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Crucial Fact

  • His favourite word was number.

Last in Parliament October 2015, as NDP MP for Windsor—Tecumseh (Ontario)

Won his last election, in 2011, with 50% of the vote.

Statements in the House

Privilege November 26th, 2009

I am glad the member asked that question, Madam Speaker, because it was a point I meant make in my address.

There is no question that the ten percenters are a valuable tool for us to be able to communicate not only with our own constituents but with the country as a whole. They should be, and in a lot of cases have been, a tool to educate, to share information with the general public on issues that are in the public domain currently.

It is additionally important to note, and this is the point I wanted to make in my speech, that the Liberal Party has been publicly stating that it wants to stop the regrouping and not allow the ten percenters to be sent by individual members or by party leaders to ridings other than their own.

I think that ignores the reality of political parties in this country having regional areas in which they do not have any representatives. Those areas would in effect be deprived of the arguments, the issues and the policies of the party that had no representation in those areas.

Therefore I think it is important to continue that ability. My argument is very strong. We have all sorts of laws that restrict what one can say in terms of liable. I think we have to remember that and put some parameters in place.

It is my understanding, and I intend to do more research on this, that the Ontario government has a mail-out program for their members who sit in that legislature but there are restrictions on what the content can be.

I think we need to look at that idea as well. I hope that would be another recommendation coming from the procedure and House affairs committee when it reviews this issue of privilege.

Privilege November 26th, 2009

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise on this motion. Quite frankly, and I say this both on a personal basis as a member of Parliament, but also on behalf of my party, I have been extremely offended by the tactics and the use of this ten percenter and the content of the ten percenter. Tomorrow, I will be here nine years and this is absolutely the worst ten percenter I have seen. I say that without any reservations. It is absolutely the worst one.

There may be one good thing that comes out of this. I really want to praise the Speaker for his ruling. It was absolutely appropriate, and I will come back to that in a minute. I am hoping that out of this, when this gets to the committee and the committee reviews it and comes back to the House with recommendations as to how the breach of the privilege should be dealt with, we may in fact clean up the process around the ten percenters, their use at taxpayers' expense. I am hoping that we never have to face this type of material going out at taxpayers' expense in the future. That should be our goal. That should be the goal of all sides of the House coming out of this experience.

I want to praise the Speaker for his ruling. He was absolutely right to look at this material in its general context. We can play semantic games with this kind of material. If we take it out of context, try to limit it in its scope by using semantics, we could argue that it is not what in fact it is.

What in fact it is, is a document that, to any objective observer reading it, accuses the Liberals of being anti-Semitic. There is no other way of interpreting this if we take the whole context, if we look at the ridings it was sent into and if we look at some of the people who were targeted, some of the Liberal members who were targeted. I would say in that regard, I have had the pleasure, and I hope this does not show up in a ten percenter or a householder at some time, of working fairly closely with both the member for Mount Royal and the member for Winnipeg South Centre. Their ridings were two of the ridings that were targeted. To accuse them, given their long history, both of them, of fighting for human rights, fighting for civil liberties, fighting for a just society, quite frankly is inexcusable. The same could probably be said for some of the other members. It is just that I know those two better than the others. To send it into those ridings is an all-time low for this House.

We could almost see how this comes up. It is political people, party people, who write these things. That is probably something that should be changed by all the political parties. We should take a look at the orientation. We could see this coming out in a pamphlet during the course of an election, written by people in political parties who go over the top in attacking other members of the House and candidates in other political parties. However, when we recognize that this is a document that is going out at the expense of taxpayers, it is a document that is going out under the authority of the House, which is the only way these are allowed to go out, again the content is just reprehensible. It should not have happened.

I want to go back to the contextual arguments, because the Speaker was right in doing this. When we look at that, there is another form of discrimination going on here in the targeting of specific ridings known to have a large Jewish community. It is discriminatory to them, to the members of those constituencies, because it makes presumptions about how they vote, about what their biases may be, and about what their orientations may be. It presumes, and I think this is where the discrimination comes in, how they are going to react based on their faith, their ethnic background or whatever, in this case particularly on their faith.

That type of targeting, again, should not be allowed. It should not be allowed in any context, but certainly if there is a document that is being paid for by taxpayers and authorized by this House, it simply should not go out.

This is probably more appropriate for the committee to be taking into account, but I want to go back to my opening statement about looking for some good to come out of this. I have to say that I would not be satisfied if the recommendation coming back from the committee were simply for an apology.

An apology is acceptable if a mistake has been made, a factual mistake. That is not the case here. This goes way beyond that. It cannot be argued that somebody preparing this material and sending it out did not know, did not intentionally know what the consequences were going to be, how it would be interpreted and how it would be seen by the recipients of this material.

In my opinion, an apology in this case is not sufficient. That should be forthcoming from the government. In fact it should be forthcoming today. It should have been given when this first came to the public's attention. That alone is not sufficient. There has to be some other consequence of this type of egregious behaviour.

One of the suggestions we will be putting forward to that committee is that the cost of this to the Canadian taxpayers should be reimbursed to the Canadian government by the Conservative Party. I think that would be a much more appropriate penalty, not just for the riding of Mount Royal but for all 10 or 12 ridings it went to.

It will be a fairly expensive penalty, but maybe the message will get through not only to the Conservatives, because I think there have been other political parties from time to time that have crossed the line, again, though as I said earlier, not as badly as this one has. The message will go out.

The final point I will make is that hopefully there will also be recommendations regarding the content of ten percenters in the future, and regarding how we might restrict that so that these types of attacks and discriminatory, bigoted allegations would never be allowed again.

Those are all the comments I have. Again I want to praise the Speaker for his ruling. I think it has been an excellent one and maybe it will bring us to some conclusion that will help this House to function more efficiently and fairly in the future.

Privilege November 26th, 2009

Madam Speaker, I do not intend to give a speech, and I wish other people would follow that policy, but I do have a question. It seems to me, and I hope the committee, when it reviews this, will look at things from this perspective, that with regard to the whole issue of ten percenters, there is the issue of circulation and whether we should continue to allow the regrouping and the widespread circulation. That is one issue. Perhaps we should either limit that or prohibit it.

The other issue with the ten percenters is content, and that is more pertinent to the ten percenter that was sent out in this case, not only to the riding of the member for Mount Royal but to a number of other ones as well. I wonder if my colleague could comment on whether he agrees that this is where the debate should be going, since both those issues should be addressed, and provide any comments he might have on restricting the material that could be contained in ten percenters, not only across the whole country but in individual ridings.

Child Protection Act (Online Sexual Exploitation) November 26th, 2009

Madam Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-58 today with mixed emotions. We have been dealing with this issue in the justice committee since late 2006 or early 2007. It has been better than three years now. We actually had some consideration of it in Parliament in 2004 and 2006 as well, so it is going on five years.

I rise with mixed emotions because I am concerned. We are supportive of this legislation as far as it goes. Our major concern with Bill C-58 is that there are a number of other issues that should have been addressed long before this. Some of them have now been addressed in this bill, but there is a number that have not been addressed.

Addressing those issues and building a framework so that our police, prosecutors and judges would have greater ability to try to stamp out child porn on the Internet and the technological transmission of it would be a major step forward. We have not gone far enough on this and I am going to address at least some of those points.

I do want to set this in its historical context. When we were dealing with the legislation that dealt with the luring of children over the Internet, what came forward at that time was a good deal of evidence from various police forces, particularly from the Ontario Provincial Police and the Toronto Police Service. I do not want to disparage other forces, but at that period of time they were probably the most advanced forces in trying to combat child porn on the Internet.

The problem that we are now addressing came forward three to five years ago. We are addressing it to some lesser degree in Bill C-46 and Bill C-47, which are now before the public safety committee. The problem is getting at the service providers, which are in most cases the methodology, mechanism and technology by which the producers and traders of child porn are using to trade and sell this child porn.

What came out in the course of those hearings was that a number of service providers were refusing to co-operate with police forces both here in Canada and internationally. As a result of a number of fairly strong comments that came from members of that committee at the period of time when we had to deal with this, we have seen an increase in co-operation from the service providers in terms of giving police officers information, putting them on notice when they identify child porn on their service technology, and co-operating as fully as they can with the police.

That is not universally true to this day and that is why we are seeing this legislation. We really should have seen this legislation at least three years ago because it was very clear at that point that we had a problem. It was only because of some of the threats that came out of the justice committee at that time that we got greater co-operation from the service providers here in Canada.

It is still a major problem when we try to deal internationally. There are certain countries who are very co-operative with us and are actively engaged in trying to shut these sites down and to prosecute those who they trace the child pornography back to. However, there are other countries in the world that have no mechanisms at all to deal with this.

In that regard, I think it is worthwhile to note the assistance we got from Bill Gates and Microsoft. They assisted the police forces in developing a technology at quite a substantial expense to that corporation. It was in the range of about $10 million in human resources to develop the technology and the actual expenditure of funds to produce it.

It is important to note, both with regard to this bill and just generally, how child pornographers work. They put the information on one service provider and then skip it through a number of service providers. We have been told in some cases this material will go through up to as many as 50 service providers around the globe.

Through this technology, which was developed by Microsoft, through the Toronto police force's initiative, and funded by Mr. Gates, we are generally able to trace the material back to the source. So we may skip through a whole bunch of service providers, but we can eventually get back to the source and get the site shut down. We have seen at least several major busts in Canada as a result of this technology being deployed. A number of people were charged and in some cases convicted. Other cases are still working their way through the courts.

The technology was crucial and it was the first time it had been developed in the world. We are now sharing that technology with other countries with whom we are cooperating so they can use it to track things back to the child pornographers.

That was a major step forward. It was interesting to see in the media this week that some of the other technology that we have been working on in order to be able to register sites has not been developed. We had a five-year program that I think was initiated in the 2004-06 Parliament. We are close to the end of that. Under that program, people identify the site and advise the police, and then we have a registry of that.

That registry is still not up and running, because of technological problems. According to the article in the Chronicle Herald on November 25, as much as 40% of the budget that was allocated over that five-year period has not been spent because we do not have enough police officers actually working on this, and we do not seem to have been able to put enough resources into fully developing that technology.

That five-year period is just about up. I have no idea what the government is going to be doing in terms of continuing that funding until the service is up and running effectively. It is quite clear from the article that more police officers should have been specifically trained and designated to work in this area, and that has not happened.

With regard to the bill itself, one of the concerns I have is that, as is typical with the government, the government is out front, promulgating the notion that this is the be-all and the end-all. I am being a bit too harsh on them and I will admit that, but the reality is that the real work that needs to be done by government is to fund our police forces.

There are very few large police forces in this country that do not have at least one or two police officers specifically designated to deal with child pornography, mostly on the Internet but in print as well. We need more of those officers. We need a lot more of those officers in order to be able to deal with this problem.

This is a growth industry. It continues to grow because of the Internet. We have always had child pornography in print and even in paintings. We can go back hundreds and hundreds of years, maybe even millenniums. The explosion occurred with the Internet, which provided for easy transmission of this pornography, and it tapped into a substantial market that was unavailable before, crossing international boundaries and making it very difficult for national police forces to be able to deal with it.

I have to say this, and it is not just about the current government but also about the previous Liberal government and also about a lot of other countries. There are very few countries we can point to, England may be one of the exceptions, that have in fact dealt with this problem in an efficient manner, that is by moving enough human resources into combatting this.

We know that the province of Manitoba was one of the provinces that moved on this by establishing a snitch line. England has done the same thing and has funded it. It seems to be fairly effective in getting the public, when they are scanning various websites, to identify child pornography and to get that information to the police. The police can then deal with it in an efficient and rapid fashion, to shut the sites down and to try to track the producers of the sites.

It is working in that regard, in that we have a methodology, but we do not have enough resources. It is really a shame that our police forces are still struggling with that, because they have nowhere near the capacity to combat the sheer volume of what they have to deal with on the Internet.

In that respect, I urge the government in this coming budget to take another look at this area in particular. If we are really serious about protecting our children, we need to put more resources into doing that.

This legislation will help a little. I do not want to deny that completely, but it is a very small step in comparison with how much more effective we would be in combatting this scourge if there were more police officers working on it and also on developing technology. Police officers need training and they need companies like Microsoft to come into the field and cooperate with them to try to develop better technology to track this right back to its source. That is the only way we can effectively shut it down.

With regard to the bill itself, I have some concerns. There was a lot of debate before the bill got to the House over whether service providers would have a legislatively mandated responsibility to monitor their sites.

Going back to the bill on child Internet luring, the committee heard some evidence to the effect that it was going to be difficult for the smaller service providers to do that. On the other hand, it might, quite frankly, be possible to develop technology so that the computer would do the monitoring.

There are any number of other technologies and services that we use on computers that can do the search on a random basis. That technology needs to be developed and deployed. Maybe that is something we have to impose on the industry.

However, we have just given up. This bill does nothing to require the service providers to do any monitoring at all. All it requires is that if somebody tells them there is a site on their technology, the ISPs have to report it to the locator and a police force. They are under no affirmative obligation to monitor the websites using their technology.

I think the government backed down too much. At the very least, we should be looking at imposing some responsibility on them. It appears obvious that this bill is going to go to committee, and I am hoping that the committee can look at this again and perhaps strengthen the bill in a meaningful way to impose some responsibility.

I want to make a point about the penalties in the bill. The penalties assume that service providers are all corporate, so there are only fines in the bill. We need to take a look at that and see whether we should be pulling back the corporate veil.

I know the test will not be easy from a legal standpoint, but where we have been able to identify service providers that are abusing their responsibility to protect children, we should be pulling back the corporate veil, and police and prosecutors should have the ability to prosecute individual members, whether they are part of the executive or the board of directors, of those companies for these crimes.

We have been able to identify that in some cases it was quite clear that the corporate entity knew about the sites and did nothing about them, simply allowed them to continue on. If we have that kind of a scenario or that kind of conduct, then we in fact should be going after individuals and not just the corporations.

Criminal Code November 24th, 2009

Mr. Speaker, we should tell my colleagues that they cannot ask any questions, because I will not finish my speech before time runs out, not that I could not handle any of their tough questions, of course.

I rise on Bill C-31. There is general agreement among all political parties that the provisions of this bill are long past being needed. A number of the amendments will bring us into the 21st century with regard to processes that our police forces are required to go through in laying or prosecuting charges. There is general support for this bill. We will be supporting it at second reading. It will go to the justice committee along with lots of other bills and we will get to it eventually.

I want to say this, because I always attack the government on this. In the four years that the government has been in place, this is realistically the first bill that has been prepared in a proper way to deal with the problems we have with the Criminal Code. By that, I mean that it is the first bill of any consequence that one could call an omnibus criminal law bill. There have been a couple of other ones that have involved two or three sections of the Criminal Code, but this is the first one that is an omnibus bill.

I am emphasizing this point because if the government had done this in a number of other cases and had brought a whole bunch of individual bills together into one, we could have expedited a number of the amendments that we have in fact passed, oftentimes with all-party support over the last four years, and we would probably be at least a couple of years ahead of where we are right now.

I want to praise the government for finally listening to me in this regard. I want to encourage it to follow my advice more extensively in the future so that we will have other bills, because there are a number of other provisions in the Criminal Code that need amending and, in particular, modernizing so that our police officers, prosecutors and judges can use the Criminal Code more effectively than they can now. There are all sorts of conflicts in the Criminal Code as it stands right now, as well as those sections of the Criminal Code that are just clearly out of date. I urge the government to take my advice more regularly as it has taken it on this particular bill.

With regard to the contents of the bill, members from both the Liberals and the Bloc and I have serious concerns about the provisions that deal with the issue of the taking of fingerprints before a person is charged. The taking of fingerprints and this point of not being allowed to take fingerprints unless our police are going to charge an accused person goes way back. It has been in the Criminal Code for more than half a century, since shortly after we had the technology of fingerprinting. It goes way back into the last century.

Again, as we heard from my colleague from the Bloc, the need to have a charge laid before fingerprints are taken is in keeping with that significant presumption of innocence that underlies a great deal of our criminal justice system. This is really cutting away at that principle of presumption of innocence. I in no way want to cast aspersions on our police forces, but we know from time to time that we have individual police officers in particular who abuse their authority and power.

Unfortunately, if this amendment were to go through, it would allow for the potential for abuse of that kind by a police officer. It is wide open to being used as a fishing expedition. Our courts in the past have said quite clearly that it is offensive to practice within our criminal justice system and, more specifically, to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I have great concerns as to whether the clause as presented to the House in this regard would survive a charter challenge. I do not think it would. I believe it is clearly a breach of the charter and the only way that could be overcome is, under article 1, by demonstrating that it is necessary in a free and just society to infringe those fundamental rights in the charter.

Again, as I said in one of my questions earlier, I have spoken with police officers and chiefs of police, and the only explanation I have had is that this is convenient for them. Quite frankly, even when I explore that, I do not understand the explanations I get as to how it is convenient and how it is going to make their jobs easier. I do not see how they are going to meet the charter test, but, of course, that will be explored much more extensively when this bill goes to committee.

We have heard a fair amount today as well that one of the highlights of the bill involves the amendments to the prizefighting section of the code, section 83, and that this bill will modernize that. There are some concerns about it. Having listened to members of the other parties, I would say it sounds as though we have all been lobbied on this issue, but I know that the province of Ontario has some serious reservations about expanding the definition. I am not sure they are justified, I have to say, because I have looked at the section, but it is something that we will need to explore.

What has not been raised here is the parimutuel amendments, the betting amendments in the code. I will address those more extensively and perhaps go back to the prizefighting issue as well either tomorrow or the next day when this bill comes before the House again.

Criminal Code November 24th, 2009

Mr. Speaker, I would ask my colleague about the fingerprinting issue and the taking fingerprints prior to charges being laid, which this bill would authorize.

Since the member has perhaps the greatest amount of criminal law experience in the courts of any member in this House, does he see the argument that somehow this is more convenient for the police and will make their job easier? I must tell him that that has not been my understanding of how the process works from my observation when I did criminal work. I am just wondering if he might be able to enlighten us as to whether the police have a valid argument in that regard.

Criminal Code November 24th, 2009

Mr. Speaker, I want to go back to the issue of the prize fighting amendments.

Did my colleague from Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe see a piece in the Toronto Star this weekend, or if he is aware of it? It stated the Ontario government was very much opposed to expanding the definition of prize fighting. It appears that it is specifically opposed to letting the UFC into Ontario.

A former premier of Ontario, who is a member of my colleague's party, is the chief lobbyist for it. Has the member had contact with it and could he advise as to his own position on the expansion and allowing UFC into Ontario? It appears a number of the other provinces are allowing the UFC in now because they interpret the code differently. Is he aware of that? Where does he stand vis-à-vis the position of Ontario?

Criminal Code November 24th, 2009

Mr. Speaker, it would be nice if they followed the police recommendations with regard to the gun registry.

I want to pursue this question of the fingerprinting. The member for Edmonton—St. Albert is incorrect. There is nothing in this bill and nothing presently in the Criminal Code that requires police forces to do away with these fingerprints.

If an individual has his fingerprints taken but is not subsequently charged, which is what this bill would allow, those fingerprints stay on record. They are on CPIC and are available to all the police forces across the country even though the person was never charged. This bill does not correct that. It is one of its major flaws and probably the only part of the bill that I, like my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue, have serious reservations about. Why does the government not have a provision in here to do away with the fingerprints?

I have spoken to a number of police officers and chiefs of police and the only explanation I get about why fingerprints are being taken before a person is charged is that it is for convenience. It is not for the convenience of the potentially accused person but for the convenience of the police.

When I explore that further, I do not find where the convenience is. I wonder if he could maybe explain that to me, if he understands the process. As I understand the process, it would not make any difference and it would not be any more convenient.

Criminal Code November 24th, 2009

Madam Speaker, the reality in response to that last question is that a number of us on committee were told that the material from Mr. Head had been sent to our offices. That was false information. That was a mistake.

On November 16, all parties committed to deal with this bill on a clause by clause basis, and we were under the belief that the information was in the hands of other members of committee. It was not until yesterday morning that we found out that was not the truth.

If ministers are going to be allowed to withhold information, whether intentionally or unintentionally in disregard of the role of the committee process in this legislature, why are we here not only as members of opposition parties but as government members as well? Why not just turn it all over to cabinet and let cabinet run the whole government?

If the committee system is going to work, do we not need to have a guarantee that we are going to get information in a timely fashion? Does my colleague share my frustration?

Criminal Code November 24th, 2009

Mr. Speaker, as my colleague for Abitibi—Témiscamingue knows, it is really the Liberals' opinion of this bill that we are trying to change. What is more, in the information we believe we will receive, there is almost nothing about those who were authorized by the judge and jury to apply for parole in order to be released from prison before 25 years.

This is directed to the Liberals. I think they have enough integrity to review this information, to change their minds and perhaps support our position and vote against this bill.