Joe Comartin

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, November 17th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Burnaby—New Westminster for the question and also recognize the excellent background work he has done for us as a caucus and also the work he has done in committee to try to fight this agreement.

It is clear where Canadians stand. We are not supportive of any regime that is going to treat its people the way the Colombian government historically has treated its people and continues to treat them right up to this day. I have not had a chance to read that full report. I have seen summaries of it, and it is just shocking. As recently as this week we have received that kind of report, and yet we are here in the House somehow foolishly believing that if we sign this agreement it is going to change the situation in Colombia. It is not.

I want to make one other point. What Canadians expect from us, as they expect right around the globe, is that if we have the opportunity to do so, we should try to better the conditions of countries that we have relationships with whether through international bodies that bring pressure on them to change their practices, or through using our foreign aid. There are any number of mechanisms, whether or not there are other diplomatic mechanisms we can use to bring pressure on the government to change. That is what Canadians expect us to do. They do not expect us to just sign a blank cheque and allow this kind of conduct to continue.

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, November 17th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, really, I just cannot start without making reference to my Liberal colleague and suggesting that he actually read some of the provisions that are in the European Union arrangements as opposed to the non-existent preconditions of the so-called free trade agreements that we have been signing. The level of his lack of knowledge is really quite astounding.

With regard to what we are doing here, let me provide a bit of an overview. The basic question we have to ask is why we are here debating this issue. Why are we here, when there are so many other issues we could be facing that are so much more important? More specifically, why are we, as a legislature, having to review a bill that would incorporate a trade agreement with a country that has a reputation like Colombia's?

Despite some of the other suggestions we have had with regard to our getting some minor trade advantages out of this agreement, the reality is that we are doing this for ideological reasons, driven by the ideology of both the Conservative and Liberal parties. We have seen them, in spite of promises in many cases to the contrary, consistently sign these types of agreements that have repeatedly been to the disadvantage of Canada, through which we have been taken advantage of or, in the case of agreements with smaller countries, through which we have taken advantage of them.

We continue to do that because there is this fundamental belief on the part of the those two political parties that these agreements, in spite of all of the evidence to the contrary, work. I have to assume that sometimes they have some doubts about the viability and validity of these types of agreements, but even then, they have put so much political capital into these types of agreements, into the politics of this country in particular, that they cannot back off, and I think sometimes their denial of just how bad these agreements have been is almost Freudian.

These agreements are part of the failed globalization movement driven, to a great extent, by large multinational corporations for their benefit, not for the benefit of the individual countries and certainly not for the benefit of the workers in those countries.

I will just use one small example that always struck me so strongly. After we signed NAFTA, we studied the impact on wages in Mexico. In spite of all of the trumpeting of how great a success NAFTA was, the average wage in Mexico fell by more than 10% over that five-year period. It did not go up; it actually fell by over 10%.

We saw in the same country the devastation of the agricultural community, particularly those who grew corn, because of the swamping of their markets by the United States.

We could go on repeatedly about how these agreements do not work, but we continue to drive them forward. This government does, and the previous Liberal government attempted to do the same thing. In spite of all that evidence, they do it.

However, with Colombia, we have to say, “Enough”. We have to look at that country and we have to ask how we could possibly agree to enter into a trade agreement with Colombia with the history it has which continues right to this day.

The member for Kings—Hants spent four days in Colombia listening to the propaganda of the government that was pushing for this agreement because it would benefit certain elements of Colombian society supported by that government.

This agreement will be a disaster for the average worker. It will be a disaster for environmental conditions. It will be a continuing disaster for human rights and human rights causes in that country.

The member for Kings—Hants was accompanied at that time by the member for Toronto Centre. They spent four days and became instant experts on Colombia after listening to all this propaganda. It was offensive listening to the member for Kings--Hants. I say that on a personal level because I remember the number of trade unionists from Colombia who have come through my riding over the last 10 or 15 years, some of whom went back to Colombia and were killed.

The member for Kings—Hants said that the death squads are gone and that the militia is not functioning there anymore. He said that even in the face of overwhelming evidence, report after report, that their activities continue to go on. Those death squads and those paramilitary units are closely affiliated with the full-time military and with the government of Colombia. They cannot pretend they do not know what is going on and know who is committing these atrocities.

Colombia has led the world consistently in the number of murdered labour leaders and labour activists. There has been a huge number of deaths in indigenous communities because multinational corporations and their allies in the corporate world in Colombia want to grab their land. Colombia has led the world in the number of human rights activists who have been killed or tortured as a result of the activities of those death squads and those paramilitary units.

Enough is enough. We cannot possibly think of entering into an agreement with a country such as Colombia. It is just completely foolhardy to think that by entering into an agreement, into what is really quite a nominal trading relationship, with no conditions on the environment, no conditions on labour standards, no conditions on human rights, that somehow we will magically bring that country up to the same standards as those of democratic countries. It is an argument that has no merit when one is dealing with Colombia, its government and the paramilitary. It has none whatsoever.

There are other models. There are models in South America, where some of the countries with larger economies have banded together to look at ways to increase trade between their countries without exploiting one country over another. It is a model that North America should be taking a look at.

The European Union tells Turkey and Czechoslovakia that they have to meet standards. Even after the countries have been admitted, they must continue to meet those standards.

I love the story about how the European Union said to Margaret Thatcher that her country could not be part of the European Union unless she fixed a minimum labour standard and a minimum wage. That was the big thing for her. She held out and refused to comply with that.

The European Union held out as well. It said it was not having a race to the bottom on employment standards and environmental standards. The European Union told her there would be a push to the top, that everybody would go to the top. The European Union wanted the best standards in the world and it has moved consistently on that. It is strong enough to tell those countries that are not prepared to move on that that they will not be allowed in. They will not get the advantage of the huge trading relationship it has established.

That is the model that we should be using, the model that the whole world should be using. We are seeing some of that already in South America. As the countries there began to democratize, they moved that way. It is interesting that those countries that have led the way on that have refused to enter into so-called free trade agreements with North America and they are continuing to do so. They are building their own model.

I see my time is just about up, but I will say there is absolutely no way that a country like Canada, which believes in democracy the way we do and human rights the way we do, should be signing on to this kind of an agreement.

[Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act, October 29th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I again thank my colleague for the question. I had heard him ask a similar one to our friends from the Bloc, and I was hoping he would do that.

On the five-year review versus the sunset clause, I guess the difficulty I have is that on both sides there are problems. I do not know how many bills have been passed in this House in the last 15 years or so, because for about that long it has been relatively common for this House to provide mandatory reviews.

I know from my work on the justice committee and before that on the natural resources and environment committees, as well as the public safety and national security committees--I have spent a lot of time on all of those committees--that a lot of the bills that have gone through those committees and through this House have had mandatory reviews of a variety of natures in terms of their timing.

According to the way the process is supposed to work, those reviews are done in a timely fashion, and in fact are done before the mandated time is over. That is the way it is supposed to work. We could go back and look at the debate that went on around the time we first provided those reviews. The understanding was that a review would be done by the standing committee that was responsible for that area, and in fact it would do the review before the time was up.

When the time limit was up, the standing committee would be able to present to the House recommendations as to whether the bill was okay or the law was okay as it was or if it needed amendments, and if it needed amendments they would recommend the type.

The reality is that rarely happens. I once had a reporter come to me, and this was two or three years ago, and say she had been doing an analysis of a number of bills, crime bills or justice bills, and had found a huge number of them for which the review had never been done. I believe the same was true in the environment field, that the reviews were never done.

I have conducted some reviews in both those areas, justice and the environment, but I would have to say those were the exception. We were doing fewer than 50% of the reviews that had been legislated and mandated. There is no reproof, no penalty to this House for not doing the reviews, so we continue on this way.

The obvious alternative is, then, to put in a sunset clause. The difficulty I have with a sunset clause in this area is that I know how badly these tools we are providing in both Bill C-46 and Bill C-47 are needed.

I recognize that technology will develop and will probably overcome some of the provisions we have made here, and we will need to pass further laws down the road so that we can again be up to date with the criminal element in the use of technology.

I am really fearful that if we put in a sunset clause and the government of day does not pay attention, this will collapse and it will not be available to our police forces. I think that is too much of a risk. I know it is tempting to do so, because that would impose greater pressure on the government of the day to make sure it got done.

We saw it happen with the government. We had this situation with the anti-terrorism legislation. There were several clauses in there, the use of which I have to say I opposed, and in fact they collapsed because the government did not move quickly enough to deal with them.

This experience shows us that we cannot depend on them even in a sunset clause situation to respond appropriately with regard to time.

[Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act, October 29th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, let me answer the second question first.

The amendments to this bill are really quite simple. We simply bring into line the responsibility that the demand for this information would have to be presented to a judicial authority. How that is done varies across the country. In some cases it is brought before a justice of the peace but it is usually a judge of the provincial superior courts in the respective provinces and territories. There are three basic points that a crown attorney or sometimes the police themselves place before a judge: the subject of the investigation; the stage it is at and what they have done up to that point, identifying the individuals or even a corporation against which they want the warrant; and the specific information they need, as described on an affidavit explaining why they need that information to deal with the investigation.

It is fairly straightforward. We have been doing these warrants for probably 100 years or more in Canada, which have evolved over time to be more sophisticated. There are standard forms that have to be filled out. All we need to do is plug this section into the same format.

In terms of the potential for abuse, I do not want this to sound as though we have police forces in this country that are running amok. I in fact believe just the opposite. I think our judiciary is one of the best in the world, and I think we can make the same argument for our police forces, whether we are talking about the RCMP, some of our major provincial police forces, or those forces at the municipal level.

Our police forces are quite sophisticated by international standards, generally well trained and generally knowledgeable of the law and the requirements of their role. However, like the judiciary and like politicians in this chamber, they are human. From time to time they make judgment errors. The judiciary is in a much better position to provide that protection than are individual police officers who can have--I do not want to call it a conflict of interest because that would be unfair to them--a real desire to catch criminals. At times they can be overenthusiastic, and that then leaves it wide open for these kinds of demands to be made in circumstances that cannot be justified and would not be permitted by a judge.

[Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act, October 29th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-47 with a bit of trepidation because my colleague from Vancouver Kingsway did such an excellent job in his analysis of the bill on Tuesday. My colleague from Elmwood—Transcona said that he will probably use that in his political leaflet. I give him permission to do that, because he did an excellent job.

I have watched and listened to the speeches from the various parties. The need for this bill is very clear in terms of providing some tools for our police officers, in particular, and our prosecutors and our judiciary to bring them into the 21st century to combat a number of different areas of direct cybercrime. It would assist them in a number of areas by giving them the ability to get at other information and evidence which they cannot access now because of the gaps in the Criminal Code, our evidence act and other pieces of legislation.

All parties agree that this legislation is necessary. Being completely honest, I think that all parties would also say that it is way overdue. I have been our party's justice critic for going on five years. This has been discussed throughout that entire period of time. We have seen some other drafts of this legislation. There has been a lot of discussion in the public arena. In fact, that discussion probably started back in the late 1990s.

We identified a number of the problem areas in the Criminal Code, the evidence act and other legislation that were, in effect, acting as barriers to effective policing of a number of crime areas, including organized crime. The more sophisticated organized crime groups are way ahead of our police forces and criminal justice system in their use of new technology. We are very much playing catch-up. That has been identified for at least a decade. Unfortunately, neither the current government administration nor the prior one moved rapidly on it.

There is strong support for the bill, with one glaring exception. As I said earlier in my comment and question to my colleague from the Conservatives, Anne McLellan, who was the minister at one point and introduced the first bill regarding these types of amendments, as a typical Liberal, flip-flopped on this. Ultimately, she came out on the side that the state would not invade people's privacy and privacy rights without judicial oversight. The state would not intervene without judicial oversight. I think she ultimately took that position after initially being on the other side. In fact, she introduced a bill that was very similar in this regard to the bill that is now Bill C-47.

Before any bill was introduced in the House, the then minister of public safety and national security took the position publicly that there would be no state intervention in those privacy areas. We are talking here about basic information contained in computers, in current technology and in other technology that we think may be coming. The minister took the position that we would not intervene in that as we have not in any other area of law, technology or private property. Historically, we have just not done that without judicial oversight. We can argue whether that is appropriate, but I believe that argument is long behind us.

We can go back hundreds of years and the intervention of the state in people's private lives has generally been seen as a negative without judicial oversight. We need that independence and knowledge our judiciary brings to the issues of the day, to the issues of civil liberties, human rights, et cetera, to balance that against the need for the state to intervene in certain cases. That decision needs to be made by the judiciary, not by an individual police officer, the argument being that the judiciary is in a much more independent and qualified position to make that decision of where that balance occurs.

That is the situation we are in at the present time. That is the society we have built. That is the criminal law and criminal evidence structure we have built and which has generally worked well. Nobody argues with the needs in our society which this bill reflects, but we do argue with the government because we believe that in this bill, it has clearly crossed the line.

I want to draw to the House's attention the specific section regarding what a designated person can demand from service providers. It is quite lengthy:

Every telecommunications service provider shall provide a person designated under subsection (3), on his or her written request, with any information in the service provider’s possession or control respecting the name, address, telephone number and electronic mail address of any subscriber to any of the service provider’s telecommunications services and the Internet protocol address, mobile identification number, electronic serial number, local service provider identifier, international mobile equipment identity number, international mobile subscriber identity number and subscriber identity module card number that are associated with the subscriber’s service and equipment.

That is a lot of information that has to be turned over on a simple demand. There are no provisions in the bill for any refusal for that information to be turned over. The subscriber has absolutely no rights but to turn that information over.

There is a secondary problem where, because of the amount of information that could be asked for, as we see from that list, if it is one particular provider that is being targeted, it could bankrupt the person because of the amount of time it would take to provide that information. It is open to that kind of abuse.

It is not open to that kind of abuse if the police force is required to appear in front of a judge and explain why this information is needed, what the nature is of the investigation, the need for that information to assist in that investigation, and we could go down the list. That approach by the police force is no different from any number of other areas where the police now have to go before a judge. There is nothing special about the need for this information.

It is clear that the information in a lot of cases will be needed, but it is also clear that it is the kind of information we get now but is always subject to first getting a warrant. Whether it is getting a warrant to wiretap a conventional land line, whether it is a warrant to install listening devices in a private residence or a commercial establishment, all of those are subject to judicial warrant and judicial oversight. That should be the same here.

It is so fundamental that I do not understand why we are doing this. It is one of the reasons I have raised the point repeatedly as to why we are doing this. Why is the government doing this? I have never had a satisfactory answer.

My colleague from Vancouver Kingsway was very clear in his address to the House on Tuesday. He has canvassed a number of the experts in this area. What came out of the work he did in that regard was that the experts, academics and people who work in the field, investigators, et cetera, have not been able to identify one case in which police have been able to come forward and say that they need to be able to do this.

We will hear the argument from some police agencies or forces that they need this because of timing. That is not a credible argument. It is the same kind of argument we can hear being made with regard to setting up wiretaps, planting listening devices, or getting a search warrant to search residences and commercial establishments.

We have provisions within our law such that if a crime is about to be committed or the police have reasonable probable grounds to believe that a crime is about to be committed, they can do that on their own. We have exemptions within the code that allow them to do that, and those exemptions would apply to these circumstances. I repeat that they have not been able to come up with one instance in which they needed access to that information on demand, where they could not have taken the time to get the warrant.

This may be a point I have to make. I do not want to assume ignorance on the part of government, but I do not have any other explanation as to why it would move in this regard. Our judges who grant these warrants are available in every community in this country on a 24-hour basis. It is a matter of a phone call. Judges in regions are designated for periods of time as having this responsibility, and they make themselves available. I have been involved in cases in which I know the police went to the judge's home and got the warrant, because there was a timing issue. So the judges are available. The need for the protection of privacy is there. It is guaranteed in that regard, and it does not, in any significant way and maybe not at all, hinder the role the police have to play in doing timely investigations.

Neither the timeliness argument nor the argument of the need to prevent a crime from happening stands up to any type of vigorous analysis. There is just no evidence that is the case. Gathering this information, described in section 16 of Bill C-47, which I just read out, is really no different from gathering it in the other areas, for which we regularly attend before judges or judicial authorities to get the warrants before we proceed.

If I had heard any valid explanation from the government, we would not be opposing Bill C-47, and that would be true of my colleague from Vancouver Kingsway. He is responsible for this legislation, because it is going to Public Safety, not Justice. However, both of us would have been in a position to say yes, there is no question this bill is absolutely needed and has been needed for the better part of a decade in this country.

I should say in that regard, we are not only behind the criminal element in this country and organized crime in particular, we are well behind a number of other countries that have moved much more prudently in this regard and have legislation similar to this on their books and have had it for the better part of a decade. We are that far behind other countries as well.

We would have been quite happy, in fact enthusiastic, to support the bill, get it through committee as quickly as we could and back to the House and on to the other chamber for quick passage, but we cannot do that when this fundamental right is being abrogated in the legislation.

If we had heard any kind of decent explanation from the government, we would not have taken that position, but we had no choice. This is so fundamental.

Again, we can go back into English law and into English common law during the hundreds and hundreds of years over which we have evolved these principles of the proper role for the state to play and the proper role within the state for the judiciary and police forces to play. This is undermining that in quite a significant fashion without any justification whatsoever.

We will be opposing the bill on second reading. I expect it is going to go to committee. In any event, hopefully at the committee one of two things will happen. We will convince the government that it has to put judicial oversight back into these sections so that it is covered or--I will say quite frankly that my colleague from Vancouver Kingsway and I are open-minded on this--if we can hear justification, valid argument as to why we should support this, we will in fact change our position for third reading.

However, we have had that opportunity, as far as I can see, from the government. We have not received that justification or any valid arguments to support it with regard to the judicial oversight issue. We are going to stay open-minded. Perhaps other witnesses will come forward who are more astute in their arguments in this regard, and we remain open-minded to see if there are reasons for it within the conditions that our police forces are facing now. I have to say I am skeptical, but I remain open-minded on it.

Having said that, I will conclude. The bill absolutely needs to get through. It needs only this one significant change. If we can get that, then hopefully we can get it through fairly quickly.

[Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act, October 29th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his kind comments. I promise not to use them in any political leaflet and I expect the same back from him.

However, he did not answer the question and perhaps I will put it this way. Has the member spoken with the current Minister of International Trade and asked him why he took that position back then and why his government has reversed positions on this issue now?

He obviously felt at that time, although I suppose the other possibility is that he did not know what he was talking about, so I do not want to attribute that to him, but I think he did, and recognized that, in terms of that balance between state interference and public safety, we were clearly better to stay on the side of judicial oversight in terms of protecting privacy rights and still allowing for the use of this legislation but only with judicial oversight.

Has the member spoken with that particular minister and asked him why he took the position at that time?

[Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act, October 29th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I want to acknowledge the work of the previous speaker in his chairmanship of the public safety and national security committee. I will not overly extoll his virtues because I do not want it show up in a political leaflet sometime in the future, but all parties worked very well in that committee, and part of that was because of his good chairmanship.

However, during that period of time, and I am sure he was paying close attention to this because of his responsibilities in the area of public safety and national security, the current Minister of International Trade, the then minister in that period of time for public safety and national security, who would have been responsible for this bill had he remained in that position, came out very publicly, as had, to a lesser degree, the former minister in the Liberal government, when this type of legislation was being debated and discussed in more general terms rather than a specific bill.

However, in the course of that debate in the country and in, I will say, the high tech community in this country, there was great concern expressed about privacy rights and about the role the state should play in getting access to private communication and private data. I think there was a general consensus in the country, and in those communities that were particularly interested in this area, that that should never be done without a warrant.

The then minister for public safety and national security, the now Minister of International Trade, came out and very clearly and unequivocally made the statement, and repeated it on more than one occasion, that his government would never allow access to that type of data without a judicial warrant, without judicial oversight. I think the actual terminology he used was, “without judicial oversight”.

I am now asking my colleague why the government would, in this bill, allow for the state to demand this information, compel this information, without judicial oversight.

[Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act, October 26th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of my party to signal that we have done a fairly thorough review of Bill C-46 and will be supporting it at second reading to go to committee.

I do want to be clear, and I think it is obvious to anyone who peruses the bill, and it is a lengthy one, that it is a significant step forward in bringing a number of our procedures and much of our criminal law into the 21st century.

It has a number of short provisions in it. In the past we did not have technological terms that would allow us to lay charges or in some cases get warrants to pursue investigations simply because the term computer, for example, was not in the particular section of the code that was the subject of the investigation.

We have other changes, setting aside the technological ones, that are fairly short amendments, whereby we are again expanding the scope of a number of crimes to reflect the reality of cyber crime, crime that is based on the use of technological equipment.

It is very important that we make those changes and bring things up to date because we know of a number of investigations that have gone on and have failed and of a number of charges that have been laid and have failed simply because the terminology in the code was not up to modern-day standards.

From that perspective, it makes a lot of sense to have this. In fact this bill is quite overdue in terms of when it should have been on the law books of this country. Those amendments have been planned for some time.

I want to say that there are some other relatively short amendments, and I want to note one in particular that is to clause 6. This is the section of the code that deals with hate propaganda and hate literature, and we are including an additional group in the identifiable group that would be the subject of an attack based on certain criteria. Right now the wording mentions colour, race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation. We are adding to that list “national or ethnic origin”, because there have been a couple of cases in which that was the motivation for the attack by the hate-mongers and we could not charge them because the group in question did not fit within the definition of identifiable group.

That is a significant update, a significant change. It will allow us to catch people who publish and disseminate that kind of literature and that kind of hatred. That is an improvement. We have several more like that.

I want to make a few comments about some of the reservations. We heard one of them in the last questions from my colleague from Timmins—James Bay. There are provisions for amendments to the Competition Act more specifically than to the code, which will allow for telewarrants, so the police officer or the prosecutor would not actually physically stand in the presence of a judge. They would obtain a warrant through some form of telecommunication.

In terms of the design, it appears they would do that in the normal way. They would prepare written material, submit it to the proper judicial officer, and if so justified, they would receive the warrant. They could do it by fax, a combination of telephone and fax, or by computers, over the Internet.

There is a third way that is of concern, and it was raised by my colleague, the member for Timmins—James Bay. There are provisions in here whereby one will be able to seek a warrant through a telecommunication mechanism without putting anything in writing. I have to say that does cause me some concern. The test for that is that one can seek it where it is impractical to submit a request in writing.

I am concerned about that because it potentially could be open to abuse where people argue. As we heard from the last speaker, it sometimes takes a long time to get a warrant but that is the way our system works and it has worked quite well in terms of ensuring that the judicial officer has in his or her possession sufficient information to allow for the incursion into usually private residences, commercial establishments and now, more commonly, computers and that whole world.

We need to be very careful that we do give our judicial officers sufficient information. I must say that it is somewhat hard to imagine, on a consistent basis, being able to do that without submitting a reasonable amount of written text to the judicial officer. Again, it does not need to be by fax. It can be over the Internet. However, it can simply be speaking to a judicial officer over the phone and recounting the reasons why a warrant is needed and why it is impractical.

Another concern I have about the section is that it is not clear as to who determines the impracticality. We do not know whether it is the police officer or the prosecutor seeking it, and if it is the judicial officer, what do those officers need to do to establish that there is no criteria as to what impracticality means? I think that again is open to some potential abuse.

When I first started practising law, we did not have the provisions in the law to obtain warrants for wiretapping. It was just blank. In fact, I was involved early in my career with a couple of cases where we actually challenged the police forces who we believed were conducting illegal wiretaps. It was shortly after that that the legislation came into play.

However, I remember the debates that went on in this House at that time and, more generally, in legal circles, where we were debating what criteria had to be met for those kinds of warrants. When I look at the debate that went on at that time and the ultimate criteria that we put into play as to what we had to meet in order to get those kinds of warrants, I have not heard that debate today in the House, and I do not see the criteria in the legislation.

That is an area of concern for us and when it gets to committee we will be investigating that more thoroughly to see if there are ways we can, not only accommodate this type of amendment, but also provide some guidelines for our judiciary as to when they would allow for a warrant to be issued, in effect, over the telephone, without anything in writing in front of them.

It is really important, with the exchange that now goes on where the prosecutor and oftentimes the police officer appear in front of a judge or a justice of the peace to get a warrant, that the exchange that goes on of a personal nature is fairly crucial for the judge to make his or her decision, and that is much more difficult over a telephone.

The other major concern is the bill would, in two areas, place additional pressure on people who provide computer services, service providers, in that we would have two provisions for requirements to produce material and, coupled with that, requirements for the computer service operators to preserve material.

I have seen some commentary in the public media from service providers who are concerned about heir ability to do that. This would not be a problem for large service providers, the large companies, but it may very well be for the small ones. Are we going to allow for a relatively comfortable period of phase-in where they need to add additional technology if they do not already have it? That still remains a question mark. Will it be, in some cases, just too expensive? Would this put people out of business by simply asking for a preservation order from them, which comes only from the police and then they go get the warrant for production?

As I have said, I have heard those concerns expressed. One of the ways to deal with this may be to allow for a phase-in period when they can get their computers and the new technology up to snuff to meet the requirements of this.

The final point I would make is the point raised by one of my other colleagues in a question, which was about our ability, with these amendments, to give additional tools to our police officers and prosecutors around what are cyber crimes. Some of that is cyber bullying, which is an issue that has already been raised today, but it also expands our ability to deal with child pornography over the Internet. It would give some additional tools to the police for that purpose, which is another reason for supporting this.

With those two reservations that we have been able to identify, we will be supporting the bill but we will be looking at ways of perhaps improving it in committee. In committee, we may also identify additional problems with it but we believe overall that this bill certainly takes us in the right direction with regard to those additional tools that our police officers need.

[Ending Conditional Sentences for Property and other Serious Crimes Act, October 21st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I also rise to speak to this legislation from the perspective of the context in which we have to address it and the attempt by the government, in a very undemocratic fashion, to do an end run around a vote that took place in the House approximately three years ago on the precursor bill, Bill C-9, which the government brought in shortly after it was elected in 2006. It was the first crime bill that the Conservatives brought in.

In the 2006 election, both the Conservatives and the NDP ran their platform around the issue of eliminating the use of conditional sentences for serious violent crimes. That was the terminology, and it was almost identical in both party platforms.

Bill C-9 came forward, but that was not what it attempted to do. As so often happens with the Conservative Party, it was a huge over-reach.

Bill C-9 would have eliminated the use of conditional sentences for 40 or 45 sections of the Criminal Code. Were these sections all dealing with serious violent crime? We have to remember that the Conservatives promised Canadians in their platform to eliminate conditional sentences.

There were sections in there about altering data in a computer. That was an offence and the conditional sentence would no longer be used after that kind of conviction. There were sections about forging a testamentary document. It was the same thing. That is not a violent crime. There was a whole list of these.

Accurately, as was described by some members who spoke earlier, the combined opposition parties moved to bring the bill to committee. We in the NDP told Canadians that we would remove the use of conditional sentences for serious violent crimes, and we did that, and then we eliminated the other sections. We complied with what we had said to Canadians. We were quite happy to do that because it was what we had promised. We accomplished one of the promises we had made to the electorate.

Bill C-9 came back to the House and a substantial majority voted for it. I think the Conservatives might even have voted for it, but I cannot remember. I should have checked that. The bill went on to the Senate where it was approved and became law and is law to this day. That was a promise made and a promise kept, as opposed to what the Conservatives would have wanted to do.

Following the way of their straight partisan politics, the Conservatives have now decided to bring Bill C-42 forward, along with many other bills, and are attempting to convince the Canadian people that they are tough on crime. I would like to emphasize toughness not smartness.

It was interesting to note the evidence that came out in the course of the debate in committee on Bill C-9 and to a lesser degree when it came back to the House. I remember both the justice minister and the minister for public safety and national security appeared before committee. In both cases they were asked if they knew how many more people were going to be incarcerated and if they knew how much that was going to cost.

Let me digress on this point and explain how conditional sentences work. A judge has to determine that he or she would not sentence a person eligible for a conditional sentence to incarceration in an institution for more than two years. In effect, they would be sentenced, if they were going to be incarcerated, to a period of time of two years less a day. If anybody understands the system in this country, all of those sentences of two years less a day are served in provincial prisons.

Let me go back to the two questions of whether they knew how much it was going to cost and did they know how many were going to be put in? In both cases, the ministers did not know.

I and some of my colleagues from the other parties dug out that information regarding that long list of 45 offences that may no longer be eligible for conditional sentences. All those people would then go to jail for two years less a day. I want to be clear on this. This was information that came from within the Department of Justice. Let me repeat that. The source of this information in writing was the Department of Justice. It turns out that 5,000 more people would be put in provincial jails. Of course, the ministers did not have to worry about that, did they? Not a dime of that was coming out of the federal coffers. They were just dumping this problem of 5,000 more inmates on the provincial system.

Knowing how much it costs per year for an inmate, we estimated that those 5,000 additional inmates in our prisons at the provincial level would cost the provinces in the range of $250 million to $500 million a year. There are many provinces that would like to be able to spend that money.

Because there was no way that the provincial systems could accommodate 5,000 additional inmates with their existing number of beds, there would have to be additions built on to the existing provincial institutions or new ones built. The estimate of what it would cost for capital was in the order of $1.5 billion to $2 billion. Is the federal government going to contribute any of that? Were those two ministers going to have to take it out of their budgets? Absolutely not.

It is important to understand that context because we are faced with the same situation with this bill. If I asked the Minister of Justice or the Minister of Public Safety, who is responsible for corrections, they would not be able to tell me. They would not be able to give me an answer. I am absolutely convinced of that. In fact, last week in the Globe and Mail we saw the article and the editorial attacking the government for refusing to disclose what information it has and what analysis it has done.

I want to be very clear. The analysis that the Minister of Public Safety has done has not taken into account the drug bill that has gone through the House and is sitting in the other place waiting for passage. If that bill and this one pass, he has not done an analysis of how many more inmates there would be. He has not done that.

In spite of the fact that we hear constantly from the Minister of Justice that he keeps being reassured by the Minister of Public Safety that we have lots of space in our federal prisons, it does not matter. He is wrong, by the way, and I am going to come back to that in a second. It does not matter because these people, under Bill C-42, are all going to go into the provincial system.

It was interesting to hear two of my colleagues, one from my party in Quebec and one from the Liberal Party in New Brunswick in the last couple of days tell me that the judges at the provincial level have been told not to send people to jail for weekends because the provincial institutions no longer have space for any of them. They have to put them on probation. That is the reality of what we are faced with at the provincial level and it is true in every single province and territory in this country.

We have signed international protocols that require us to have one inmate per cell. We are breaching that international protocol as much as 50% of the time, particularly at the provincial level but also at the federal level.

Let us go back to the federal system and the assurances—I wanted to use a term that is unparliamentary and I am looking for a synonym—that lack credibility from the Minister of Public Safety.

The head of Correctional Service of Canada, Mr. Don Head, has made it very clear at committee hearings and in the public press in the last month that we do not have the capacity at the federal level, that we are regularly double-bunking, and triple-bunking in some cases, per cell. We are not meeting our international requirements and promises we have made. We do not have that capacity.

Last week the Globe and Mail attacked the minister and the government, because the minister is refusing to disclose the analysis he had done and how much it will cost. That does not take into account these two bills, the one that is before us today and the drug bill that is before the other place right now.

Because of the information we do have up to this point and we will get more, and with the support of the Liberals the bill will obviously go to committee, we will be voting against it. I am quite comfortable in saying that we will see similar numbers, 5,000-plus inmates being incarcerated in our prisons, if this legislation and the drug bill go through. Let me repeat that it will cost the provinces hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It will cost the provinces a huge amount of capital dollars.

It will depend on what our judges do with it. They may say that they cannot send convicts to provincial jails any more, so they may move the sentence up to two years plus a day, or two and a half years or three years and they would then go into the federal system. That would severely impact on the number of inmates at the federal level. It is a realistic possibility, if not a probability, that our judges will start to do that.

I want to make one more point about the cost issue. We always hear from the Conservatives, which is partly why the Liberals run scared on it, that we are soft on crime. I want to use an example in the United States. I think we could argue that most of the states, and Texas and a couple of other southern states in the U.S. may be ahead of them, but California has led the way in throwing people into prison in huge numbers.

Just so we are clear on that, our incarceration rate in Canada is about one-seventh of what it is in the United States. However, it is also the highest of the western democracies after the United States. Japan has an incarceration rate of roughly 60 per 100,000 population. Ours right now is running at about 110 to 120, in those ratios, which is almost double that of Japan. Western democracies in Europe, Australia and New Zealand are running 80 to 90 per 100,000. The United States is running 700-plus per 100,000.

California was one of the states that led the way in getting tough on crime, with the right-wing Reagan-Bush type of agenda, followed very closely by the Conservative Party in this country. In the last few months, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, that person who is really soft on crime, has been compelled to begin to release--he is doing it himself; he has to sign each one of them--thousands of inmates on early parole, including a large number who had been convicted and were serving time for serious violent crime, because the state can no longer afford to pay for it. The prison costs in California exceed what the state spends on post-secondary education. It is part of the bankruptcy with which that state is confronted right now. In order to deal with that, he is having to release thousands of inmates on early parole.

That is a very clear model of what would happen if we follow the agenda followed by the United States and the State of California, which the governing party wants us to follow. I want to juxtapose that with the use of conditional sentences. What came out very clearly in the review of Bill C-9 two and a half years ago was that it is working.

The Conservatives come up with these individual cases where our courts clearly can be said to have overused the conditional sentence. We can always find those cases.

I am a great defender of our judiciary. Having practised law all those years, having analyzed our judges and having analyzed judges in a whole bunch of other countries, I firmly believe that we have the best judges in the world. However, they are human. They make mistakes. We should not be deriving from those mistakes principles that guide us on how we are going to pass legislation around convictions, around sentencing. That should not be the way we do it.

What we should do is look at what has happened since we brought in conditional sentences. It was very clear from the evidence that we took in the review of Bill C-9 that it is working. The recidivism rate is about one-third what it is versus those we incarcerate, 30-plus per cent of those we incarcerate, down around 10% and in some cases, depending on what the charges are and what the convictions are for, as low as 8% and up to 12%, but on average, around 10% or 11% is the recidivism rate.

We hear the anecdotal stories and we hear people say that they are standing up for the victims. What they are standing up for is a system that is going to victimize more people down the road because 30% of the inmates are going to become recidivists and are going to go back and commit oftentimes more serious crimes than the ones they first went in for. We know that prisons train people to do that. Where are they in terms of defending those victims, the future ones who inevitably are going to be a result of these types of policies?

We are going to be voting against this bill at second reading. If the bill gets through the committee and comes back to the House, we are going to be voting against it at third reading. This legislation is the wrong approach. It is going to victimize a large number of additional Canadians as opposed to the alternative of what we have now. It is very clear that as our violent crime rate continues to drop, a good deal of that is because we began using a number of principles around restorative justice, including conditional sentences. Our system is working.

It is interesting. I sat for a number of years on the public safety and national security committee. People from all over the world came to look at what we were doing because our system was working. They were seeing us drop our violent crime rate. They were seeing that we were moving quite dramatically away from the U.S. experience and that it was working. Conditional sentencing was one of the things they would come to take a close look at to see how it worked. In many cases, I understand, they are beginning to look at implementing it in other countries that were not using it before they saw ours.

It is a system that works. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Are our judges human? Yes, they are. Do they make mistakes? Absolutely, they make mistakes. However, it is still the best system, and it is far superior to what is being proposed under this legislation.

[Criminal Code, October 20th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I have a quick anecdote.

I was actually sitting on a credit union board in that period of time when we were looking at enhancing the security of both debit cards and credit cards. The member is dead on with his comments about the large banks simply seeing this as an expense of doing business.

What that meant to them was that they passed on that expense to the consumer. It is part of the reason we have somewhat higher interest rates, both on our credit cards and consumer loans.

It would have been a time for the government, not so much under the Criminal Code but under the industry department, under commercial activity in this country, for that responsibility to have been imposed because it was not done voluntarily by our financial institutions. They did not end up bearing the costs. We, as consumers, ended up bearing the costs.

We could have done that quite a number of years ago. The technology was there. I was sitting on those boards more than 10 years ago and the technology was already there at that point. We are just starting to see it at this stage.

There has been a misdeed here on the part of both the banking institutions in this country and the government.