Joe Comartin

[Supply, November 18th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I want to acknowledge the fine speech we have just heard from the member for Churchill. I wish to pick up on one of the points that she made about the way that Canadians have an expectation that the health system and the food system combined are safe in this country.

In that regard, I would ask her about some of the criticisms that we have had as a party, as we have proposed this motion to deal with the substantial reduction, if not the outright ban of trans fats in our foods. One of the criticisms that has been levelled is that we should leave it to the industry and allow it to put in place voluntary regulations and controls.

Would the member feel that this would be a viable alternative for the country to follow?

[Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Act, November 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I want to acknowledge the work the member of Windsor West he has done. All three of the crossings, including the train crossing, are in his riding. He has led the way on a good deal of the effort we have put into play to try to resolve the issue.

Specifically, on the authority, there is no question that we need it and that it be coordinated very tightly with the U.S. side. There are constant decisions of an almost emergency nature that need to be made. From talking to our police forces and our fire services, we know it is very difficult for that cooperation to occur because we do not have a central body in the local area to make those decisions. I would be very supportive of us establishing an authority, the federal government being the initiator in that regard.

[Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Act, November 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from the Bloc for his question.

The answer is no. The committee has not done anything in this regard.

It is one that badly needs to be looked at. The difficulty in which the committee found itself was because the O'Connor inquiry was underway, it would have been presumptuous for us to do an analysis at this point.

I would also like to point out to the member from the Bloc that the proposal for a national security oversight type of committee is before the Deputy Prime Minister at this point, and coming out of that, the types of protocol that we need. We have them now. There is some suggestion clearly that they need revision, updating and strengthening as to the sharing of information with our allies. Perhaps it could be said that we share 100% of all our intelligence material with those four allies: the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

Protocols are in place. There are some suggestions up to this point in the Arar case that they were not properly followed. We will get that from the commission when it reports. My sense is we need to do more and it should not be left exclusively in the hands of the minister. A parliamentary committee should be in place to review those protocols and see that they are proper, that they are in force and that there will be ongoing monitoring of them once they are developed.

[Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Act, November 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, this issue has been the dominant issue in the Windsor-Detroit corridor since September 11, 2001. There is just no other issue at the same level of concern for the residents of Windsor and Essex County.

To answer directly the question that is being asked, I do not see an inherent conflict between the interests of the residents and businesses in the city of Windsor and the county of Essex and the international trade that moves within our municipal jurisdiction across that border in both directions.

What has happened is that the determination on the part of the U.S. government to place--I understand this and I am very careful about using these words--as an absolute its security above all other considerations has developed to such an extreme that it is imperilling the economic health of the region, and not just on the Canadian side of the border but on both sides of the border.

We have had studies done by the chambers of commerce on both sides showing losses, on an annual basis since September 11, on the Canadian side running between $5 billion and $7 billion annually to the general economy in southwestern Ontario, and losses of as much as $10 billion to the economy in the adjoining states on the American side, in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana.

I want to point something out. I can recall this and I am taking some pride in saying, “I told you so”. The big problem was that the American side was not putting money directly into the border services. On the Canadian side we had, if I can use this figure, 10 booths open and allowing traffic to move onto the Canadian side, and only 4 or 6 operating on the American side.

To show how effective this has been, the American side just recently opened four additional booths. They were operating at full capacity as of September of this year and for the first time in three years we have not had consistent backups at the border. It was a relatively simple solution. It is not the end of it, because we need another border crossing and there is no question of that in my mind. But there were some simple solutions and that was one of them. The mayor has more.

You are signalling me, Mr. Speaker, to stop talking. I will leave it at that.

[Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Act, November 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the bill before us has the unanimous support of all parties. It did not require a great deal of work to achieve that consensus. All of us have felt for some time that the need to deliver our security services efficiently, both domestically and internationally, has been wanting. When the bill was brought forward at the start of this session, all opposition parties with an open mind were willing to accept it with some minor changes.

Before I go to those, however, I would like to address why we needed this so badly. As a result of the terrible tragedy that occurred on September 11, 2001, we have learned that there are significant flaws in our system. These flaws have been documented by reports across all of our allies: the 9/11 report in the United States, the Bali report in Australia and the Butler report in England. Each one of those reports has shown that the services that we have show a significant tendency, and this may even be a human tendency, to build those traditional silos and then hide behind those silos, in fact defend them in a very territorial fashion.

Unfortunately, as much as one might admire some of the loyalty that is shown within those agencies to that silo defence, it leads inevitably, in each of those jurisdictions I just mentioned, to a lack of cooperation so that the loyalty that we see in terms of defending the agency is extended to the degree that it becomes dysfunctional. In fact, it prevents those agencies from cooperation. We have seen that in all three of those countries.

There is some indication, most of it anecdotal here in Canada, that similar things have happened. We certainly saw some evidence come out in the course of the Air India trial where because of the lack of cooperation, it would appear, and a reduction in the effectiveness of our intelligence services and security services in the investigation of that crime, it has caused the trial to be dragged out over a much longer period than it would have been otherwise had there been more cooperation. I do not want to overemphasize that particular case because it is, of course, still before the courts and we may get some indication at some point whether that is a complete reality.

However, we know that this is a problem. From my experiences in another committee on which I sat this past summer, our services are conscious of it. The committees and the inspector general that oversee this are very conscious of it. Attempts are being made to eradicate that lack of cooperation and, as a member of the NDP, I applaud those efforts.

This bill is one of the methodologies that we are deploying as a government to facilitate cooperation and to downplay any of this territoriality that leads to a dysfunctional service.

As a party we are quite pleased to support the bill and will be voting in favour of it once debate at third reading is complete. However I want to acknowledge that there were some flaws identified when the bill went to the committee and amendments were moved. I want to draw the House's attention to the amendments that were moved to clauses 5 and 6.

The amendment to clause 5 was to specify the agencies that would now be consolidated under one department and under one minister. They are: the RCMP, CSIS, the Canada Border Services Agency, the Canada Firearms Centre, the Correctional Service of Canada and the National Parole Board. These are the existing agencies and departments that will be incorporated.

I want to make this point because on this amendment there was criticism coming from the government side that it somehow would hamstring the minister. I want to be very clear that the amendment, and the bill as it is before the House, particularly clause 5, allow for additional agencies to be added. I have to say, again based on some of the experiences I had this summer, that I believe this should be happening fairly soon. I am not sure the government members are on side with that, but if they do come to that realization and wish to add additional agencies under the purview of the minister, they in fact are able to do so without amendments to the law that will flow out of this bill.

I want to perhaps applaud the opposition parties. In the course of that amendment coming forward, all three opposition parties supported it. There was a good discussion. It was a good example, if I can put it that way, of the parliamentary committee system working.

Similarly, with clause 6, the amendment was brought forth provides for a direction, in effect, to the minister to exercise his or her authority and powers under this law in compliance with the constitutional jurisdiction of the provinces and the territories. Again there was a good discussion. The opposition parties, after listening to that discussion, are all supporting this amendment.

It is one that I believe is particularly important if one begins to appreciate what is going on in Canada at the present time in terms of the police forces of the provinces and the municipalities cooperating extensively with our national agencies in gathering evidence. In some cases, what has been traditional intelligence gathering is being assisted if not outright conducted by our provincial and municipal police forces in cooperation with and generally under the direction of our federal agencies such as the RCMP and CSIS.

The cause for concern as a result of this is that we want to be very clear that the provinces and the territories retain their traditional jurisdiction in the areas of enforcement, at the same time recognizing that right across the country we have been cooperating with the federal agencies and in fact taking on additional workloads since September 11, 2001.

We wanted that workload to be conducted in such a way that it always remained within the control of the provinces and the territories and that protocols were worked out with the federal government and its agencies on an ongoing basis. We did not want the jurisdiction of the provinces and the territories impugned. I believe that this amendment brought forward on clause 6 takes into account the reality of what is going on in the country right now within our police forces. It protects that jurisdiction of the provinces and territories. Again there was a good discussion in the committee, in the way that committees are supposed to function, we all believe, and perhaps in practice do not as often as they should. The committee did function well here.

Both of these amendments were put through and are now back before the House with what I believe to be an improved bill.

Along the same lines of the conduct of the committee, other amendments were proposed and were turned down. I want to draw to the attention of the House the fact that the Privacy Commissioner came before the committee as a witness and proposed two amendments, one that I would say she was not pressing for but one that she felt was in fact necessary.

After listening to her testimony, questioning her and having a thorough discussion in the committee, we determined in regard to the proposal she was making, although it was in its essence very valid, that is, concerns over privacy and how information was being used or could be used and in fact abused, it was not appropriate to deal with it at this time in this bill.

I think we all felt we had a sense of responsibility to the Privacy Commissioner to be very clear with her that we appreciated her initiative in this regard and that it is one she should pursue in other legislation, either in existing law or in fact some amendments to new legislation that should be forthcoming in the next while. We appreciated the initiative, but we felt that it was not in this law that it should be dealt with.

In that regard, there certainly was a good deal of discussion about the fact that a lot of our information at the international level is being shared. There were concerns expressed about whether the proper protocols are in place to protect Canadians from that information being abused in other countries.

Obviously the case that comes to mind is the Maher Arar case, and there are the suspicions we all have as to whether that happened in his case. Certainly at the superficial level it would now appear quite clear that it did. Who was at fault is unclear and that of course is the major subject as I see it of the O'Connor inquiry that is going on at the present time. Coming out of this, we may in fact get some recommendations that will invoke that concern of the Privacy Commissioner and we may pursue this at some point down the road. Certainly that is the intention of my party and it is one that we will follow quite closely once we have that report.

The additional point I would like to make is that this bill is just the start of the work that needs to be done to make sure that we do not end up as so many other countries have. Our traditional allies, the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia, all have demonstrated that within their services there is a need for ongoing vigilance, that the services are working at their peak efficiency, if I can put it that way. We as members of this House have a responsibility to see that there is an infrastructure in place which maximizes the likelihood of that occurring. This is one bill that we are quite happy to support as the first step in achieving that result, but it is certainly not the end.

[Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Act, November 16th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-6 has been referred to as a housekeeping bill. I suppose that is reasonably accurate. The government has moved on this, quite a bit later than it should have given the announcement that came with regard to this type of legislation almost a year ago when the present Prime Minister became Prime Minister. It is simply an attempt on the part of the government to consolidate the functioning of our security forces, the work that we do both nationally and internationally with regard to the security of our citizenry.

As we have heard, all parties are in support of this legislation. In effect it is a very short bill when the amendments to other legislation are taken out. It simply consolidates a number of the agencies.

I do want to say that the provisions in the bill that were placed before the justice committee were such that it was responded to in a cooperative fashion by the committee. I believe it is an attempt by all parties to cooperate and make the minority government situation not only function but function well. I believe we went quite some distance in achieving that.

I have to say perhaps as an aside that questions remain with regard to the restructuring of our security forces, but in a spirit of cooperation those concerns were set aside by the committee to be addressed at a future date.

I will mention one of the items. There was some discussion as to whether the agencies that fall within the purview of the minister, in this case the Deputy Prime Minister, are as broad as they could be. I spent a good deal of my summer dealing with security issues, both in this country and internationally. What kept coming up was this need to have cooperation to make sure we do not create silos where we have territorial infighting and protection of our own territory, at times to the detriment of the security in the country. We heard that from our allies in the United States, England and Australia. It was a common theme.

This legislation goes some distance toward achieving that, but as I say, it does not bring in all of our security agencies. This is a question that was raised at the committee, but in a sense of cooperation we put off the question so this bill could move forward quickly and we could begin to do this coordination that everyone agreed was necessary.

The sense of cooperation was there and was acted upon. A number of amendments got proposed, two of which passed. I want to make mention of one that did not. It was not proposed by committee members but by the Privacy Commissioner.

There is no question that the Privacy Commissioner had valid concerns about the issue of privacy and in fact the security of information that is gathered by our security forces, both domestically and internationally. We have heard a great deal about the use that the Patriot Act is being put to by our American allies. This is one of the areas where we would be concerned. There was a concern expressed about the way this information is used, in particular because of the suspicions in the Arar case about it being used improperly. For that, we will wait for the outcome of Justice O'Connor's report and recommendations.

Those issues were raised. Again, in this sense and spirit of cooperation that was in the committee, we indicated to the Privacy Commissioner and to the government that we were prepared to set those concerns aside to be dealt with later, either within the scope of this legislation and bill or in other areas, but it would be a matter that we would address down the road. We felt it was simply too important to get this legislation in place so we proceeded on that basis and in fact did so expeditiously.

One of the controversial issues that is now before the House is that the government, in response to the report from the committee when this bill was reported out at report stage, has now moved this amendment. It would in effect overturn the amendment that we received from the Bloc member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, wherein he wanted to draw clear jurisdictional lines between the federal government, the provinces and the territories.

All three of the opposition parties supported that approach. We in the NDP do not believe, as was suggested by the parliamentary secretary earlier this morning, that the implications of passing this amendment do not set a permanent type of precedent. He admitted he was not a constitutional expert and he is right in that regard, if in fact he was going to take that position. The long term effect is that it will be in the bill and in the law. We have indicated that at that time, and I will repeat it now on behalf of my party, we are going to address the issue of provincial and territorial rights vis-à-vis the federal government on a file by file, bill by bill and law by law basis.

In this case, it is appropriate, because again one of the things that I think was drawn very clearly to our attention this summer as the committee did its work on public security is the amount of additional work being done in intelligence gathering and in public security, work that has traditionally been done at the federal level and by federal police agencies and services and is now being done in a cooperative fashion with the provincial and municipal police forces in the country.

We want it to be very clear that although this cooperation has been extended by those government agencies at the provincial and municipal level, we did not want to see an incursion by the federal government into what have been traditional areas of responsibility for the provinces and territories in accordance with our constitutional framework in this country.

The motion that was put forward for an amendment by the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin was appropriate. It is one that in the circumstances we supported and we continue to support now. We are clearly saying to the government we will not support it returning the bill to the state it was in when it got to committee.

I want to make one final point with regard to that. We as a party have argued that we need to expand the role of the committees in the House and the government and within our constitutional framework. It is part of the democratic deficit to which the Prime Minister is very fond of referring, but I have to say that we have to question his sincerity at a time like this when the committee clearly discussed this issue. It was a full discussion. Members listened to the opinions from all sides and said to the government that in this case the amendment was appropriate. That was a clearly democratic process. It is one that should in fact be honoured by the government, so we draw to the attention of the House the fact that the government is ignoring all of the platitudes that it has put out around democratic deficit and the need for reform when it moves this type of amendment at report stage.

The committee discussed it. The committee went through a democratic process. The committee reached a decision and has now reported that decision to the House. That should be honoured by the government and by the House.

In conclusion, I will say that we are supportive of the bill but we are going to insist that the amendments that were passed at committee be honoured by the House.

[Migratory Birds Convention Act, 1994, November 2nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the bill before us today is the reincarnation of legislation that was passed in the last Parliament but which the government did not see as important enough to get through the Senate before it called the election.

However, whenever I talk about the bill, the one number that always sticks out with me and is the number 300,000, which is the number of birds killed by this type of pollution off the east coast, and only off the east coast, every year. The number is a low estimate, according to the Fisheries and Oceans people or the environmentalists on the east coast. These are the ones they can actually identify as having died, so the figure is much larger than that.

In spite of the comment that we heard from the last Liberal speaker, the reality is that a number of the species that are being affected by this type of pollution are endangered. It is a hole in the endangered species legislation that went through the last Parliament that has not allowed the scientists who are studying these bird populations to get them on the endangered species list.

The legislation before us today is way overdue. I say that with a great deal of conviction because our U.S. neighbours have had this type of legislation in place now for close to 15 years. The result of that has been this scheming by some of the international shippers to sail into Canadian waters. They cross the Atlantic, come into Canadian waters, dump their bilge and then move into the U.S. port, which is their ultimate destination. However we have been the recipient of their pollution and garbage for way too long and the government has sat on this legislation way too long.

The effect has been, because of the U.S. legislation, that they have done a great deal to clean up this type of activity by rogue ships that dump their garbage in international waters or national waters, as is happening now in Canada.

The other thing that the U.S. has done, which we have not done and which this legislation does not do, is put our money where our mouths are. We will pass the legislation but no additional resources will be put in place for additional surveillance by the Coast Guard, by Fisheries and Oceans or the federal Department of the Environment. None of them will receive additional dollars to do anything to make sure the legislation will function.

Although we have increased the fines, which I applaud the government for doing, as it is something it should have done over a decade ago, the reality is that we may not have any ability to enforce the legislation unless we get serious about funding the Coast Guard, in particular, but also Fisheries and Oceans and the Department of the Environment.

There is another issue that has not been addressed by the legislation or the government. There were a series of reports where charges had been laid under the existing legislation but there were no convictions. The reason for that has been conflict between the Departments of Fisheries and Oceans and the Environment. Again I see nothing in the role that the government has played in the last few months since it has been in a minority government situation to clean that up.

Will we again be faced with departments not cooperating with each other or thwarting the actions of one or the other because of territorial empire building, resulting in the consequence that, although the legislation is in place, we perhaps may identify the culprits but because of shoddy work or work being thwarted by one department over the other the convictions do not get registered in court because the evidence has not been properly prepared? I warn the government that is something it has to work on. It has to clean up that territorial infighting and make sure that it never occurs again.

Another point about the lack of legislation is the issue of the deductibility of these fines. The government is extolling the fact that it has increased the fines. Again, I applaud it for doing that. However, it is rather hypocritical to say that it has done this when, under the existing circumstances in our income tax laws, in a good number of cases those fines end up being deductible from a corporation's income tax. The downside of that is, as individual taxpayers, we end up in effect paying as much as 50% of that fine.

We as a party have lobbied the government repeatedly to ban the deductibility of fines that are related to environmental crimes. It is a simple point. The government and I believe all political parties talk about polluters paying. Let us get serious about that. If we are to follow that principle, if we are to insist that people who commit crimes against the environment must pay for it, we should not turn to the taxpayers and say that they will pay half of it. We have no responsibility here. We are not guilty of that dumping. The shippers are guilty of it. They are killing those 300,000 plus birds every year just off the east coast.

As a country, we should in no way be subsidizing that type of conduct. We must change our income tax laws to make it absolutely foolproof that an individual who commits a crime against the natural environment will pay the full amount of that fine. That the principal polluter pays a bit of the fine is an hypocrisy. It is something we badly have to do.

Following on some of the comments made by my colleague from the Bloc Québécois, I cannot finish without raising the reality of the Prime Minister's role in this. The reality is his family still owns a major shipping line and we still do not have that change in our income tax law. I suggest that is one of the reasons. This Parliament has to stand up and say that we will do this. We have to say to the Prime Minister that we are sorry to his family and CSL, but CSL will have to come in line with the obligations that it faces elsewhere in the world. If it is going to commit that kind of an infringement of our law, that kind of a crime against the environment, we are no longer going to subsidize it. I point out that CSL has already been convicted once under the existing law and was ordered to pay a paltry fine of $25,000.

It is time for this Parliament to bring our laws into the 21st century with regard to polluters paying. We should no longer subsidize this type of infringement, in spite of the obvious conflict by the Prime Minister and his family. We should push hard on this issue. Until we do, this legislation becomes much less effective. It is time for us to stand up and say that we will protect our migratory birds, we will stop the slaughter of the birds off the east and west coasts and we will make the person who perpetrated that crime pay to the fullest extent of the law.

[Criminal Code, November 1st, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-13 from the perspective that we are dealing with relatively new technology and some amendments would normally cause us a good deal of concern.

DNA samples have been gathered only since 2000. It should have been done much earlier, but the current government was very slow in moving the bill through the House to final fruition. Once in place, it became quite obvious that there were some significant limitations in it, and the government is now attempting to address those. We will not know whether it has been successful until we hear from the criminal defence bar, prosecutors, some police associations and some victims' rights groups. That is why we are supportive of the legislation going to committee prior to second reading. If the government were looking for support in principle for the bill at second reading, my party would not be able to support it.

There are several points in the bill that cause us particular concern. Overall we believe the direction in which it is moving is the appropriate direction. Certain charges are being moved from the secondary list to the primary list and we believe that is appropriate.

On the other hand, we are quite concerned about the bill being made retroactive. There has been a great deal of debate in the House and across the country over this issue. Certain individuals currently in prison will be paroled shortly because they have served their entire time. It would be quite desirable for society as a whole to obtain a DNA sample from them and have it in the data bank on an ongoing basis. On the other hand, whether it is appropriate for retroactivity to apply to all people who will be released shortly still gives us some cause for concern.

It almost goes without saying that under common law, the history in England and Canada, all legislatures have been reluctant to ever pass legislation that is retroactive. That aspect of the bill will require some close attention by the justice committee when Bill C-13 gets there.

Members of the Conservative Party are concerned about when the DNA sample should be taken. We have heard from some police associations that they are pressing quite strongly for the sample to be taken, as fingerprints are, at the time the individual is charged. That is generally being done in England at this time, as opposed to other alternatives such as upon conviction, upon sentencing or after all appeals have been exhausted. Those are all possibilities. They will have to be canvassed in front of the committee which will be hearing from people who work in this area such as police associations, bar associations and, in particular, the criminal defence bar.

We know from some of the wrongful conviction cases, which have been in the news in the last few years, that DNA samples could be an excellent tool to acquit people. However, they are also quite widespread in convicting people. As I said in my opening comments, this is a new technology. I know from some of the work I did in private practice, that in the initial stages the assessment of these samples left something to be desired. Even though experts on the stand said that it was an absolute, that it was 99.99% perfect, reality was that it was not specific as we began to understand the technology better and understand what was needed to get proper assessments.

In terms of the use of the DNA data bank, we must be conscious of the fact that it is a new technology. We must be conscious of the fact that we may see somewhere down the road someone challenging its validity and its accuracy on a scientific basis. We must be very careful when we are imposing the types of pressure and the types of law on convicted criminals. We have to be very careful with that.

There are charges that are being moved, and these would be after conviction, from the secondary list up to the primary list. Those will have to be looked at closely as well, as to whether that is also all appropriate, or whether in fact there should be additional charges moved on to the primary list.

That is important because if the charge and the conviction are based on a criminal offence that falls into the primary list, the DNA sample must be ordered by the judge convicting the individual unless that person can show, for privacy or personal security reasons, why it should not be taken. That has not happened in the past. I cannot imagine it happening other than in very rare occasions in the future.

If the charge is on that primary list and the person is convicted of that charge, it is almost a certainty that the sample will be ordered and taken.

If it is on the secondary list the onus is reversed. The prosecutor in that situation must establish why the sample should be taken. The defence can argue, but the primary responsibility lies with the prosecution to establish that.

So we do have to be careful. First, have we put enough charges on the primary list? Have we put too many charges on the primary list? That has to be canvassed and again I am looking forward to the committee looking into that to some degree.

The question is the same with regard to the secondary list. Should we be adding additional charges or should we be taking some of them off that are being proposed or already on?

Bill C-13 is a relatively modest bill. The provisions that also bother us are those sections in the act that move the gathering of DNA samples under the National Defence Act in the court martial situation. I am not clear and I really do want to investigate whether the full protection of the law will be meted out under the defence act as it is under the code, both in terms of what we already have and the amendments that are being proposed. That is an additional item that has to be looked at.

Let me conclude by saying that the use of the technology is new. It has obviously been a boon to the prosecutor in a number of cases establishing proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Similarly, in a number of well known cases and a number of others that are not as well known, it has been a substantial benefit to those accused. Their defence counsel are able to establish little or no likelihood of them having been the perpetrators of the particular offence.

It is there, but it is a new technology. We need to look at it very closely. It is one of the bills that will require some expert witnesses from perhaps other jurisdictions, but certainly from the scientific and legal community in order for us to get an accurate appraisal of where this legislation should be going, and whether in fact we have achieved it with this bill or whether significant amendments will be required.

[Paralympic and Olympic Athletes, November 1st, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to salute Canada's Paralympic and Olympic athletes who so proudly represented our country with great distinction in Athens this year. Today we are honoured by their presence on Parliament Hill.

In August our Olympians competed with the world and brought home 12 medals. Less than a month later our Paralympians honoured Canada once again, winning a record 72 medals and placing third in the overall standing.

Between our Paralympians and Olympians, every region of the country was represented at the medal podium in Athens.

I would like to pay special tribute to Tecumseh's own Danielle Campo, who won a silver and two bronze medals in swimming events in Athens. Danielle has been an outstanding representative for our community and Canada. She won a bronze medal in the 2002 Commonwealth Games, the first time medals were awarded to an athlete with a disability. She was awarded the Order of Ontario the same year.

On behalf of my NDP colleagues, I salute these outstanding athletes who proudly represent our communities and our country.

[Supply, October 21st, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I want to be clear. We have heard from the Conservatives and I guess we are now hearing it from the Liberals. They want to know how much are we going to spend. This is not a bidding war. We need to know what we are going to do. The Liberals clearly do not know. They are hedging. We heard from the defence minister that we would have a full blown review and then that we would have a review just within the department. I am not sure what that meant, and we are not even sure if that is happening at this point.

It would be irresponsible for any party to stand in the House and say that it will spend $1 billion on this. I know I want to spend somewhere in the range of $100 million to $200 million on housing and better remuneration for the lower rents. I know I want to do that but I cannot say what the exact number is. Will that figure change if we take on those additional 3,000 or 5,000 in the reserves? Obviously it will go up.

Do we support the replacement of the Sea Kings? Obviously we support that. My colleague from Nova Scotia has been very strong and adamant on that, in spite of the incompetence that has been shown so often by the government on the issue and the length of time it has taken.

However it is irresponsible for anybody to stand in the House today and say that he or she will spend this amount of money. It was irresponsible for the Conservatives in their party policy to say that $1.5 billion had to be spent on operations and $1.5 billion a year on new equipment. They did not know what that meant and they do not know it today either.