Joe Comartin

[Supply, April 7th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I rise today on behalf of my party to indicate that the New Democrats are quite strongly in support of the motion brought forward by the Conservatives which calls on the government to put in place a public judicial inquiry into the Air-India crash.

It is quite important for us to put in context the situation the country is in at this point to address this tragedy, which is not a strong enough term, which occurred so long ago. Here we are 20 years later addressing the issue of the inquiry.

In terms of the context, 331 people were killed. It is by far the single largest mass murder in Canada's history. We can also set it in context in terms of the magnitude of the severity of the incident and also why we should have an inquiry by comparing it to similar types of mass murders faced by some of our allies.

When we compare this incident to the 9/11 incidents in the United States on the basis of proportion of the population, the number of people murdered in this incident is actually greater. If we compare it to the Bali bombing that affected our Australian allies so significantly as Australian citizens were the primary targets, again the number of deaths in the Air-India crash on a proportional basis is higher.

In both of those other cases very extensive investigations were conducted, authorized and directed by the legislatures in the United States and Australia. How the inquiries and investigations were conducted, the individuals conducting them, the mandates they were given, how they were funded and over what period of time they ran set very clear precedents as to what we should be doing and what we should have done a long time ago.

The families of the victims have made a number of proposals as to how the inquiry should be conducted.

I would like to digress for a minute. I know it is not appropriate for me to acknowledge persons in the gallery, but you can, Madam Speaker. I invite you or any other person who may be in the chair throughout the day to acknowledge the presence in the gallery of family members of the victims of the Air-India crash. I would ask the Chair to consider doing that at some point throughout the day.

What the victims' families have done, and certainly we know they have had plenty of time to do it, is they have come forward with a number of proposals as to how the inquiry would be mandated and what its responsibility would be.

The Deputy Prime Minister, and she said it again today, has indicated a willingness to meet with the families. We all know generally that has not been greeted by much enthusiasm by the families. They clearly see the situation as one where a meeting to discuss issues is away out of date. They want action. They want to see that the government is serious, that some meaningful attempt at giving them justice will be pursued. A simple meeting sounds almost patronizing in some respects. To meet with them will not be sufficient. I think they have made that very clear.

If the minister needs to know the issues they want addressed, they have prepared a detailed document and have set out a number of the points that need to be addressed in the inquiry. I will come back to that in a bit.

I want to go back now to set the scene a bit more. The incident took place over 20 years ago. It is the worst mass murder in our country ever. There have been repeated calls for the public judicial inquiry. It is interesting because those calls were made initially to a Conservative government by some of the members of the current Liberal government. When fortunes changed and the Liberals became government, it seems they forgot about their insistence on the inquiry and the importance of having it. However, it has gone on and in that period of time, it seems at every turn there has been more indication of a need for the inquiry.

Some of the evidence that came out in the course of the criminal trial over the last 12 to 15 months has raised serious doubts about the quality of the work that was done by our intelligence and police services. It raises serious doubts about whether there were other agendas that were being followed as opposed to looking directly at getting justice. The list is quite lengthy. There is a cry from the family and from the community generally to know what really happened.

One comment in one of the statements that the families put in writing was interesting. They are very clear. They know nothing we can do will in any way reduce the pain they have suffered from the loss of their families. It will not bring any of their family members back, and they have said that. To their great credit, they have pursued the need for the public inquiry to assure them and the country that we do everything in our power to ensure that other families never go through the type of pain and sorrow they have. They set that out very clearly and quite eloquently. It is a cry to which we must respond.

With regard to the mandate of the public inquiry, I believe it is important because it is necessary to respond to the concerns that have been raised. The very first concern that comes to mind is: Was everything done that possibly could have been done to gather the necessary evidence to obtain a conviction?

That question I think inevitably asks the second one which is: Why did it take so long to get to the point where we finally laid charges? It was roughly 17 years into the process before the charges were laid. Why would it have taken so long? That is an obvious question that the inquiry should have put to it, and hopefully we would obtain an answer that would satisfy the families.

Given the results up to this point in terms of the acquittal, there are obvious questions about how money was spent. That has to be part of the inquiry.

I also would pose the question and press this as a mandate on the inquiry, for it to assess the risk that we face as a country of an incident like this ever occurring again. That will require a number of sub-questions for the inquiry to be asked. It goes without saying that in the general public's mind the quality of the work by both CSIS and the RCMP has to be assessed. For instance, did we have proper training for the individual police officers and agents who were involved in the investigation? Did they have the proper methodologies in conducting the investigation? That has to be assessed.

We can go into some specifics such as the destruction of notes. That evidence came out in the course of the trial. Is there a policy within those agencies as to how evidence is supposed to be handled, including handwritten notes? There was destruction of other evidence, some tapes in particular. Is there policy now as to how that is to be handled?

One thing that came out in both the 9/11 report and the Bali bombing report, and which has come out in a number of other jurisdictions, is the whole problem of conflict between agencies that impedes effective law enforcement. Was that a problem here? There is certainly some evidence that came out in the course of the trial that would suggest it was. We need to assess that. It would have to be part of the mandate of the public inquiry.

One has to question whether the security at our airports is adequate. The Deputy Prime Minister has said repeatedly that this has been taken care of. From the input we get from the families, they are not convinced of this and at the very least they want reassurance, and they are entitled to that.

We heard that there has been a bit of an investigation by SIRC. A part of the mandate of the public inquiry will be to assess SIRC and how it conducted the investigation which basically cleared CSIS. That was done before the criminal trial. In the course of that trial, one had to ask if one knew anything about intelligence. How could it have cleared it when that kind of evidence was coming out, whether it was the tapes, the notes or the conflict between the RCMP and CSIS?

In that regard as recently as Monday the Deputy Prime Minister announced that the government finally would be moving forward on parliamentary oversight of our intelligence services.

Having been involved in the preparation of that report, I know full well of the historical conflict between CSIS and the RCMP, the lack of oversight, not only between those agencies, but among all our intelligence agencies. I know about the limited mandates some of the governmental agencies have to do oversight. I believe that is the problem we will find with SIRC.

SIRC did an assessment of the role that CSIS played. However, due to its limited mandate in reviewing and accessing to information, it came its conclusions. My belief is they are not the proper conclusions and that needs to be looked at.

I expect that the whole issue of meaningful parliamentary oversight of our intelligence services would also be one of the items the public inquiry would investigate. A good deal of that work has been done. It would be helpful, in this specific circumstance, for an analysis of whether proper oversight was in place.

One other issue the families have asked about is the question of whether the plea bargain with regard to Mr. Reyat and his sentencing process were adequate. That needs to be addressed.

I think I have so far listed somewhat in excess of 10 specific issues that the public inquiry would be mandated properly so to cover. In concluding this part of my comments, it is also important to recognize that we will have to give it a broad enough scope that if issues arise which have not even been identified up to this point, it would have to ability to investigate.

We have heard the comment from the government as to whether this motion is premature. The Conservative government of Prime Minister Mulroney, the Liberals under Mr. Chrétien and now the current Prime Minister have had repeated requests to conduct an inquiry.

When we put this in the context of other inquiries, such as Westray or Walkerton water inquiry, in terms of magnitude, this one, in any kind of logical argument, requires an inquiry.

The fact that the criminal case may be appealed, a decision which has not been made yet, does not put us in any different position than where we have been for quite a number of years. It is obvious that there should be an inquiry. If ultimately the crown makes the determination it will appeal, it does not have to enter into the consideration as to whether we go ahead with the inquiry now. We should have done this a long time ago.

My final point is in terms of favouring the reason for an inquiry. There have been repeated accusations and calls for the inquiry. It has come out of the Indo-Canadian community and the Sikh community, that if this had happened to an other segment of the community, we would have had an inquiry.

The current Minister of Health of this government has made statements to that effect in the last few years, as he comes out of that community. It is another reason we should have the inquiry. Whether that has any validity or not, the very fact that it is out there in the community should be put to rest once and for all. We should conduct this inquiry.

[Justice, April 4th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps the Young Liberals of Canada forgot to send one of their pithy “It's the Charter, stupid” buttons to the justice minister because his department is continuing its wrong-headed fight against George Hislop's charter rights for pension equality for Canada's lesbian and gay community.

It is so typical of these Liberals. They say one thing and do another; promise made, promise broken.

Will the Prime Minister today say that this senseless and costly legal fight will end today?

[Criminal Code, March 8th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I rise with a bit of trepidation to speak to Bill C-275. From the address we heard from the member for Cariboo--Prince George, it is quite clear how strongly he feels about the circumstances that have led him to present this private member's bill to the House.

I have a great deal of sympathy for him and for the family of the victim who was killed in this incident, which prompted this legislation to come forward. It is somewhat difficult, recognizing those circumstances, to have to stand here and say that the members of the NDP, like the Liberals and the Bloc members, are unable to support this legislation.

If we take a quick look at the legislation, we will see that it sets out a number of provisions we have difficulty with. In effect it provides for the removal of criminal intent to charges that deal with individuals who have left the scene. It sets mandatory minimum sentences in a variety of ways. Finally, it removes the discretion that prosecutors in this country have to negotiate appropriate sentences in exchange for a guilty plea.

In each one of those cases we have as a party on a number of occasions taken the position that we are not prepared to deviate from those fundamentals that in effect underlie our criminal justice system in this country. Again I recognize that it almost sounds crass to be talking about these fundamental rights when family members still grieve and still mourn the loss of a family member as a result of the conduct that we heard described by the member for Cariboo--Prince George.

When we are here as members of this House, as legislators for this country, we have the added responsibility of taking into account not only those facts and trying to deal with them as best we can, but also the facts in a number of other cases and in fact all of the cases that will eventually come before our courts when one is being faced with these types of charges, specifically, leaving the scene of an accident with the intent to escape criminal or civil liability.

One could pose a number of questions. Why is this being done in this particular section of the Criminal Code? Why not others that are also very severe? There are numerous answers to that question. One is that in fact these principles underlie to a great degree the development of our criminal justice system over a period of hundreds of years.

I want to address specifically the issue of removing the concept of criminal intent. We can come up with any number of scenarios whereby the person either negligently or with criminal intent, or maybe without either, that is, completely innocently, leaves the scene of an accident, perhaps because the person is not aware that there has been an injury. Perhaps the person is going to seek help. We have in these sections the necessity of criminal intent so that individuals in those cases would not be faced with minimum time in jail as they would under this bill. That is a mandatory minimum, which in this case runs from four or five to seven years depending on the section that is being applied.

Let me talk about what we have determined over the passage of time. It is not a perfect system. Again I think the family will probably not accept that, but it is not a perfect system. In this case, from their perspective, and I do not know the facts well enough to be able to say I agree with them, the criminal justice system has failed them. But we know that day in and day out the system we have built generally works. It actually works much better than any other system that I am aware of in the world, but it is not perfect.

The replacement of mandatory minimum sentences, taking away the discretion of judges to make those determinations, and the removal of criminal intent would, I believe, create a worse system than the one we have now, a worse system than that found in a number of other countries. We need to retain these.

More specifically and with regard to the issue of minimum sentences, I have spoken out on this issue on a number of occasions. The member for Cariboo--Prince George mentioned the fact that there are minimum sentences in our Criminal Code. In fact, we are up to 29 now. For a number of them, quite frankly, I would be opposed to having them in there.

However, there are some that have worked. There are times when minimum sentences do work. I believe they are the exception to the general rule, but there are times when they do work. For instance, some of the minimum sentences that we have imposed in impaired driving cases, which are much less severe than what is being proposed here, have worked. However, I think it worked primarily because it was coupled with a very strong public education program that got a positive reaction from the community. I think this is somewhat of an exception.

The automotive club here in Canada came out with a study last week which showed that a further extension of minimum sentences in impaired driving situations would no longer work. They have been effective up to this point, but expanding them would not in fact produce any additional prohibitions or prevent crimes of that nature.

The other point with regard to minimum sentences that I tend to press upon is the fact that such severe minimum sentences as those being proposed in the bill would result in a substantial increase in the number of trials that would have to be conducted. Individuals who might have been willing to plead guilty and avoid the trial and avoid putting the family through the trial would plead innocent in an attempt to have the charges dismissed. They would seek an acquittal. That would happen in a good number of cases. That certainly is not in the interests of grieving families or the victims of the crime, but it is a reality.

A number of states in the U.S. have moved quite extensively to the use of minimum sentences. This has resulted in a substantial increase in not guilty pleas. Inevitably when that happens the more trials there are and the more acquittals there are as opposed to getting guilty pleas in advance.

There is another point I want to make and again I am not sure that this will be of much solace to the families. In the early 1990s in the province of Ontario, and across the country, quite frankly, significant backlogs resulted in the withdrawal or dismissal of over 50,000 criminal charges in Ontario alone.

If we do not to some degree take a practical bent on this, which includes the right of our Crown prosecutors to be able to negotiate guilty pleas for appropriate sentences, if we do not keep that system in place, we are going to be faced with another backlog and the potential of a huge number of charges being dismissed because the Charter of Rights says that people are entitled to a trial in a reasonable period of time.

For all of those reasons, and as much as we sympathize with the member for Cariboo--Prince George, we have to oppose Bill C-275.

[Black History Month, February 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, February is Black History Month, a month when we officially recognize the important contributions black Canadians have made and continue to make to our national mosaic. I would encourage all of us to take this time to remember the rich and diverse history of Canadians of black heritage.

There are many who are aware of parts of our black heritage. For instance, in my community of Windsor and Essex County it is well known that we were the terminus of the underground railway for slaves fleeing the United States. However, there is little official recognition of the history of black Canadians in many other respects.

I would encourage my colleagues to take this month to familiarize themselves with black history. I would also encourage our provincial and municipal governments to make a commitment to include a greater recognition of black history in our education curriculum.

Finally, our generation and subsequent generations must become more knowledgeable of the significant contributions to culture and science made by the black community.

[Supply, February 17th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I want to take issue with my colleague from Alberta because he criticized some of the comments our environment critic made with regard to his support on the mandatory regulation of standards.

Elizabeth May, the executive director of the Sierra Club, in reference to a survey done over the course of the last election, to which that member responded, said that one of the biggest surprises they had was his commitment to regulate fuel economy and “abandoning the voluntary approach”.

During the same period of time, five days before the last election, Simon Tuck and Greg Keenan from the Globe and Mail said that the Conservatives “were abandoning the voluntary approach with regard to fuel economy and emissions and were going to the mandatory”.

I wonder if he could tell us, in terms of his opening comments to our environment critic this afternoon, what his position is. Is he in favour of mandatory or is he opposed to it?

[Supply, February 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have two points that I want to make in response to the hon. member's question.

First, on one hand we hear about the amount of money that is going into research, but what we do not hear, because it is not happening, are the resources being deployed, the tax system being amended and subsidies being deployed. We need to deploy the technologies that we have.

I spent the last four years in the House as the environment and energy critic for my party. Everything I learned in that process tells me that we can deal with our environmental problems with existing technology and know-how. That is not where the problem is. We really do not need more research and development. We need to deploy the resources, the knowledge and the technology that we already have. No one can tell me one problem that we cannot resolve with what we already know.

The second point I want to make quickly is that as long as we continue to subsidize the fossil fuel industry to the tune of $1 billion to $1.5 billion a year, we are not being very serious about dealing with climate change and global warming.

[Supply, February 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the first thing I would point out is that the motion is about the auto industry. The question has more to do with the Kyoto standards for all sectors of the economy and the whole of the environment.

In answer to the member's basic question, I think she has missed the point regarding the motion. The motion is about whether we are going to approach the problem that 25% of all of the carbon dioxide being released in this country is coming out of the tailpipes of our vehicles. Are we going to require that issue to be dealt with in a quick, efficient fashion and thereby mandate the regulations or are we going to allow the industry to continue on as it has for the better part of this last decade by not seriously addressing this issue? That is what it is about.

Coming out of this, if we do the job right we will begin to address emissions right across the globe because we will be developing and deploying the technology that will deal with those emissions in the undeveloped world.

[Supply, February 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Winnipeg North and I will be sharing this time slot.

When I was getting ready to speak today I was going to start this somewhat differently but, having listened to some of the comments from the member for Oshawa, I decided I should talk a bit about our responsibility, both as a party and as a government, in terms of dealing with this issue.

We have to do that in the context of the history of the auto industry, and I am intimately involved in that history. My father worked on both the U.S. side and the Canadian side of the border before he passed away. I have extended family members who currently work in the auto industry. For the last 15 years before I was elected, I was directly responsible in my legal work and the legal plan that I administered in Windsor was directly connected to the auto industry.

The comments I heard from the member for Oshawa, that we do not care about jobs,that we do not care about the industry and that we do not understand the industry, are accusations that I totally refute. The reality is that if we do not get serious about dealing with the environmental consequences that flow from the use of motor vehicles in North America, if we do not play a significant role in cleaning up the use of the vehicles, we will get left way behind. We will continue to see Toyota, the Chinese industry that is coming very rapidly, taking more and more of our market share. Those imports will continue to swamp this market in both Canada and the United States.

We are at the cusp of one of those times historically when we have to act and we do not have a lot of time. Our concern is all about maintaining the industry, but even more important, about growing the industry, making the Canadian part of that industry stronger, not weaker. The do nothing attitude that I am hearing from both the Liberals and the Conservatives is not acceptable. It will not get us there.

Canadian workers, as we heard from my colleague from Windsor West, are among the best in the world if not the best. They have no superiors, although they may have some peers. When we look at the history of what has happened with the auto industry in North America, particularly in the last 50 years, there has been a significant advancement, especially in protecting workers' rights and their right to organize. My father was probably part of the Ford strike that finally forced Ford, by way of that strike, to have compulsory recognition of the union. It is the basis in many respects for our collective bargaining arrangements in this country, not just in the auto sector but right across the board.

There have been advancements on health and safety issues. I think of the strikes that my family went through during the sixties to get parity with workers in the United States. I think of what went on in the sixties and the seventies to get the auto industry to address the issues of auto safety. I think of the fight to get smaller vehicles built in North America after the oil crises of the early seventies. In every case, if one studies that history and understands it or lives it as I have, we cannot talk voluntary. We do not tie our hands behind our back. As the government, as the representative of the people of this country, it is often necessary for us to say that we will mandate these standards.

The Liberals have repeatedly told us today about the 14 MOUs and how great it has been that the auto industry has met the requirements under those MOUs. What the Liberals have not told us is that not one of those MOUs was signed before the industry was compelled to meet those standards in the United States under a different administration than is in that country now. In every single case those standards were met and agreed upon in Canada only after they were made compulsory in the United States. We all know how integrated the industry is.

Nothing new was going on there. Nothing voluntary was being achieved in the way of advanced standards. They were already compulsory. However, because we form such a small part of that market, roughly 10%, what was going on in the U.S. mandated that those standards had to be implemented and met. No pluses for that.

The reality is that right now the U.S. administration is not pushing either fuel efficiency or emission standards. It has abandoned the field. As a consequence of that, the field has now been taken over by individual states in the United States, led by California but followed closely by Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, New Jersey and, just last week, Washington.

As of the first of this year, California made certain standards compulsory. We will probably hear more today about the 25% solution, which is to increase fuel efficiency by 25% and reduce noxious emissions by roughly the same amount. Illinois has signalled that it too will sign on to the plan. When we add up the population of those states, it adds up to more than half the population of the United States.

If we sit on the sidelines, which could be the consequence of the negotiations that are going on now, and if they turn out to be voluntary, all of those states will be ahead of us. This begs the question: Will the Chrysler minivan, which we build better than anyone in the world and which is assembled in Windsor, have access to those markets as a result of our dithering here in Canada?

When we talk about job security, we should be thinking about what in fact is happening and not some fearmongering coming from the opposition, the government and, to some degree, from the auto industry.

What is very interesting is that California has shown us technology that will let us meet those standards. We are not talking about future patents or future inventions. The technology exists right now. California has shown us that we not only have that technology but that it is affordable and can be installed in the average vehicle.

I have a list outlining some of the material from California, but depending on which one we use and how many we use, we can get that 25% solution by spending roughly $1,100 to $1,200 Canadian per vehicle. That money would be recouped by the savings on fuel of about $1,000 a year. The initial capital expenditure on the purchase price could be paid off in a year or a year and half and additional dollars would be saved after that. If that technology were put on the minivan that is assembled in Windsor, it would open up markets in both Canada and the United States.

I am quite confident in Canadian workers, whether they be engineers, plant managers, supervisors, skilled tradespeople or the man or woman working on the line. They have the ability to do this. What we are saying is that we must make sure that the auto industry performs and that the people who make the decisions allow this to happen.

[Constitution Amendment, 2005, February 15th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I must admit that I rise to speak to this motion with mixed feelings. On one hand, I have some sympathy for the member for Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington in his attempt to deal with the issues that arise from those sections in the BNA Act. On the other hand, as we have heard from both the Liberals and the Bloc, I feel that this is not the way to go about making constitutional amendments. I have to indicate that my party supports that sentiment and we will not be supporting the motion.

I want to wear my lawyer's hat for a moment. I have some concerns about whether this motion, if we proceeded with it, is within the exclusive power of this House. We may need to call on a number of constitutional experts to determine that for us. It is not something we can do in this House.

The reality is that even though we would be taking some power away from the federal government were we to proceed with this motion and amend the Constitution accordingly, there is still an issue on the role the provincial governments would play regarding this motion and its effect.

We could say that we are giving up a power, that we are restricting our ability to override provincial legislation. We cannot rule out that there may be some provincial government which, in looking down the road, may say, “At some point maybe we would like the federal government to continue to do that”.

I know that is stretching it a bit. It is the reality in terms of what we may end up with at some point. A provincial government may say, “Wait a minute. We do not want the federal government touching any part of the Constitution, including this part, until we approve of it also, or at least approve of it in an amendment formula that is acceptable to the country as a whole, including the provincial government”.

The other point we have to make when speaking to this type of an approach is to recognize that this part of the Constitution has been used sparingly over the years. The reservation section which we are addressing this evening was last used in 1961. It has been nearly 45 years since it was last used. With regard to the disallowance, 1943 was the last time it was used by the federal government.

In addition, the consensus among constitutional experts would be that at this point in time as this has fallen into disuse and there have been so many changes in our constitutional framework, including the passage of the laws in 1982, and the advance of the role of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the role of the courts to make decisions, all of those advances have rendered these sections no longer constitutionally valid. The end result of this motion if it were to come to fruition would be for naught because these sections no longer apply. They no longer have constitutional validity.

If the federal government attempted to use these sections, I believe our courts, our Supreme Court in particular at this point, would strike the sections down as no longer being valid.

Let me make the additional point that because of what happened in the run up to 1982, the resulting and ongoing concerns by the province of Quebec over amending formulas and changing the BNA Act, and a number of those concerns being shared by other provincial governments, we should not be going anywhere near making amendments, even those that appear, at least on the surface, to be taking power away from the federal government to proect the provinces, even if that is the end result, and I am not entirely convinced it is, we should not be doing this without full involvement and consultation with and the authority of the provincial governments.

It seems to me that if we have learned anything from the 1982 experience it is that we should never go down that road again of making those kinds of decisions where we exclude any significant part of our provincial counterparts.

Based on all those points, it is the position of the NDP that we will not be supporting the motion, that it is simply just not the way to go about constitutional amendment in this country and that it has some very dangerous consequences should we do so.

[Citizenship Act, February 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, this private member's bill should not be here because it is such a ridiculous set of circumstances that has brought the bill before the House. The issue should have been taken care of by the government quite a long time ago. I will set the scene. I have no doubt that the bill will pass because we are in a minority government situation and all of the opposition parties are in support of the bill. It is going to pass at some stage in the process.

The issue that is addressed in the bill has existed since 1977 and has been identified repeatedly since that time. The amendment is very brief. It is an amendment to one section of the Citizenship Act. It will provide for citizenship for people who should have citizenship in this country. Because of amendments to the law over the years, there are gaps in the law, which have been identified for quite some time. This has had the effect of denying citizenship to individuals who have every right to claim that citizenship in this country.

When the problem was identified, it was corrected going forward. That occurred back in February 1977, but the problem pre-existed and a number of people whom I believe are Canadians, who should be Canadians and who should be recognized by this country as Canadians, from 1947 to 1977 were excluded. The effect of the bill will be to make the provisions that are in the law now retroactive for anyone who falls into one of these categories from 1977 onward.

We ended up with the anomaly that individuals who were born in Canada were denied their citizenship. The almost unbelievable nature of our law surfaces. Children who were born of Canadians who were outside the country, that is the children were born outside the country, those children were entitled to Canadian citizenship and rightfully so because of their birth to Canadian parents and equally and obviously rightfully so it seems to me should children born in Canada but who were moved by their parents to another country. Those children lost their citizenship if the parents took out citizenship in the other country. It was a unilateral act of their parents which resulted in the children losing their citizenship.

There is a real tragedy in a number of cases. The Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration heard some of those stories as it took evidence from a number of witnesses.

In my own constituency in Windsor, which is right on the border, a number of people fall into this category unbeknownst to them in a large number of cases. In Windsor over the years a large number of families have moved to the U.S. side of the border, oftentimes within a stone's throw of the border but they are living on the American side for employment purposes.

A woman who came to see me was almost in shock when she found out that she was not a Canadian citizen. She had been born in Canada but had been moved by her parents to the United States, to the state of Michigan, for a relatively short period of time. It was less than seven years. She was back in Canada by the time she was seven years old. Her parents' marriage had broken down and her mother had moved her and her siblings back to Canada.

One of her siblings was born in the United States. She lived in Canada for the rest of her life. I do not want to identify her but she became a very strong contributor to our society and when she applied for her old age pension, she was advised by the authorities that she was not a Canadian citizen. Her sibling, who was about two years younger than she but was born in the United States, was a Canadian citizen. When she turned 65 she qualified for her pension.

It makes no sense at all that we have that situation under our existing law.

I am sure that anybody listening to this address and the others we will have this evening will ask why we would do this. When we consider some of the comments from the civil servants who were called to testify in previous hearings before the standing committee, and listen to the parliamentary secretary who tried to give some explanation in this last round, there really is no explanation.

We are told that there may be a large number of people and we should be concerned that they would all drift back across the border at one time and swamp our services, health services, pensions and whatever else to which they may be entitled. The first answer to that is that if they are Canadian citizens, they are entitled to those benefits. They are not going to be denied those benefits by the arbitrary nature of the existing legislation.

Again, it is gross discrimination just because a person was born after 1977. It is not an issue. People are Canadian citizens if they are born here, but if they were born in that 30 year period and then moved with their parents to another country, they are denied citizenship. It is extremely arbitrary. It is outright discrimination. It makes no sense at all.

One case that was used was a woman whose family has been in Canada for almost 300 years. Her father actually was a judge in Canada. She was told, again fairly late in life that she was not a Canadian citizen.

The evidence we heard at the committee was that a civil servant went to her, told her she would be given her Canadian citizenship but she would have to sign a non-disclosure agreement. As much as she wanted to be a Canadian citizen, she refused. She said that is not what Canada is about. She knew more about what Canada was about than the person who was making the offer to her, and she left the country. She was a woman who had contributed greatly to this country but was forced to leave because she was not a Canadian citizen.

People are running into problems at the border when people who think they are Canadians travel outside the country and when they come back are told they are not Canadian citizens. This has become more of a problem since September 11, 2001. People who come into the country are being more closely scrutinized. Often they find out to their severe dismay that they are not Canadian citizens.

The amendment would correct this. It is an amendment that should go through. All the opposition parties are in favour of it so it will go through eventually. One final point I would make, unlike some of the other private members' bills that might get stalled in the other house, this one has already passed the other house. This is going to become law. It is one of those occasions when we can point to a minority government and say that a number of majority governments have not dealt with the issue, but democracy will reign on this case and this injustice will be ended once and for all.