I am sure it was a first in Canada. It was a very traumatic experience for a lot of people. After several ill-fated attempts in just getting it accepted and through the caucus, he was able to convince the government caucus to proceed, with the aggressive support of four of us, one being the chairman, Mr. Steve Ashton, who is the father of our current Churchill MP and is still an MLA and cabinet minister in Manitoba, the current city councillor, Harvey Smith, who was a former MLA, Marty Dolin, who was a very dynamic and no-nonsense MLA and strong advocate for social change, and myself as well.

We had the support in those days of the Liberal leader, who had a caucus of herself, and she was a very strong advocate. In spite of my differences with her over the years, she does a great job in the Senate. She is one of the more active senators and I really appreciate the work she does there.

However, we encountered very strong opposition from the Conservative opposition of the day. In the provincial legislature it is a little different. The committee structure is different from Parliament's, where pretty much everyone who wants to appear at committee gets their 10 minutes to present. While we had a number of people present in favour of the legislation, we had hundreds of people being brought in by different church organizations. I recall the member for Laval's excellent speech earlier today. Several church groups organized and brought in hundreds of people. We would sit there until midnight, night after night, listening to these presentations, and I remember it very well.

We had some difficulties, even within our own caucus, convincing people that this legislation was not there to promote any type of lifestyle. We had to convince people that we were simply bringing in a human right, that we were including this measure in the Human Rights Act and that people were not allowed to be discriminated against in terms of employment, finding an apartment and other areas.

The opposition, however, became very nervous about all of this and suggested that somehow the government would, at the end of the day, be promoting. Well, the world did not come to an end because of what we did in 1986. If anything, more jurisdictions adopted what we did then.

After six and a half years in government as premier of Manitoba, I believe Howard Pawley, as the premier today, will tell us that what he did in terms of including sexual orientation in the human rights code of Manitoba was one of his proudest achievements of his six and a half years. I do not think he would have thought of it and said that at the time but, as time went by, he recognized that as a milestone.

I would say that even the Conservatives in the Manitoba legislature today would look back, I believe, with some embarrassment about how they responded and acted at that time.

Doing the right thing is often difficult but, when it comes to human rights, they are fundamental in a democratic society. We cannot take any shortcuts when it comes to human rights.

I expect that my email machine will be on overdrive tomorrow, and that is to be expected. There have been a lot of big changes in society since the 1960s and I think the member for Laval captured it very well when she described her situation in the 1960s. I can relate to that as well, as I think many people can. For the benefit of society, things have changed. There are more open-minded people today than there were in the 1960s. I think of lot of it has to do with the educational process. When people have issues explained to them and when they understand the issues better, they will be more accepting.

The fact is that the world did not come crashing down because of what we did in 1986. There are many other jurisdictions that are dealing with issues like this.

I want to take a moment to recognize two trailblazers, who the member for Burnaby—Douglas knows as well, Mr. Chris Vogel and Mr. Richard North from Winnipeg. I remember meeting Chris Vogel when I was a student activist back in 1971 at the University of Manitoba. Chris Vogel was active in organizing gays for equality at the University of Manitoba.

Many years before gay marriage even became an issue in Canada, Chris Vogel and Richard North were married. I think it was probably the first gay marriage in North America. I did not want to forget to mention Chris Vogel and Richard North before my time ran out.

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, June 8th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, one of the biggest travesties of this omnibus bill, Bill C-9, is the sale of AECL, a measure that in itself should mandate a legislative initiative from the government. It is hiding it in this omnibus bill. AECL is our largest crown corporation. The Canadian taxpayers have put $22 billion into it. The government is looking at selling it at a time when it would be lucky to get $300 million for our investment.

I think the public should be demanding that the government at least do this in a transparent way. The government commissioned a report from Rothschild on how to proceed. It never consulted Parliament about its contents. We want to know why the government is sneaking this measure into an omnibus bill like Bill C-9.

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, June 8th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the member a follow-up question. The member raised the issue of Canada Post and the remailers, and I really think that this is the smoking gun in this 880-page omnibus bill. The Conservative government has tried to throw in a lot of things that do not really apply. The sale of AECL is one of them, but certainly the remailers is the most blatant example.

I say that because the government, independent of this measure, introduced the remailer issue under Bill C-14 and Bill C-44 over the last two or three years. It presented them in this House. These bills were debated in this House and they were not passed by this House. It could not get these bills through.

Seeing a weakness over on the Liberal side in the opposition, the government has thrown everything into this bill. Things that do not belong have been thrown into the bill because the government knows that the Liberals will go along with it and pass it through as law.

Would the member like to make some comments on that point?