House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2011, with 50% of the vote.
Employment Insurance Act September 17th, 2009
Madam Speaker, this morning the House leader for the Liberals brought a motion wanting unanimous consent to pass this legislation. Unanimous means the Liberals have to go along with it. That is how the system works. Then this afternoon, they are against the bill. I wonder about the flip-flop in less than five hours.
Where is the logic? Where is the consistency? Why the flip-flop? I would like some rationale behind that.
Motion in Amendment September 15th, 2009
Mr. Speaker, my friend from Abitibi—Témiscamingue points out that it is less than that. I would tend to agree with him, although there have been a couple more that he may not have seen during the summer. I think we are up to about a dozen now. That is how many charges there have been, not convictions, just how many charges there have been. I think there have been less than half a dozen convictions.
The estimates that we have been able to get are wide ranging, from a minimum of 1,000 cases a year of human trafficking in Canada, both domestic and international that come through Canada, to perhaps as many as 10,000. That is how many cases there have been, something in that range. That is a huge variance, but even if we take the lowest figure of 1,000 that I think just about everybody agrees to, having only 12 prosecutions, approximately, over that period of time is absolutely shameful.
What it reflects, again being critical of the government, is a lack of resources and, quite frankly, a lack of training for police officers and prosecutors. We are beginning to see that change. The first charges only came down in the last 12 months, so they are beginning to get on to it. They have taken some training and they are beginning to prosecute, but the resources do not exist.
That is something for which the government clearly has to take some responsibility, including the present government. It has been in power long enough that this issue should have been addressed so that more adequate resources are given to our prosecutors and police forces.
The second criticism is that both at the time we passed the original amendments incorporating the concept of human trafficking into the code as an offence with imposed penalties at that time and now being increased in this bill, what should have happened, and I say this from having spoken to a number of agencies that deal with victims of human trafficking, is we should have been looking at changes in policy and legislation under our immigration legislation.
All too often what happens when a case is identified and a charge is laid, the victim of the crime, oftentimes a young person, as the member for Kildonan—St. Paul set out so eloquently, and in most cases is a woman, is kept in the country long enough for the prosecution to go ahead and then is immediately deported, oftentimes back to the same country from where the young woman came. Oftentimes she is subjected once again to human trafficking crimes, maybe to another country, occasionally back to Canada.
About a year ago there was a documentary on trafficking in England. It identified one victim who had been trafficked into England six times from central eastern Europe.
The way around that is to look at our immigration laws to see if we can keep the person here at least for an extended period of time so the person no longer will be victimized. That is another area the current government has not looked at, nor did the previous government when we passed the law in 2005.
We need corresponding changes to policy and perhaps amendments to the immigration act so that if we do identify victims of human trafficking, they are given some special categorization under that legislation and those laws in order to be able to remain in the country at least long enough so that they are safe from further persecution and abuse.
Those two things have to be done. We need more resources in this area.
Sister Helen Petrimoulx is the head of our refugee agency in the city of Windsor and is a strong proponent of further action by government in enforcing the laws and prosecuting these charges. She spoke about the need for this but very eloquently spoke also of the need for looking at the victim not just as someone who is a witness in a criminal trial, but somebody who needs the assistance of our state in order to be taken care of. She told me of some of the really tragic stories that have occurred in the Windsor area, because that area is one of the conduit areas from Canada into the United States and vice versa.
The final point I want to make is with regard to the legislation we passed in 2005. I do not think it needs to be addressed in this bill. It should have been addressed in 2005 and it certainly should be addressed now. It has to do with greater penalties for those in the organized crime element who to a great degree are the masterminds behind these offences.
One of the concerns I have in that regard is that in February of this year the United Nations came out with a very extensive report on human trafficking. One of the shocking patterns that it demonstrated in the statistics it had gathered was that in more than 50% of the cases around the globe, it is women who are charged with human trafficking. Having been almost invariably themselves victims of it, they are then pressed into the same trade by almost exclusively men who are involved in organized crime gangs. The people that we are catching and prosecuting in the majority around the globe are women who themselves were victims at one time. One cannot help but think if we had got to them earlier they would not have been prosecuted because we would have got them out of the system.
What we need to do with regard to this is look at severe penalties, specifically against the organized crime syndicates, both nationally and internationally. We know the Hells Angels and the biker gangs are trafficking. We know they are using the street gangs to help them. We know they have connections with international crime syndicates. We have to go after them.
This is not meant to be in any way disrespectful to my colleague, the member for Kildonan—St. Paul, but this legislation is only going to scratch the surface. It is going to affect those people under 18, and that is a good measure, but there is much more work that needs to be done, both practically on the street with our police and in the courts with our prosecutors and judges, and with our immigration law.
Motion in Amendment September 15th, 2009
Mr. Speaker, I will start off by saying that a great deal of what we just heard from the member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe is the same position I will be taking. I endorse a good deal of his comments.
I want to raise some cautions. I want to take this opportunity to attack the government. I know that comes as a real surprise, if not a shock, to my colleagues on the other side of the House. Before I attack the government, I want to praise the work that the member for Kildonan—St. Paul has done on this subject, oftentimes with a great deal of frustration with her own government. She does not express that but I certainly have a sentiment that she feels it quite substantially from time to time.
It is important to know that the motion brought by the Bloc is really an attempt to gut this bill. I do not think there is any other way of addressing it. It does not go to the essence of what the debate is about, but it is the Bloc's attempt to gut the bill.
The attack on the government really takes two parts. One is it has clearly abandoned its responsibility of dealing with the problem of human trafficking. We heard evidence in committee that even though the law was passed in 2005 specifically dealing with human trafficking by the previous Liberal government, since that time we have had, and this is an approximation, only about a dozen charges under the law.
Questions on the Order Paper September 14th, 2009
With respect to the Police Officers Recruitment Fund: (a) how much has been allocated to the fund since its inception; (b) how much has been allocated to each jurisdiction since inception; (c) is the government aware of how many new police officers have been hired with this fund and, if so, how many in each jurisdiction; (d) what plans does the government have to help jurisdictions retain new recruits beyond the conclusion of this fund; and (e) what controls has the government put on the fund?
Employment Insurance September 14th, 2009
Mr. Speaker, over the summer, constituents from my community and others from across Canada shared with me how the government's employment insurance program was failing them.
With as many as 60% of unemployed workers not qualifying for EI, in particular thousands of women, part-time and short-term employees also not meeting the qualifying criteria, it is left to the municipalities and the local community to provide a social safety net.
In communities like Windsor—Tecumseh that safety net is strained to the breaking point by the weight of the government's failed employment policies, employment policies, by the way, that have resulted in my community suffering an official unemployment rate over 15% and a real unemployment rate approaching 20%.
My community calls upon the government to take immediate action to help those unemployed and to alleviate that human suffering.
Criminal Code June 16th, 2009
Mr. Speaker, recognizing that, I certainly agree that a public education campaign is going to have to be funded at the federal level. It would be one of the appropriate ways to move dramatically to prevent these crimes from ever occurring. There is a regulatory function that needs to be in place with regard to the credit-granting agencies as well.
Criminal Code June 16th, 2009
I think I have to caution my colleague from Winnipeg, Mr. Speaker, who is very knowledgeable of this, and very enthusiastic and passionate about getting some resolution.
He will recall in my speech that I mentioned the member from Alberta who is currently the chair of the industry committee. He brought forth a bill and addressed that issue. What came out when we were looking at that private member's bill, and we got this from the Department of Justice, was that the provision was more appropriate in an industry bill, or legislation that the industry department is responsible for.
However, and this is much like the question we had from the Bloc, I do not have a sense that the government has done anything about moving forward in that area. It is not just a question of notification. There is the whole issue of privacy and record keeping and how that is protected. There is a need to enhance the ability to protect that from theft. All of that work is really more a consumer-type of bill. That is where it should be. My belief is that the government is not currently addressing that issue at all.
Criminal Code June 16th, 2009
Mr. Speaker, the initial answer is no. This bill does not address the issue of notifying.
Criminal Code June 16th, 2009
Mr. Speaker, my Bloc colleague is right. We cannot fight identity theft unless we work with the provinces. Quebec will do things differently because it uses the Civil Code, whereas the other provinces use common law. I am not convinced that the government has had a satisfactory dialogue with the provinces. That is another thing we will have to figure out in committee.
Criminal Code June 16th, 2009
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Yukon who sat on the justice committee for a number of years with me and saw this going on with the government. Let me answer his question by addressing one bill specifically because it is coming back. The Conservatives are trying to rejuvenate it and it is the conditional sentencing bill. In terms of taking advice or researching the background of the bill and the reasons why we have conditional sentences in this country, the Conservatives are trying to make these blunt changes without having any understanding of the consequences, mostly to the provinces, or they are simply not caring about the consequences.
Bill C-9 was the bill introduced early in 2006 shortly after the Conservatives were elected and that bill was going to create a situation where about 5,000 more people were going to spend an extra year in jail than they were currently spending. From the process we went through with the minister in front of the committee, I think we even had the public safety minister take a look at this in terms of responding to a question, neither of those ministers had any idea of what the consequences were going to be.
Their department officials did. I gathered some of the information from them and the rest from the Library of Parliament. The opposition parties came together and took out the abusive part of that legislation. We passed the bill where it did need some amendments and clarification, and we ended up with a decent piece of legislation, but now they are back and they are trying to do it again.