Jim Maloway

[Petitions, April 26th, 2010]

The second petition, Mr. Speaker, signed by dozens of Winnipeg residents, is a call to stop the closure of the six Canadian prison farms.

Dozens of Canadians have signed this petition asking the government to reconsider all six prison farms, including Rockwood Institution in Manitoba. They have been functioning farms for many decades providing food to the community. The prison farm operations provide rehabilitation and training for prisoners to work with and care for plants and animals.

The work ethic and rehabilitation benefit of waking up at 6 a.m., working outdoors, is a discipline that Canadians can appreciate. Closing these farms will mean a loss of the infrastructure and will make it too expensive to replace them some time in the future.

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

[Petitions, April 26th, 2010]

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

The first petition, signed by thousands of Canadians, calls on the government to adopt Canada's first air passengers' bill of rights. Bill C-310 includes compensation for overbooked flights, cancelled flights and unreasonable tarmac delays.

The legislation has been in Europe since 1991. It was revamped five years ago and Canadian air passengers, up to just days ago, are receiving benefits in Europe that they are being denied in Canada.

Bill C-310 would require passengers be kept informed of flight changes whether delays or cancellations. The new rules have to be posted in the airports. The airlines must inform the passengers of their rights and the process to file for compensation that deals with late, misplaced baggage. It also deals with all inclusive pricing by airlines in their advertisements. It is not meant to punish the airlines. If they follow the rules, it will not cost them one cent.

The petitioners call on the Government of Canada to support Bill C-310 which would introduce Canada's first air passengers' bill of rights.

[Health, April 26th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, Norman Guilbert, a grandfather and retired educator from Elmwood—Transcona, who had never phoned a politician's office in his life, called to inform me that Health Canada announced that beverage companies would now be allowed to add synthetic caffeine to all soft drinks, as much as 75% of that allowed in the most highly caffeinated colas.

Canadians already have concerns over their children drinking coffee and colas because they know caffeine is an addictive stimulant. Soft drinks have been designed and marketed toward children for generations. It is already hard enough for Canadian parents to control the amount of sugar, artificial sweeteners and other additives their children consume. By allowing such amounts of caffeine in all child-marketed soft drinks, Canadian parents will lose further control over protecting their children's health.

It seems the government is willing to follow American deregulation at the sacrifice of the health of children and pregnant women, which goes against what Canadian parents stand for.

[Petitions, April 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is signed by dozens of Canadians who call upon the government to match funds personally donated by the citizens of Canada for the victims of the Chilean earthquake.

On February 27, a Chilean earthquake of an 8.8 magnitude occurred in southern Chile. The Chilean Canadian community mobilized with fundraising events.

The petitioners are wondering why the government does not give the same treatment to the victims of the Chilean earthquake as it has for the victims of the Haitian disaster.

[Petitions, April 23rd, 2010]

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

In the first petition, thousands of Canadians are calling upon Parliament to adopt Canada's first air passengerss' bill of rights. Bill C-310 would compensate air passengers with all Canadian carriers, including charters, anywhere they fly.

The bill would provide compensation for overbooked or cancelled flights and long tarmac delays. It addresses issues, such as late and misplaced bags, and requires all-inclusive pricing by airlines on all of their advertising.

Legislation such as this has been in effect in Europe since 1991 but, in its current form, for the last five years. The question is why Air Canada passengers should be treated better in Europe than in Canada. In fact, in the current environment in Europe, we find out that they are not being treated the way they should be even under European law.

Airlines would need to inform passengers of any flights changes, either delays or cancellations. The new rules would need to be posted at airports and airlines would need to inform passengers of their rights and the process to file for compensation. If airlines follow the rules, they would not pay any compensation.

The petitioners call upon the government to support Bill C-310, which would introduce Canada's first air passengers' bill of rights.

[Sébastien's Law (Protecting the Public from Violent Young Offenders), April 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the member makes a very good point. I do not think many people in English Canada know that statistic, as he points out, that youth crime has dropped 25% in Quebec. I would think that if the public were aware of those statistics, they would be writing letters to their elected officials, and the radio stations and the newspapers would be publishing reports, demanding that the provincial governments put pressure on the federal government to do exactly what he says.

I find it amazing, too, that, although these statistics are well-known and have been mentioned by many of the speakers, the government seems to be ignoring the advice of the member. After all, the advice is here. The government does not need to hire a high priced consultant. I am sure it has enough of them already. The member knows and understands the system. He has been the solicitor general and minister of justice in Quebec and he knows what he is talking about.

For the government to simply ignore that advice just belies the fact that this is all about its public relations exercise, that public relations machine that is in overdrive most of the time on these crime bills. The government thinks nothing of introducing these bills one after the other, getting big media hits on them and then pulling the plug and calling an election or proroguing the House.

I think the government actually enjoys that because then it gets to do it all over again. I am sure the government gets a lot of pleasure out of that. However, at the end of the day, where are the results? The legislation never makes it through both parts of the House.

In a way, it is sort of like the gun legislation. The government really does not want to get rid of the gun registry. It would like that issue to hang around as long as possible because it is worth thousands of votes. If the government ever does eliminate the gun registry, there will be a lot of sad faces on the other side because the Conservatives have been riding and campaigning on that issue for so long that they honestly do not know what other issue to campaign on. They would be totally bereft of issues in an election campaign if that issue were to disappear.

The same is true here. The government is not really interested in solving the problem. It is just interested in the public relation effort that it has been able to engage in and in turning the guns on us saying that we are soft on crime when that is certainly not true at all.

I think my voters understand that we want to be smart on crime and we want to do what works. The message may take a while to get across but I think if we repeat it enough and talk about it enough times, people will finally start getting the hint.

This whole issue with the prison farms is a time bomb for the government. I have talked to people, even Conservatives, and I have not found a single Conservative voter who thinks this is a good idea. As a matter of fact, they shake their heads and ask what kind of government would close down prison farms. It just does not make sense after quite a number of years. In Rockwood, I think it has been there for 30 years. In Kingston, it was there when I was growing up. The farms have been around in Kingston forever. Why would the government shut these down?

This is the type of issue that can be very bad for the government because its own voters will think there is something wrong with a government that would do something like that.

[Sébastien's Law (Protecting the Public from Violent Young Offenders), April 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his insight on this issue. We in the NDP look forward to getting this bill to committee. As I said, there are parts of it we like, especially the provisions guaranteeing the separation of youth criminals from adults, but we feel that if we can get the bill to committee, then issues, such as ones the member has reflected on, will be dealt with because witnesses can be called and further study can be conducted on the wording of the bill.

Our colleague and critic, the member for Windsor—Tecumseh, has already commented that this bill is not very well drafted and that there are some drafting issues that he personally would like to address in committee. We need to make those changes in committee, which is the proper place for it. We certainly do not want the bill to proceed to its final stages and into law and then find out four or five years later that there are some serious issues on the drafting side of it.

I would say once again that we in the NDP want to get the bill to committee so it can look at all the issues, including the ones stated by the member for Mississauga South, and, hopefully, come up with better legislation than we are looking at right now.

[Sébastien's Law (Protecting the Public from Violent Young Offenders), April 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to continue my presentation on this very important bill.

Bill C-4 is an amendment. The enactment amends the sentencing and general principles of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, as well as provisions relating to judicial interim release, adult-youth sentences, publication bans, and the placement in youth custody facilities. It defines the term “violent offence” and “serious offence”, amends the definition of “serious violent offence”, and repeals the definition of “presumptive offence”. It also requires police forces to keep records of extra-judicial measures issued to deal with young persons.

As I indicated yesterday, we will be supporting the bill to get it to committee and we are hoping that there will be one or two amendments to the bill. We actually like some of the provisions of the bill; however, we have some concerns about some of the other parts of it, but overall and on balance, there is some merit to the bill.

On February 4, 2002, the House of Commons passed Bill C-7, the Youth Criminal Justice Act. That new law replaced the Young Offenders Act and was proclaimed on April 1, 2003. The Youth Criminal Justice Act builds on the strength of the old act and introduces significant reforms to address its weaknesses.

We can see that over time legislation does get updated in the House because of changes in society and changes in government or just because in some cases we find things that are not working well with it and we find that, by general consensus, we should improve the legislation.

The introduction of the bill followed an extensive period of review and consultation, much of which is reflected in the following reports. There was a review of the Young Offenders Act and the youth justice system in Canada, and a report on the federal-provincial-territorial task force on youth. There was also a report renewing youth justice, a report of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human rights, and there was a strategy for the renewal of youth and justice, which was a 1998 report.

In March 1999, Bill C-68, the first version of the Youth Criminal Justice Act was introduced and Parliament prorogued in June. The bill was reintroduced as C-3 in October 1999. The bill proceeded through second reading, the Standing Committee on Justice, and prior to third reading, the federal election was called for November 27, 2000 and the bill was delayed.

We see the same process following us through what we had to deal with in previous times where, because of elections or the prorogation of the House, we end up starting over. So it is little wonder the public gets frustrated with us when they see that it takes forever. I think they expect immediate responses and the government is at fault here too because it promises immediate responses because it governs itself by press release, media events and polling.

When something happens in the country, the Conservatives push the button and put the public relations factory into overdrive, fire up the issue, get some bill thrown out here, and then of course nothing happens with it. Then they blame the opposition, but the reality is, as we know, they only have to blame themselves.

There have been many concerns in Canada regarding the Young Offenders Act and the youth justice system. As we had indicated before, and a Bloc member as well indicated yesterday, many of the concerns are based upon misconceptions about youth crime, misconceptions about the legislation and how the system operates. Some concerns have been based on the misunderstanding regarding the limits of the legislation and the unreasonable expectations about what the legislation could actually accomplish, and once again, people have the impression that somehow we will pass a law and the problem will be solved.

When we were dealing yesterday with the bill, there was talk about one of the very good parts of the bill that we like, which is the fact that the youth offenders will be kept separate. They will not be put in with adult offenders.

We recognize that while that is a good idea, and we are going to pass this bill in the House, the fact of the matter is that enforcement of the bill would actually be done by the provinces. We will be putting a financial burden on them to make certain they have the facilities to keep young offenders separate. Some of the provinces do not have the proper facilities.

While the public may think they are going to see some immediate changes following the passage of this bill, they will have to wait until the facilities are improved or built within their own jurisdictions. It could be another decade before the bill actually has its full effect.

There are a number of problems in the youth justice system. The system lacks a clear and coherent youth justice philosophy. Incarceration is overused. Canada has the highest youth incarceration rate in the western world, including the United States, which is a bit of a surprise to me. I did not think that would be the case. In spite of its huge expansion of prisons during the Ronald Reagan era, the crime rate in the United States has actually gone up. I would not have expected that to be the case.

The courts are overused for minor cases that could be dealt with better outside the courts. Sentencing decisions by the courts have resulted in disparities and unfairness in youth sentencing.

The Young Offenders Act does not ensure effective reintegration of a young person into society after being released from custody. This is a very important point. We are trying to rehabilitate people. Society does not benefit from people reoffending. Putting people in jail and making better criminals out of them, so that when they get back out in the street they continue their career of crime, is not what the public wants.

We want these people in jail once and only once. Programs need to be provided to them when they are incarcerated so that when they come out, they come out with a new view on life. They have to be integrated into society. They need to have access to employment.

I would like to provide the House with an example, which I find almost impossible to believe. Six prison farms in this country are being shut down by the Conservative government. If we do anything, we should be building more prison farms in the country because it seems to me that over the years we have lost a connection with rural living, a connection with animals, and taking care of animals. A farm environment provides a perfect case of that.

I toured the Rockwood prison farm just outside of Winnipeg in Stoney Mountain during the break a couple of weeks ago. I saw the dairy herd. It is really sad that it will not be there in a few months. This farm has shown good results for over 20 years. The prisoners get up early in the morning and take care of the animals on the farm. They take ownership. They have a much better attitude than what they would have if they were just simply locked up in a prison.

The government argues that there is not a big market for farm work. It is going to train people in trades such as welding. It is a good idea to get them jobs out in society when they are released. The reality is that learning a welding trade and so on is not the same as working with animals. In some cases it would be a good idea if they could be around humane societies where they could walk dogs and stuff like that, and make some sort of connection with animals.

We are about to lose these prison farms. I realize that is another issue for another day and that day is coming soon. A motion will be coming from committee dealing with the closure of prison farms.

It seems to me that there is a lot of room for improvements in all legislation. We certainly do not want to stand in the way of making sensible improvements to laws. As I have said many times, we are looking for what actually works, where we can show results.

The former solicitor general for the province of Quebec spoke eloquently yesterday on this very bill, about how the Quebec system does work and how the crime rate in Quebec has actually decreased. It is beyond me why we would not have every province in the country and other jurisdictions, which I am sure some are, studying the Quebec model to implement aspects of that system that would work in their own jurisdictions.

To me, that is what a sensible government would do. A government that simply approaches the whole issue on the basis of ideology and says, “Because it worked in Margaret Thatcher's England or Ronald Reagan's United Sates, that is the model we have to follow because we are Conservatives. We cannot accept any Liberal, NDP or Bloc ideas because they does not fit with our overall philosophy”. That is just way out of line.

The justice system should always be an open system where we could adopt the best of a jurisdiction anywhere in the world, whatever gets results. Whatever works properly is what we really want to see in here, instead of a government basically operate this whole system on the basis of political expediency, what is good for it in the short-term, and how it can get some headlines.

I introduced some headlines yesterday that we see across the country, and I maintained that if the press in this country were responsible and started writing headlines like “Soft on crime” and “This legislation does not work”, the government would be retreating, but because it gets these cheap headlines out of these boutique bills and amendments that it introduces, it is encouraged to continue.

We would like to see the bill go to committee. I have one further point on the issue of victims. The government continues to talk about how it supports victims of crime. We in the NDP are solidly on the side of the victims as well. Three years ago, the government appointed Mr. Sullivan to be the victims' advocate and has not reappointed him. He, the government's appointee, is saying that the government has spent too much time on punishment issues, that it has spent not enough time and ignored victims. So much for the government's position of being on side with victims, of supporting and looking out for victims' rights, when its own appointee is saying that this is not true, that the government is not as solidly behind victims as it would like the public to think it is.

[Italian-Canadian Recognition and Restitution Act, April 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-302.

At the outset, I want to congratulate the member for his perseverance in bringing forward this bill. A lot of work goes into a private member's bill. He has gone to considerable lengths and efforts to get the bill this far.

I recognize there is some disagreement between the supporters of the bill and the Conservatives, but that is to be expected in a House such as this. However, I encourage him. We in the NDP certainly support the bill. We are strongly behind it.

I also want to congratulate the member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River and the member for Vancouver Kingsway who made excellent presentations on this bill. I have read most, if not all, of the other speeches on this bill in Hansard.

This bill is an act to recognize the injustice that was done to persons of Italian origin through their enemy alien designation and internment during the second world war, and to provide for restitution and promote education on Italian Canadian history. As I indicated before, my party is universally in support of the member's efforts in this regard.

On September 3, 1939, the Government of Canada issued regulations that empowered the minister of justice with the full authority to act as he chose to destroy any subversion during the time of war. This allowed him to detain without trial any person and created a class of aliens who were not foreign nationals but were Canadian citizens.

On June 10, 1940, Italy declared war on Canada. That very evening, Prime Minister Mackenzie King announced that he had ordered the internment of hundreds of Italian Canadians identified by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as enemy aliens. That order was applied to Italians who became British subjects after September 1, 1922.

The government also established a judicial mechanism to administer internment proceedings. It passed an order in council which ensured the registration of all people of Italian birth. Furthermore, the office of the custodian of alien property was authorized to confiscate the property of enemy aliens.

Like the internment of Japanese Canadians, Ukrainian Canadians, German Canadians and others, the forced registration and internment of Italian Canadians is a sad chapter in our history. In some respects it is a forgotten chapter because people my age and younger only learned of this history many years after the fact. It is very appropriate that legislatures across the country have dealt with these issues over the last few years. It is certainly better late than not at all.

The RCMP rounded up approximately 700 Italian Canadians. Often, parents were separated from their children and husbands from their families. There were 17,000 people designated as enemy aliens for no other reason than their birth. There was no reason to suspect that those interned posed any threat to Canada or Canadians. In fact, many of them were first world war veterans who had fought for their adopted country. That is a very hard fact to come to grips with and swallow, that someone who had served this country during the first world war, some 20 years later would be part of a group that was interned. It is very hard to get one's mind around that.

Presumably there were records. We have dealt with that. Everyone knew from the records who was who. It is hard to think that the RCMP would just simply take somebody who had been in this country for 20-plus years, who had served in the first world war and, after exemplary service and an exemplary work record, would round him up and take him away. It was not uncommon for men in uniform to come back home only to find that family members had been interned. I cannot think of a worse situation than that.

The roundup of Italian Canadians was virtually completed in October 1940 and, as we all know, most of them were sent to Camp Petawawa situated in the Ottawa River Valley. It is difficult to establish how many Italian Canadians were interned, although estimates range from 600 to 700. I read a lot of very good information on Italian community websites, which explain the history of what happened during that period.

Although the majority of those interned were from areas with the highest concentrations of Italian Canadians at the time, Montreal, Toronto and other centres in Ontario, there are also documented cases in western Canada.

The internment was brutal. Families could not visit or write interned people for the first year. They had to go a whole year without knowing where their family was. Italian Canadians were penalized financially. A spontaneous boycott of Italian businesses, whipped up by the prejudice of the times, took place throughout Canada. Provincial governments ordered municipalities to terminate relief payments to non-naturalized Italians. Travel restrictions were imposed on Italian Canadians and their ability to occupy certain jobs was prohibited.

We were half a world away from where the war was at. For Italy to be a threat to the North American continent at that time I would think would be absolutely non-existent. Why there would be so much concern about interning people on such a big scale in a vast country like this does not make any sense, certainly not in the context of the times. However, those were different times and people obviously had different attitudes.

Italian Canadians were forced to report on a monthly basis to the RCMP. Activities, such as teaching the Italian language and meetings of the Roma Society, were declared illegal. As a matter of fact, the previous Bloc speaker indicated how the Italian language could not be spoken in churches in Quebec and that French had to be used.

Internment was up to three years and the average interned person was held for almost 16 months. To put some feelings on this, these are not just numbers we are talking about. Some of the people interned were doctors, lawyers, carpenters, bakers, contractors and priests. I believe a doctor from Sudbury was interned at the time.

It was just as bad for families because these actions added to their psychological scars. They suffered constant harassment and ridicule from neighbours and co-workers and the fearmongering being perpetuated by elected officials of the day.

The federal government went even further. It froze bank accounts. It forced Italian Canadian families to subsist on $12 a month. Many Italian families were forced to sell their homes, businesses and valuable assets.

If we were to face something like that right now, I can imagine what our overwhelming reaction would be. We would find this hard to believe.

The Liberals, Conservatives and NDP members can be cats and dogs in this House some days, but without getting into a political fight, the fact is that members should note that it was New Democrats under the CCF who stood alone for decades against internment and against the War Measures Act and in favour of civil liberties. The forefathers of our party stood up against the erosion of civil liberties at a time when the Liberal Party was in power and was doing things like this. We have a very pristine history and a good position when it comes to issues like this.

[Sébastien's Law (Protecting the Public from Violent Young Offenders), April 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-4. At the outset, I want to commend the other speakers for some very interesting presentations today.

I have said before, during the questions and answers with some of the speakers, that the NDP will be supporting this bill to get it to committee. There are some provisions of it that we like and other provisions that we would be seeking some amendment to or clarification. The drafting of the bill itself is not precisely the way our critic, who is quite qualified in that area, thinks it should be.

Having said all of that, I think that this bill will not be staying at second reading for a very long time. The parties will want to get it into committee so that we can go through the process of calling the witnesses and start to examine the various provisions of the bill with the idea of making it better. There may be some amendments that the Liberal Party, for example, may want to introduce. This is all about coming together and trying to make legislation that is good for the country as a whole.

The member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin made an excellent speech today explaining how the Quebec model works so well. The crime rate in Quebec is falling and is reasonably low. There is a system there that other jurisdictions should be looking at for improvements and copying. He explained that he did not feel that the federal government could really borrow the system because it was not really set up to be exported. I believe that was the way he explained it.

However, the fact of the matter is that the government has to start looking into types of systems that actually work. It seems to me that its whole approach to the criminal justice system is totally wrong. It is as if it is getting its orders from the Republican Party of the United States. It seems to look to the United States to see what Sarah Palin would think of a particular measure. We have to say that because it is adopting 25-year-old discredited strategies from the United States that have been proven not to work.

I do not know how many times we have to say it. Ronald Reagan's days are long past and so is his explosion of the prison population, the building of private prisons, the three strikes and your out, and the mandatory minimum sentences. Those were 25 years in the making and have produced higher crime rates. How much more proof does the government need to realize that that is the wrong way to go and that we should be looking to be smart on crime?

The government wants to be tough on crime. A lot of people think it is kind of soft on crime, the way it keeps proroguing the House and starting back again with all these crime bills. It talks about being tough on crime. We say we should be smart on crime. For each and every measure that the government takes in the crime area, all we are suggesting is that it should reach out and look for systems that work elsewhere.

If Quebec has good results in certain aspects of the system, why not import those? Why not replicate those? Why not promote those at the federal and provincial levels? Why not do that? If there is a better system that gets results in European countries like Sweden, then why not look to those results?

The government talks about best practices. It looks to best practices in other areas of government. Why can it not apply the same principle when it comes to this system?

Many times we have talked about how auto theft rates in Manitoba have dropped substantially because the government mandated immobilizers in all cars. It provided them for free, gave insurance reductions and set up a system in the police department to monitor the most prolific car thieves in the province. Police officers monitor them, chase them and try to keep them off the streets. That is producing results.

That is a system we would want to encourage and replicate in other provinces across the country and in other jurisdictions. Why—