Jim Maloway

[Prison Farms, May 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the government has called for the closure of all six Canadian prison farms.

All six prison farms, including Rockwood Institution in Manitoba, which I recently visited, have been functioning farms for many decades, providing food to prisons and communities. The prison farm operations provide rehabilitation and 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 outdoors is a discipline Canadians can appreciate. Closing these farms would mean a loss of the infrastructure and would make it too expensive to reopen them in the future.

It seems the government is willing to close these Canadian prison farm operations across Canada when clearly, the work and rehabilitative benefit to prisoners of the farm operations is actually a positive thing and its own Conservative supporters think we should have even more prison farms, not less.

[Fairness at the Pumps Act, May 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member. All of those items should be included in the bill and we will be dealing with them at committee.

My Liberal friends and I are cross-debating the whole idea. If we assume for a moment that the penalties are a big improvement, long overdue and required, then perhaps we should be looking at not hiring the private inspection team and just simply beefing up the existing government inspection team and have it inspect on a random basis. Rather than conducting the number of inspections being done right now, perhaps over the next year we could double or triple the number of inspections. The private sector should not be involved in inspections that risk gouging the retailer.

There is a smart way to do this and we can probably resolve this at committee.

[Fairness at the Pumps Act, May 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I will deal with the question of odometers first. Odometers are already included so no amendment would need to be added.

My argument for the member would be this. A private business anywhere in this country would, I believe, trust a government inspector over a private sector inspector who approaches the business on the basis of making a profit.

The other issue that we need to deal with is the question of whether there should be set appointment dates or whether there should be surprise inspections. We perhaps should be looking at doubling the number of government inspectors and have them do random inspections so operators are not tipped off, but keep the good part of the bill that deals with increased penalties.

I like what the government has done with the penalties because they would not only help with the gas pump issue but also deal with odometers. I like all of what the government is proposing to do with regard to the penalties. I just do not like the idea of the government privatizing the inspection process, because people being inspected would know when the inspector was going to show up and they would be charged an arm and a leg for the inspection. That is what I do not like about the bill.

[Fairness at the Pumps Act, May 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, whenever the Conservatives, whether it is federal or provincial Conservatives, talk about consumer protection or bringing in a type of consumer protection, it always seems to coincide with some offset to business lobbying.

In the case of the vehicle inspections in Manitoba, it was cloaked in the argument of driver safety and safer cars. What it was really about was taking a government inspection service and turning it over to the private sector.

We do not see the Conservatives supporting the air passengers' bill of rights because there is nothing in it for the private sector. Once again, any time we see any consumer initiatives coming from the Conservatives, we know there has to be some sort of hidden trade-off to private sector. In this case the government is looking at private sector inspectors.

In terms of ambient temperature, members clearly have a point on this. We dealt with this issue in the 1990s in Manitoba.

In terms of gas prices, 125 studies have gone nowhere. For the last 10 or 15 years, the member for Pickering—Scarborough East has been a leader in that caucus, going against his government when the Liberals were in power. He has demanded changes to the Competition Act. That is the only way we will start to get convictions on price fixing at the pumps.

[Fairness at the Pumps Act, May 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased today to speak to Bill C-14, a bill that has been a long time coming to the House.

On April 15, 2010 the Minister of Industry introduced Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measures Act, which is when it was given first reading. Of course, the government calls it the fairness at the pumps act.

Bill C-14 provides for court imposed fines under the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measures Act. It also provides for higher maximum fines for offences committed under each of those acts. In fact, it increases them by quite a substantial amount, and that is a very positive thing. It creates new offence provisions for repeat offenders.

The bill also amends the Weights and Measures Act to require retailers to have their devices that they use in trade or in their possession inspected at regular intervals. That new requirement is to be enforced through a new offence provision. The enactment also provides the Minister of Industry with the authority to designate non-government inspectors or authorized service providers as inspectors to perform certain examinations.

At the outset, we are certainly looking for some amendments to this particular bill. As I had indicated, two years ago an Ottawa Citizen report on a Measurement Canada investigation revealed that between 1999 and 2007, government inspections of over 200,000 fuel pumps found that about 5% of the pumps delivered less fuel than reported on the pump display. Government inspection data showed that about one-third of Canada's gas stations, or about 14,000 of them, had at least one faulty pump. A motorist who fills up at various stations and pumps is likely to be short-changed about twice a year. This means that Canadians have been paying for gasoline they did not receive and the government was collecting tax revenue based on phantom gasoline purchases.

At the time the story came out, our critic questioned the minister, and he indicated that he would change the regulations to impose higher fines and have more inspections. In fact, nothing happened at that time. During the election campaign of 2008, the Conservatives made a promise to bring about changes to increase the monitoring of fuel pumps across the country and increase the fines for violations. Once again, nothing happened until now with the introduction of the bill. We could always say better late than never, but it certainly has been late.

No resolution or corrective action has been taken since the original report back in 2008, which means that the faulty pumps the government is talking about have been overcharging customers across the country and the violators have not been punished, even though the data from Measurement Canada would indicate the locations of repeat offenders. In addition, the question of government collecting taxes on these phantom purchases or overcharges has never actually been resolved.

Bill C-14 will, as I had indicated, increase fines and introduce administrative monetary penalties. The fairness at the pumps act proposes to strengthen consumer protection and provide greater deterrents against inaccurate measurement by increasing the court imposed fines under the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measurements Act. The fines on the two acts would rise from $1,000 to $10,000 for minor offences and from $5,000 to $25,000 for major offences. The amendments also introduce a new fine of up to $50,000 for repeat offences.

The fines under the Weights and Measurements Act would also cover odometer rollbacks. We say that is a good thing, but interestingly enough, no mention has been made of that. It is listed further on the sections that will be impacted by the bill.

At no point does it mention that the issue of the rollback and tampering of odometers is now going to meet with the same penalties and severity that is being used for this issue of the gas pumps. I wonder why that is the case. Perhaps it is an oversight that no one over there noticed, though I find that hard to believe. It seems to me that odometer rollbacks would be an even bigger and more popular issue for a government that wants to act on behalf of consumers.

For many generations now, since the invention of the automobile, people have been disconnecting their odometers. Both private individuals and car industry people have been replacing their odometers and rolling their odometers back. That has resulted in huge consumer losses. Many people listening today and even people in this chamber may not know that in the past they may have purchased a vehicle with a certain mileage on it. In fact, it may have been a vehicle that had many more miles on it, but the odometer had been disconnected, replaced or rolled back. They will never know that this has happened to them.

To me, that is a big exposure. We dealt with this issue in Manitoba a number of years ago under the previous Filmon government. The owner of a garage had been convicted under the Weights and Measures Act 25 years prior. It did not stop him because the penalties were just not there. He just kept doing what he was doing. He was buying cars in auctions in Toronto. They were cars that had maybe 300,000 kilometres on them. He was systematically rolling them back and putting them at 80,000 kilometres so that these four year or five year old cars would not draw attention.

He was buying them for $4,000 and selling them for $8,000. That seemed to be the formula he was using so that people would not be suspicious of the amount of mileage on the car. As a matter of fact, police officers told me at the time that they just had to go to the lot to spot dealerships that were rolling back odometers. If pretty much all the cars on the lot were all around the 80,000 kilometre mark, they knew that they had somebody who was rolling back odometers.

We know that this was a big, widespread activity. In fact, when this gentleman was caught for the second time, the Weights and Measures Act penalties were once again not sufficient to really cause him huge concern. I am even happier now to have the penalties we see under this act raised knowing that they will cover the issue with odometers.

The government is also looking at setting private inspectors up to do inspections. We wonder how much that is going to impact the cost to business. In Manitoba, a number of years ago under the previous Filmon government and at about the same time as the gentleman I just spoke about was rolling back odometers, the government decided to change the provincial rules and require the new odometer readings to be put into the computer and onto the system each time a car was sold.

Also around that time, because of lobbying on the part of the Manitoba Motor Dealers Association, the government of the day decided to make safety inspections mandatory. Up to that time, previous governments simply did it on a random basis. Cars would be called in for a safety inspection every two, three or four years. The government changed the rule that said that private garages had to inspect cars every time the cars were sold. Now, if a car had been owned for 10 years, it never received an inspection at all until it was sold, whereas the old system had a random approach and the inspection one received was for two years.

That led to a lot of abuses. In many cases, garages would take advantage of the consumers and could spot all sorts of defects in the car. Alternatively, the media, which did some checking of different garages, found that some garages wanted to fix many more items than needed to be fixed. In other cases, people would simply approve a car because they knew somebody. Therefore, this system did not work that great.

However, the point is it was brought in not because of any huge consumer demand for it, but because industry wanted it. Industry wanted to be able to inspect those used cars. What it did, almost overnight, was drive the cost of used cars up, at least at the low end. Once it was institutionalized, when the government changed in 1999 and the NDP came back in power, not only did it not remove it and go back to the old random inspections on behalf of the government, but it changed the rules once again. Under lobbying from the Motor Dealers Association, it changed the rules so it was no longer a two-year inspection but a one-year inspection. We have had this system now for a number of years.

I only relate this experience because of potentially what can happen in a case like this. The last two speakers to the bill have mentioned the fact that this will save the consumers roughly $20 million, but the cost to business has not been quantified. The government is planning to increase the number of inspections. More important, it is planning to allow the private sector to start conducting the inspections.

For rural areas and areas up north, this may mean greatly increased costs. My friend from Yukon will be up asking me a question about this in short order. In areas such as Yukon and the Northwest Territories, how is the government going to deal with that situation? To have an inspection done now may literally cost the little retailer hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

It remains to be seen what is being unleashed here. I am certainly sympathetic and agreeable to the idea because it should be done. In terms of having private inspection services involved, I see a lot of potential for abuse. I do not know whether the government is going to mandate the fee schedule that these inspectors have to charge or whether it is going to mandate the training that the inspectors need to have. We do not know any of that at this point.

The privatization of this inspection service by mandating these frequent inspections is going to be carried out by these newly authorized service providers or private companies. I guess it is basically another privatization effort. The Filmon government took a functioning government program in Manitoba, and changed it. It was a fair system that had been functioning for probably 20 years. On a random basis, people's cars would be called in for an inspection. The inspection would be done by a government motor vehicles inspector, who the public would trust. The member for Yukon can appreciate that. If people had been driving their cars for 10 years and all of a sudden they received a notice in the mail to bring them in to be inspected, they knew it was a government inspector, a qualified motor vehicles inspector, who would inspect the car and who had no incentive to do bad things. If something needed to be replaced, it would be written up and it would have to be replaced.

The Filmon government changed that inspection system and turned it over to the private sector, to private garages. Overnight we saw examples of gouging the public. The same garage doing the inspection report was also doing the repairs. It was very easy to take a car, find a dozen things wrong with it and then repair them and bill the customer. Not only now were people making money for doing the inspections, they were also making money for the repairs.

CBC did an indepth study with a ghost car program. I went to Canadian Tire and other garages. By the way, this was not done only once, it was done over a period of time. It did one series of inspections and a year later, guess what? It was the same garages doing the very same thing to the public. Some of the better known names fared worse in the study than some of the little mom and pop garages that were involved in the investigation.

What are we going to do? The private inspections are going to be increased from 8,000 to 65,000 a year. Perhaps the member for Yukon will put forward an amendment to revisit this after a number of years to see how the system has worked. I am not suggesting a sunset clause, but some sort of amendment that we would have a mandatory review after a three year period, a cost benefit analysis to see how well the system had worked.

There is no ombudsman office to evaluate problems or investigate complaints. There is no refund or compensation for consumers who are ripped off. There is no refund or restitution on the taxes collected by the phantom gasoline purchases.

I know a number of speakers want to talk about gas prices and that certainly is an issue. However, I want to talk about the fairness at the pumps act, which proposes to increase retailer accountability for measuring device accuracy by requiring retailers to have the devices inspected at regular intervals. I am not certain what those regular intervals would be, whether it would be six months or an annual inspection.

I believe the Liberal member talked about the inspection not being random any more. Right now there are random inspections. In many cases, a random inspection would be the best idea. However, if an inspection is appointment-based, if any skullduggery goes on in the system, what will stop the retailer from simply making certain the problem is fixed the day the inspector shows up and then change the pumps back after the inspector leaves. I am not certain how these things work. If people know when the inspector is coming, they can set up the pumps to ensure they pass the inspection. If that is the case, what is the point of doing this? I would think the random inspection is probably enough to keep people honest.

Let us assume the government is on the right track on the fines. I believe that to be the case. Let us congratulate it for the fines, but maybe we should look at leaving the inspections on a random basis so retailers are unaware when the inspector will come.

The bill would apply to retail food, dairy, logging, retail, petroleum, a whole number of areas, including the area of the odometer rollbacks, which is not mentioned in the process. The point is mandatory inspections are being done in other countries such as France, Germany and the United States.

[Fairness at the Pumps Act, May 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, if there were a government member speaking to this bill, I would ask him or her whether the government has done any costing for this bill. Several speakers have talked about the potential saving of $20 million for consumers, but there is the cost to business for all the inspections that are going occur. In fact, the government is going to be contracting out the inspection process to allow for private sector inspections. How that is going to play out in rural areas and northern areas of the country I am really not sure. If there is only one inspector for a huge area, the inspector potentially would be able to charge an arm and a leg for the inspections, unless the government plans to introduce a schedule of charges for the inspectors to follow, but I have not heard about that.

The member would not have the information because only the government would have it, but is he concerned about whether the government has costed out this program to see what the total benefit would be to consumers?

[Fairness at the Pumps Act, May 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, it is very curious that this act increases the penalties under the Weights and Measures Act, which also includes odometer rollbacks across the country. Odometer rollbacks have to be a bigger problem and a larger cost to the consumer, with people disconnecting, replacing or rolling odometers back and selling those vehicles as having less mileage, basically defrauding consumers of thousands and thousands of dollars every year. Penalities have been so minuscule that people have been violating the law. They are happy to pay the small penalty associated with it.

The government introduced this bill, which would increase the penalties drastically. When it sends out a press release, it talks about fairness at the pumps. The headline could have read, “Government takes action on odometer rollbacks”.

Does the member have any comments about why the government would be hiding such good news?

[Fairness at the Pumps Act, May 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I want to correct some of the facts. The member seems to suggest that the government should do something about the high price of gasoline. I am certainly with him on that point. The government should do something on that issue.

The fact is the Liberals were in power for 13 years and the Liberal member for Pickering—Scarborough East consistently attacked his government because it ignored the problem. I think there were 125 studies done over the years on high gas prices in our country. What was concluded out of all those studies was we had to change the Competition Act. Under the existing Competition Act, retailers that were price fixing, as we termed it, were not legally guilty of doing anything under the current act. The answer is to change the act.

The Liberals were in power for 13 years and they did not change the act. The member for Pickering—Scarborough East, who was his government's critic at the time, criticized his government. I will be interested to hear what that member has to say when he speaks to the bill later today. It is fine for the Liberal Party to criticize the government. However, it was in government for 13 years and it did nothing to reduce the high price of gasoline.

We know that having a price review board, such as is the case in the Maritimes, does not work. It simply adjusts the price to the highest figure. We need to change the Competition Act.

Does he agree with the member for Pickering—Scarborough East's consistent view on this matter?

[Fairness at the Pumps Act, May 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the government for bringing in the bill.

The fact is, however, that under the Weights and Measures Act the rollback of odometers in the auto industry or just in the country would be covered. I am just wondering why the government would have neglected to mention that in its press releases.

I would think that increasing the penalities for businesses and people who replace, rollback or disconnect odometers and sell cars as vehicles with less mileage on them than they have would be as big an issue or a greater issue than what the member is trying to solve here. I applaud him for trying to solve the issue of measurements as far as gasoline is concerned but what about the odometer rollbacks?

The penalities that he is applying in this bill would also apply to odometer rollbacks, which is a positive change. Why is the government not recognizing this? Why is it not being included in its press release?

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, May 7th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, once again I have to congratulate the member for his Bill C-475. I know how much work he has put into this bill and how he has followed it through the process. It is certainly a lot of effort on his part.

While we recognize that this is probably a bill that the government itself should have introduced to this House, in some respects it is probably better that it arrived the way it did because it gives this member an enhanced role in the House. At the end of the day, if we can fulfill public policy by going that route, I see nothing wrong with it. As a matter of fact, we should probably be making more laws that initiate as a result of private members' efforts.

I did ask the member a question the other day about the pill-making machines and I want to deal with that in a few minutes. The member for Halifax talked about having a good drug policy. Some of the elements that she talked about actually make a lot of sense. I do not blame the government or the previous government or any government for the problem, but it is an observation that I have that generally governments everywhere are sort of the last to know about the problem.

We wait as a society until people are dying before we recognize there is a problem and try to deal with it. Most members in this House are my age or older, and they would not know crystal meth if they were looking right at. I would not recognize it. The fact of the matter is that it takes a while. The kids seem to be right on top of issues. These things come about and the next thing we know we have a big problem, and then we have to deal with it.

In the United States, as the member for Halifax has pointed out, the Americans have actually done some things that are preventative, and that is what we should be doing, too. They have a policy that limits the amount of ingredients someone can buy at a store. They have to give a reason for the purchase. In fact, that is where this pill-making machine idea comes in.

It is no secret that in the past the United States required the pill-making machines to be registered when they were purchased and reported when they were repaired. It has been said that the traffic of production of methamphetamines moved north. It moved to Toronto. It moved to Canada because we do not have any regulation or registration of the pill-making machines.

It seems obvious to me that a proactive government that is interested in solving the problem with this particular type of drug should do what the Americans are doing in this case; that is, institute a procedure to limit and track the amount of ingredients that can be purchased, and require identification and reasons for why these ingredients are being purchased, including the pill-making machines.

One could argue that, yes, it will probably drive the manufacturing from Toronto to somewhere else, to a jurisdiction or a country that does not regulate the pill-making machines. However, that certainly makes a lot more sense than dealing with the problem after the problem has attacked us.

Fundamentally, the real problem here is the fact that criminal organizations and criminal gangs are the ones that are making the money out of the whole drug scene. Until we can come to grips with that, until we can cut off their money supply, they will never go away. Over the years since the RICO laws in the United States started to apply pressure and crack down on the mob, we have seen a dismantling of many of the mob's infrastructure because of that.

Once again, as usual, Canada seems to be following, almost a generation behind, the United States. We now have similar types of legislation that have worked.

All we have to do is look at the situation in Quebec and Montreal. The police in Montreal have been very effective in dismantling the biker gangs and thereby getting to the root of the problem. Members of these biker gangs do not even own bikes any more. They do not know how to ride bikes any more. They are upstanding business people, dressed in suits, living in million dollar houses. They stay out of the action and they hire drug dealers to carry the drugs. They hire low level traffickers to sell the drugs. They have lawyers.

Whenever a low level drug trafficker is caught, they are always in the background. They are always in the shadows. They have their lawyers. They are so organized that there are instances where people go to jail for the gangs. A low level drug person takes the fall, takes the sentence, and goes to jail. The gangs making the money fund the families. They pay for the families to live while the person is in jail. We have to take these gangs apart and take away the money to solve the problem.