Joe Comartin

[Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act, December 3rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, it is a very good question. I cannot say that it came up much in the discussion on this bill. On a prior bill, again dealing with child luring over the Internet, in particular, there was discussion of that.

The only answer that I have had of any merit, and I do not want to sound as if I am defending the government's position, was again the problem of identifying the sites. We obviously cannot block them unless we know where they are. So, this bill would move forward on that. I would hope, based on all of the indications we have and what is happening in countries like Sweden, that we would move to that.

In that regard, I would like to just take another minute. I did a lot of work on public safety for a period of time. Within our CSE agency, we have some very advanced technology. If this were shared with our police forces, we would be able to do this blocking as effectively as any government that I have been able to identify, including the United States. We have technology, sort of in our spy agencies, that is as effective as any. The Chinese may be ahead of us on this because they are doing a great deal of blocking in China right now. However, we have the technology in Canada and we can do the blocking.

As I said, though, we would have to make that available, from our spy agencies and those services, to our regular police forces.

[Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act, December 3rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address Bill C-22 at third reading.

As always, it is important that we recognize the support for the bill, throughout many years actually. All parties are supportive of the bill, so it clearly will go through. With the opportunity we have for the short amount of debate we will have on it, probably finishing today, we need to set, in context, how it has come to be this far into the process, why it has taken so long and the usefulness of the procedures that we mandate will have.

There is a big component here, I would hope, both in this debate, as Canadians listen to it and have up to this point, and on an ongoing basis, and that is the public educational aspect to the bill. If it is to be useful, we need greater co-operation from individuals who use the Internet on a regular basis.

To set the context, the bill requires companies that provide servers for the Internet to report what they consider to be child pornography to a specific agency, yet to be established. It will be identified and all service providers will be made aware of the agency. That is the first element.

Second, companies will have to report to the agency and if they are then, either by the agency or by a police forces, advised that they believe it is child pornography and that an investigation will take place, they will have to retain the material for a 21 day period. That will give police and prosecutors sufficient time to get a warrant to access the data and to trace back this material to its source. Our prosecutors need the 21 days to get a judicial warrant to get access to that information.

The bill is essentially about that.

To set it in its context of why this is so important, the first thing I would point out is an NDP member had a private member's bill dealing with these aspects, and a couple more, way back in the late 1990s. The subsequent Liberal governments did nothing to move on this, and I think I am accurate in that. If they did, they introduced a bill really late, in 2004, 2005. The Conservative government picked it up in 2006, but we are now in almost 2011. In fact, this clearly will not likely become law until 2011 by the time it gets through the Senate and royal assent. That is a full five years.

What has happened in that period of time is more children have been abused. Our police officers, prosecutors and judges have all been hamstrung, to a significant degree, in dealing with child pornography on the Internet because they have not had these tools. In that period of time, as much as the justice minister in particular and the Prime Minister stand regularly in the House and in public and accuse the opposition parties of slowing down bills, this one included, the reality is the government went to an election. Even though it said it would go to a fixed date election, it broke that promise and stalled the bill. We had two prorogations and both times this bill or its predecessors were stalled as well. In effect we have lost a full five years when we could have had this law. In fact, we should have had it as much as 10 years ago, and that is a real shame.

In terms of the ability of our police forces in particular, the bill would allow our police enforcement agencies to get at this material.

It is important to understand something else that happened in Canada. Paul Gillespie, a police officer in Toronto, was trying to deal with child pornography and child sexual abuse generally. He became really frustrated by the lack of technology. On his own initiative, and he is really a Canadian hero in this regard, he sent a letter to Bill Gates of Microsoft and said that police officers needed help, that they could not trace the material, which has exploded on the Internet.

We have always had child pornography. We could go back to ancient Greece, ancient Egypt and find child pornography. However, with the advent of the Internet and easy access by billions of people around the Globe, child pornographers put this material on to the Internet in huge volume.

Paul Gillespie found that the police could not trace this material back. Most of this material does not come out of Canada. A chunk of it comes out of the United States, and we can disagree on how much, and a large chunk of it comes out of eastern Europe and parts of Asia. Mr. Gillespie was trying to trace this back to the source, but this material, at times, will go through as many as 50 different servers.

He said to Bill Gates that the police did not have the technology to trace this back, that there were all kinds of walls built into the Internet that the police could not break through and he asked for help. To their great credit, Mr. Gates and his corporation provided resources to the tune of about $10 million in both actual dollars and in his staff. They built a software program with which we are now able to trace back, quite successfully, this material to its very source.

We have the problem, and I will be quite frank on this. When we have traced it back to various countries, there is no ability or, in some cases, no willingness on their part to shut these servers down and to prosecute the people who put it up originally. That is an ongoing problem. We need international co-operation. However, Canada has now become known as the country that developed, with the help of Mr. Gates and his company, the technology to trace it back.

Back to the bill and why it is so important. The service providers now have a legislated mandate that if they identify child pornography, they pass that information on to the new agency that will be created. One of the agencies we believe will be in competition for this role is the Cybertip.ca in Manitoba. Cybertip.ca was modelled after a program that started in the U.K. A centre was established in Winnipeg that regularly searches the Internet to try to find these sources and then passes that on to police agencies to try to track it down. I believe the federal funding for Cybertip.ca came in 2004, 2005 under the then Liberal government. I remember at the time criticizing the government for not giving it enough money.

We heard from the members of Cybertip.ca. They testified before the committee on this bill. They acknowledged that there was a good deal of additional work they would like to do to identify and trace this material and help the police in that regard.

Essentially people call Cybertip.ca to say that they have found a site with child pornography. Cybertip.ca then looks at it and identifies it to determine if it is prosecutable. It is passed on to the Canadian police forces that then pass it on to international ones.

Cybertip.ca has been very successful, but again, it is not properly funded. There is a lot of work it would like to do. When the director came to committee, she made it quite clear that it could easily double its work force to cope with that huge volume of child pornography on the Internet.

This is one of the potential agencies that may be identified under the regulations of the legislation as the agency to report to. I expect there may be other agencies that would bid in once the criteria and mandate for the agency is set up under the regulations.

This is a very positive development in terms of fighting child pornography. There is not an individual in the House, and very few Canadians, who are not totally revolted by this material. In a previous bill that dealt with the issue of child luring, some material was shown to the committee in camera. I have also had exposure to this through my practice while doing some criminal work. It is absolutely revolting to see, especially when it is very young children, babies who cannot even walk yet, involved with adults sexually abusing them.

It is absolutely crucial that we move on this. I am very critical of the current government and the previous government that it has taken us this long to get to this stage.

Our police officers can significantly move forward because of the ability to now gather this material through the service providers. They see, as much as everybody else does, that they will have an effect. There will be a greater number of people reporting on the existence of this material and where it exists. A secondary part of this bill will be the ability to get a quick search warrant to access the address. Through the website, which would already have been identified, they will be able to trace it back because of the software program developed through Microsoft. This will make it much more effective in fighting this scourge.

We cannot downplay the huge volume. It is speculated that not only child pornography but pornography overall takes up as much as 50% of all the material that is on the Internet internationally, and child pornography forms a significant part of that.

When the bill is passed, the government and the country will be able to move very dramatically. We will continue to take a leadership role on this. That leadership role is recognized internationally. At the international level, we need to continue to press other governments that have not been willing, or that may not have the capacity to go after these service providers to get to the sites from where the child pornography comes. We have to be as forceful as we can.

The estimate I have seen, and this is reasonably accurate, is less than 1% or 2% of this material is produced in Canada because of some previous legislation we passed and because of the technology Microsoft developed for us. Since that technology came online, it has been available to people like Mr. Gillespie. I refer to him as Mr. Gillespie because he has left the police force and has set up a non-profit agency to continue to fight child pornography.

From the time that technology became available, we have identified a few sites in Canada where child pornography is produced and we have shut them down.

In terms of advocating at the international level, we need to pressure governments, particularly in eastern Europe and Asia, to be more proactive at investigating these sites in their countries, shutting them down and prosecuting the producers.

A significant element has developed, again mostly out of eastern Europe and Asia, of organized crime producing this material and making millions if not billions of dollars off it. In all cases we are seeing children, sometimes at a very young age being abused because of the pornographers.

I want to mention a couple of concerns that I have about the legislation, and I would urge the government to monitor this.

One of the provisions in the legislation is that, if the service providers do not comply with those two responsibilities, one, to report when they identify it and, two, to save the material for that 21-day period, they can be prosecuted.

I must say that the penalties contained in the bill seem to be quite mild when compared with other penalties that the government has imposed in the child pornography area. There seems to be some deference on the part of the government because these are corporate criminals. I have some difficulty with that and we will have to monitor it.

The other problem with it is that I do not understand the rationale behind this. The government put a maximum, a two-year limit, on the time when providers can be charged. It is certainly not beyond the pale that we would identify a number of service providers after two years who knew this type of material was on their sites and did not report it, or they did report it but did not keep the material.

In the secondary case, we will know and we will be able to charge them within that two-year time limit. But for those service providers who identify material and do not report it, it is quite conceivable, almost a certainty I would think, that we will find that some of them have done it for more than two years and we will not be able to prosecute them. I heard no argument from the government as to why it picked the arbitrary period of two years. Other sections in the Criminal Code do not have a two-year time limit in terms of the right to prosecute.

I raised another concern when I spoke to this bill at second reading, and that was that small service providers would not be able to comply. I just want to assure the House and Canadians generally that they are a small percentage of the overall market. The large service providers take up as much as 90% to 95% of the market.

We asked the association representing small service providers to attend committee and tell us if it had any concerns about the bill. The association said there was no need for it to appear because it was satisfied that small service providers could comply with the law. That has been taken care of, as far as we can tell.

This is a very good bill, with the exception of our one concern over the length of time to charge and prosecute. We will have to monitor that.

It is clear, from the evidence we heard on the bill and on other legislation we worked on with regard to child pornography and child sexual abuse more generally, that we have a responsibility because of the leadership role we have taken up to this point. Slow as it has been on some occasions, we are still further ahead than a lot of other countries. We have to continue at the international level to press governments to build a capacity to fight this scourge and, if they do identify it, have the political will to prosecute vigorously to shut the sites down and prosecute the producers of the material.

[Criminal Code, December 2nd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I was actually prepared to give a moment of my time to my colleague from the Liberal Party given the amount of work he has done on this issue over the years, but he managed to usurp that time in any event. I really should not be making a joke as this is a very serious piece of legislation.

As I said earlier when I first saw this private member's bill, because we have seen it on a number of different occasions, I had some serious reservations from the perspective of whether this in fact would accomplish anything. In that sense, it seemed to me that the existing provisions within the Criminal Code, including the provisions under the Anti-terrorism Act which are part of the code now, would cover the eventuality of someone conducting himself or herself in such a way that it would amount to a suicide bombing. I suppose that was the lawyer in me coming out.

The real reason for passing this bill, and I believe my colleagues in the NDP are overwhelmingly, if not unanimously, in support of it at this point, should not be approached so much on a legalistic basis insomuch as it is the power of the House to express its denunciation of the conduct that is entailed when someone contemplates or commits an act of suicide bombing.

We have heard from other speakers this evening and on other occasions of the prevalence of this tool. As far as I am aware, it has never been used in Canada but has been used quite widely in a number of countries around the world. Because of my contact with Sri Lanka, I think immediately of the use of it there repeatedly. In fact, there is a strong argument that it may have been the first time it was used certainly on a consistent basis by a rebel force in that country and used repeatedly to great sacrifice to that society with very many deaths and real tragedies. Of course we have seen its use in the Middle East on a number of different occasions. We have also seen it in parts of Asia. We have seen it used repeatedly now in Europe.

I am speaking now as a parent. Many suicide bombers are young people convinced oftentimes by other family members or organizations they become involved with that are led by people who are much older, much more mature, and I use that term advisedly, but certainly in age they are older than the suicide bombers. Because they are convinced of the validity of the ideology, sometimes religious based, they are convinced that they have an obligation to perform suicide attacks.

I say as a parent, it really is beyond my comprehension how adults, no matter how fanatical they are about the issue and the goal they are pursuing, can bring themselves to convince a young person, a teenager in some cases but oftentimes people in their early twenties, to take this conduct to the extreme of committing suicide and killing oftentimes many other people. It seems to me no matter what organization we belong to or goals we are pursuing, that we could never justify taking that route. Counselling a young person to perform that type of act is as reprehensible as one can imagine.

I speak both personally and on behalf of our caucus in saying that we support this legislation. This Parliament has a responsibility to express our outrage, and as I said earlier, our denunciation, of this conduct. This is our opportunity to perform that responsibility.

In terms of speaking to the rest of the country, we have to be clear that this provision by itself would not prevent suicide bombings. We have to be very clear on that. In my mind this piece of legislation has no deterrent value.

We can use this piece of legislation as a way for all of us to speak out against violence in general and this type of violence in particular. We can use it as a tool, an educational tool, a political tool, to say not only to the residents of Canada but to the rest of the world that this type of conduct is totally unacceptable, that we absolutely reject this type of conduct. This is a crime that calls for a determination of first degree murder. This conduct is as reprehensible as any conduct one could perform in our criminal justice system.

I have to say again, and I am saying this mostly to the rest of the world, that some people may have contemplated using this technique in Canada but it has never happened. I am speaking to the rest of the world, and those parts of the world in particular where this type of conduct is prevalent, that Canadians generally live in a peaceful way.

People in Canada come from all over the world. They have all sorts of faith backgrounds, ethnocultural backgrounds, ideological and philosophical backgrounds. In Canada, with very few exceptions, we have been able to live together in harmony and peace and with minimal violence. By passing this bill we would be saying to the rest of the world that it is possible to bring that kind of mix together, that broad multiculturalism that is Canada now. We would be saying to the rest of the world that it is possible to live in peace and harmony. We would be a model for the rest of the world. One way to do that is to pass this bill.

I am quite supportive of this legislation. I hope that the rest of Parliament will unanimously support it, get it through to royal assent, and get it on the books. We could then speak to the international community with one solid voice. We could unanimously say that this is where the House of Commons and Canada is coming from, that this is how we addressed this problem. We would be telling the rest of the world that we are the model to follow.

[Committees of the House, December 1st, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the then minister of public safety and national security was quoted, at the time when the announcement was made of the closings, that none of the prisoners ever worked in farming and, for that reason alone, the prisons were useless. He did not seem to understand, and this is what I want my friend to comment on. He had no appreciation whatsoever of the rehabilitative aspect of working in that setting and all of the other talents.

I know my friend just ran out of time, so I would like him to comment on the lack of understanding, lack of knowledge really, on the part of the minister of the day.

[Privilege, November 29th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, one of the disturbing aspects of this is the cumulative effect that I have noticed since I have been here as a member, and in particular since the Conservatives have come into government, of their attitude towards undermining the role of the committees.

We saw the situation where the former House leader of the Conservatives actually wrote a manual in regard to how to undermine the work of a committee.

Then we saw the situation with the current House leader, before he was the House leader, in this bombastic approach in front of committee of defending staff members who fairly clearly, by their own admission, had been undermining the Privacy Act and the availability of information, again to members and to the committee.

So my question to the member for Outremont is whether we are seeing an ongoing pattern and the sense that the government has of just sending the member in, he or she will apologize and everything will be okay and we will continue on, and that has now permeated into the staff of the Conservative Party and its members.

[Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act, November 24th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, my colleague sits on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. Clause 12 of the bill proposed by the government is as follows:

A prosecution for an offence under this Act cannot be commenced more than two years after the time when the act or omission giving rise to the prosecution occurred.

Of all the bills introduced by the government, this is the first time I have seen this approach of limiting the responsibility of someone breaking the law to two years.

I would like to know if my colleague also thinks that this is the first time we are seeing this type of approach and if he believes that it is tough enough to protect the children victimized by these sites.

[Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act, November 24th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, just with regard to Cybertip, I want to point out, not wanting to be partisan on this issue, that it was an NDP government in Manitoba that first brought it in, modelling it to some degree after a Labour government out of England.

I want to take some issue with the last comments that my friend from Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe made. Although he is accurate about totalitarian regimes shutting off the Internet, in effect, from this type of material, and also for all sorts of material and the exchange of information within those regimes, the reality is that the vast majority of the material that is being produced, where the children are being victimized, where they are being abused, in some cases to the point of being killed to produce this child pornography, in fact is coming out of some of those totalitarian regimes: Eastern Europe in particular, parts of Russia and other parts of Asia.

A significant proportion is coming out of the United States as well, but the majority is coming out of those jurisdictions. So I do not want any impression left that we should be looking to those totalitarian regimes as the model to be followed.

When Cybertip was in front of us at committee, they made it quite clear that they did not have sufficient resources. I would just ask my colleague whether he would be supportive of urging the government to provide greater financial resources to Cybertip so that for some of the programs that they want to initiate or expand, they would be able to do so.

[Tax Conventions Implementation Act, 2010, November 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I knew the bill had been paid very little attention before it came out of the Senate, where it was rubber stamped.

As I made my comments earlier about the elitism that resides in the vast majority of the members of the Senate, it is not surprising they see it as a tax avoidance bill. They see it as the avoidance of double taxation and rubber stamped it. Why do we need sober second thought for something like that? That would be the attitude of the vast majority of senators.

Again, it was a very elitist concept behind our Constitution when we set the Senate up in the first place. We could not trust that rabble in the House of Commons, so we had to have this other group of sober second thought people. I am not sure where they are supposed to come from, other than from the elitist of society, whether it was in 1867 or 2010.

It is very offensive. I find senators personally offensive when I hear them say that the have some kind of democratic role to play in our society. I was elected. I am accountable to the people of Windsor—Tecumseh. Senators are not accountable to anybody, not even to the Prime Minister when we look at it, even though he appointed them.

It really epitomizes the fact, since my friend shared the information with us, that they did not even have any debate on it, and it will go back to the Senate for royal assent if it gets through the House. It is not a valid legislative democratic process. It is offensive to the democratic process in our country or in any of the western democracies.

[Tax Conventions Implementation Act, 2010, November 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the member is very right. We have entered into that many agreements or conventions now with over 90 countries. We just saw the spectacle a couple of weeks ago with regard to Switzerland and the whole Crédit Suisse difficulties we had.

The Prime Minister went to Switzerland, with lots of photo ops, announcements and touting of resolution of problems in co-operation with Switzerland. Over the weekend, we found out that it was all smoke and mirrors. We found out that the Swiss government, Crédit Suisse specifically, was not agreeing to share information and in fact was challenging it through the courts.

I am sure if we went through the list of 90-plus countries, in spite of the fact that we have these types of agreements, we would find a number of them where it is smoke and mirrors. I believe in the vast majority of cases Canada is doing it honestly, that we are enforcing the convention in our home country, but there are any number of other countries not doing that . The government does not know. It has not done any type of ongoing monitoring of whether the country with which we have entered into the convention is being as honest and trustworthy as Canada.

[Tax Conventions Implementation Act, 2010, November 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill S-3 from several vantage points.

Bill S-3 is a fairly conventional taxation bill with regard to establishing international relations with the countries as described in this bill. In this case, the countries are Colombia, Greece and Turkey.

My party always has concerns over a bill that does not emanate originally from this House, as opposed to the other House. That is particularly true given the gross abuse of democracy we saw flowing from that other House last week, as it killed a bill that had substantial democratic support from this House, the elected House. We always have a concern when we see this, but I have to say that when we look at the purpose of this bill, as opposed to the one the other place voted down last week, it is so typical of that House that the bill would be coming through it, because this bill is really about establishing favourable tax arrangements to avoid double taxation. It is the type of elitism we see in that House that permeates the background of this bill.

We are saying to the government that its approach of using the other place the way it has, both to defeat bills that this House has passed and to initiate bills into this House, is a practice that really should stop. From a democracy standpoint, that House has no credibility. To use that House in the process of passing legislation and laws in this country is a fundamentally flawed approach to democracy.

The second concern we have with this bill will come as no surprise to this House or people who have followed our relationship with Colombia and the gross abuse of human rights that has occurred in that country and our opposition to the free trade agreement that has passed this House, which is giving it favourable arrangements with our country that it has no entitlement to, from the perspective of human rights as practised, or abused, in that country.

There is no possible way we can see extending a positive relationship between ourselves and Colombia until such time as it ceases those kinds of practices. The number of deaths, both in the aboriginal community and within organized labour and among workers generally in that country in the last few years, is so offensive to the values of this country, of Canada, that we should not be having any arrangements of this kind with it.

With regard to the other two countries, it is quite clear that the bill is doing what it has conventionally done, which is to try to avoid double taxation. We sort of have this image that the concept behind this bill and these conventions that we are entering into with these other countries is to avoid double taxation. This image is probably not the most common one that should be applied here, as members will see with some of the points I am going to make with regard to what is in the convention.

My colleague from Outremont used the example of the couple who are spending part of their working year in Canada and part in one of the other countries and making sure that they are not double taxed in both countries. This agreement obviously addresses itself to that.

It goes way beyond that, and I want to just go quickly through the areas it does address. It deals with the issue of residency. The type of revenue one is generating will define whether the taxation is going to occur here in Canada or in the other country. It deals with that fairly extensively at the beginning of the convention that we are now entering into if this bill goes forward, which it appears it will, given that it has support from the official opposition.

It then goes on to list the various types of incomes that one can have. It is important to note these because the approach as to how we will tax those incomes will vary by the nature of the income. I am not going to go into that detail because it just becomes too complex, but we deal separately with income from immovable property, from business profits and from the shipping and air transport sector of the economy. It then goes into a general category of associated enterprises.

It then goes on to other types of income with regard to dividends, interest from investments, royalties. It deals specifically with the capital gains area, which is always a problem between states as to how that will be taxed. It deals with general income from employment and for directors fees. It deals specifically with artists and sportspersons, which has become more of a problem in both those areas. It deals specifically as to how their incomes will be taxed. It finishes off with pension and annuities both in terms of how it will tax those and how they will be received, and there are some agreements in that regard.

It then goes on, under a separate category, to deal more specifically with the taxation of capital gains and capital loses, setting out criteria the countries we agree to follow.

It deals with one final area that is important to note because of some of the scandals we have had. I think members in the House agree we have taxation so the government generates revenue so it can provide for the needs of our society. Whether that is creating a military and supplying the resources it needs, to providing government pensions for those who are in retirement or disabled, assisting the provinces with health care, we can go down the list as to why we tax.

There is of some concern with this convention. Although it begins to address the abuse that we see regularly of corporations in particular, but wealthy people more generally, moving their assets offshore, both in terms of assets that continue to generate revenue but otherwise capital assets offshore to avoid taxation in the country, it does not address it very well. We have seen that any number of times.

We have seen it with some of the scandals that have flowed out of Switzerland, Liechtenstein and a couple of banks in Belgium that have facilitated this abuse. What it is really about is fair taxation, that everyone, individuals and corporations, pay their fair share so the needs of society are met. If one segment of society is intentionally and regularly avoiding its responsibilities by moving assets offshore, we should be doing whatever we can do to bring that in line and seeing that those assets are taxed appropriately and fairly to society as a whole.

We cannot do that without co-operation from the international community. It is just impossible to do it as a sovereign country by oneself. We need to have co-operation with the state to where the assets flow.

We have seen the kind of abuse particularly with Switzerland. Because of its banking system, it has been able to shield abusers over the last 100 or better years who have abused their responsibilities to pay a fair share of their taxes. We are beginning to break through that in many ways.

We saw horrendous abuse in that regard with protection that it gave to organized crime and to the Nazis and fascists both during and after the second world war. We are breaking this down in that country, but it is occurring elsewhere. The bill would not address that to any significant degree. The only point it goes to in that regard is it requires both countries at either end of this relationship to share information if that data is compellable in the country of origin.

Beyond that, the bill would do nothing to increase our ability to, in effect, enforce our tax laws in our country or to ensure that the tax laws in the country with which we have entered into this convention are enforced, oftentimes with assets that may have flowed from our country, whether it is income or capital assets.

It is obviously a flaw in these conventions. I come back to Colombia. Given the high level of corruption in that country, it is going to be a particular problem and it is not going to help us at all. Quite frankly, I seriously doubt the ability of the government of Colombia to enforce those parts of the agreement and to see that taxation is done fairly. If assets are being secreted in that country from Canada, I doubt it will share information with us so we can deal with it in an appropriate way. That is clearly a flaw in the agreement. I do not think we are in any position, as a party, to support that part of it.

With regard to Greece and Turkey, we would generally be supportive. Our relationship with both those countries is well established and well founded. They are countries that overall have a strong reputation of co-operation with Canada. It is appropriate that we enter into these types of arrangements them, whether it is with regard to how we deal with retirement pensions. We see pension moneys flowing between the two countries in some substantial amounts, so it is appropriate we deal with that. It is appropriate they are there to assist us if there is abuse of the taxation process in their countries, of assets flowing into Canada or out of Canada into Greece or Turkey. We have no problem supporting that, but we have very serious problems with regard to Colombia.

This is one of those bills, because of where it has come from, that we cannot support. Because of the arrangements with Colombia, we cannot support it. Support from our party would flow with regard to Greece and Turkey. It is a step in the right direction when we enter into conventions with those countries. They are countries we can deal with in a honest and trusting manner.