Joe Comartin

[DNA Identification Act, September 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, although this is a private member's bill, the NDP supports it going to committee. We have some reservations. We hope they can be resolved at committee or perhaps even before it gets to committee.

I want to follow up on some of the comments made by my colleague from the Bloc, who made a number of points about the frustration he and I have both shared with regard to this legislation. I know it is certainly a frustration shared by the mover of the bill and the Minister of Natural Resources, who had authored a similar bill, I believe Bill C-240, in the last Parliament.

In spite of the fact that we had reasonable support for the concept from certain individual members of the Liberal Party, it was frustrating. When the Liberal Party was in government, it would not address this issue, which was unfortunate. At the time, two pieces of legislation were before the justice committee. One was kind of a last minute thing. This concept could have easily been included at that time. If not then, it could have been addressed in the mandatory review of the DNA system established under the code almost five years ago now. That review was supposed to have been completed over a year ago and still has not been.

There is a need for this type of system where family members can assist in identifying another family member, whether it is a sibling or a child, who has been killed or died as a result of other trauma. This would be a major step forward in giving the surviving family relief by knowing what happened to a loved one. There is no question we need to do this.

My colleague from the Bloc has raised the constitutional issue. It is quite clear, and I think all of us agree, that there is a problem. In the last Parliament, the current Minister of Natural Resources went out of his way to get correspondence from all of the provinces, indicating they wanted to have the system put in place.

Unfortunately, that is not the end of it. The system could still be challenged if it were established, as suggested in this bill, as purely a federal system. It could be challenged by individuals who are being followed as a result of this. I will come back to this in a minute. It is not simply good enough to say we have an agreement between the provinces and the federal government. How that agreement is put into play is very crucial because it could be challenged under the Constitution.

I believe there are answers to that question and hopefully we will be able to resolve it at committee. For that reason, the NDP supports it going to committee, perhaps with some significant amendments at that point to address the constitutional problem.

In addition to that, there are some other problems with the legislation. I do not believe it goes far enough in dealing with privacy issues that could come up. Although the bill is very clearly intended to only deal with DNA samples of deceased individuals, it is not the end of it. The bill does not prohibit, as extensively as it needs to, getting at the DNA sample and comparing it to another sample of a person who is still alive and may be the subject of some investigation by the police. That is clearly not what it is intended to do, but it is open to that kind of use by the state. We have to build some additional amendments into the bill to prevent that from happening.

My final concern is the privacy issue. We have the potential scenario of sexually abusive parents attempting to trace their offspring, who has run from the home because of the abuse, and is using it as a methodology to do so. Under the bill as it is presently composed, they can offer their sample. If the sample is then compared to one that is found at a crime scene or if it gets into the hands of police officers in some other fashion, that would be an indirect methodology of tracing that person.

In the previous bill and again in this bill there have been specific attempts to thwart that from ever happening. I do not think it goes quite far enough and I will be proposing some amendments to deal with that more specifically when it gets to committee, assuming the House see it appropriate to do so. Those amendments would shut the door on any invasion of privacy in that regard. I believe it can be done with further amendments to the bill and perhaps amendments to our Evidence Act, which would prevent that from occurring and prohibit police forces from ever using it in that way.

There is one additional problem, about which we learned when we went to the laboratory in Ottawa. There is a problem with destroying DNA samples. The way we collected samples in the current system, a number of them are put on one sheet. If we destroy one of them, we almost inevitably destroy the whole sheet or a great number of them. The people in the lab were still working on that problem about a year ago. I do not believe they resolved it. It is a problem under the current system because we have outstanding court orders that DNA samples that were taken improperly are to be destroyed and they cannot do it. The system does not allow for it.

It may be possible to create and store the samples in a different fashion, but right now that is not possible. That is a concern under the legislation. The final part of the legislation that is being proposed speaks specifically about the need to destroy samples in proper circumstances. That is the final point that needs to be addressed.

I expect most of my caucus will be supporting the bill. However, we have concerns around the constitutional and privacy issues. We also have concerns about its potential abuse and the ability of the system to be able to destroy samples. All those issues, with the exception of perhaps the last one, can be resolved at committee. We will have to hear additional evidence on the issue of whether the samples can be destroyed.

In summary, the bill is long past due. I will be critical of the former government because it was not dealt with in the last Parliament, and it should have and could have been. I hope we will be able to get this through. I hope the government will come on side and make it a government bill rather than a private member's bill.

[Canada-U.S. Border, September 25th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it is not necessary for it to take 10 years. I know the government likes following the Bush agenda and it took 10 years to do it in the U.S. but it does not take that long in Canada.

It will take five more unnecessary years, if the government does not do it in five, where more guns will be smuggled into this country, five more years with dangerous criminals crossing our borders.

There are alternatives. There is another way of doing this. Why not have the government come forward with enough resources for the RCMP and provincial police forces to increase our capacity to train our guards and get them on line in five years, not ten?

[Canada-U.S. Border, September 25th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, 10 years ago guards requested the right to be armed to protect themselves and Canada's borders. Now the government has said it is going to take an unbelievable 10 more years to accomplish this.

We need to stop the tide of illegal guns coming into this country and our guards at the border need the tools to do this.

Will the government today commit to having every single guard armed in five years or less?

[Canada-U.S. Border, September 25th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday 60 Canadian border guards were forced to walk off four Canadian border crossings because an armed and dangerous criminal was approaching the border.

[Early Learning and Child Care Act, September 25th, 2006]

Yes, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, in terms of past practice this motion clearly is premature. The House has not pronounced on this bill. Members have every right to have the debate, the first two hours of it, at which point hopefully the bill will be sent over to committee and perhaps amended there, perhaps in part to deal with the concerns being raised by the government.

The decision itself as to whether a royal prerogative is required here will be made and should be made at that time, I would argue, not at this time. That has been the pattern on a number of rulings we have had both in this Parliament and the previous Parliament.

In particular, and I want to echo the comments from the whip for the Bloc, it is really quite hypocritical to hear the government party stand and make these kind of submissions when in the last Parliament it repeatedly brought forth bills that, quite frankly, very clearly required royal prerogatives. We went ahead and dealt with them and in some occasions amended them to the degree that the royal prerogative was not necessary. For those members to make the argument at this stage is completely contrary to the practice they followed in the last Parliament when they were in official opposition.

What we should be doing and what I would urge you to do is simply put off making any decision on this issue of the necessity of the royal prerogative until the House has had its due process, until it has had the opportunity to fully consider this legislation and decide then whether the royal prerogative is required or not.

[Points of Order, September 22nd, 2006]

I apologize, Mr. Speaker. I am going to have the problem of not knowing which riding he is in: Delta—Richmond East.

In the last Parliament that member put forward two questions at the same time and they were Question Nos. 5 and 7. Those questions, and I am looking at copies of them right now, run on to a length that is longer, or at least as long as Question No. 90 which is the subject of the objection from this government and the parliamentary secretary at this time.

Those questions were in fact subsequently answered. They were on fishery items, I believe. The member was then and is still now quite interested in that topic. He was asking as I believe proper, specific questions, wanting specific answers to specific facts, wanting that detail, all of which seems to be well within the spirit and the wording of Standing Order 39 as is Question No. 90.

The position that is being put forward by the government, and the parliamentary secretary on its behalf, is one that is inconsistent with its own practice in the last Parliament when Conservatives were in opposition. Even the parliamentary secretary could go back and look at some of his questions in the last Parliament. They were fairly lengthy as well. It is inconsistent with the practice that has grown up since Standing Order 39 was changed.

I would argue strongly that the motivation behind this is really about the issue itself and the government being unhappy at having to provide this information from the Departments of National Defence and of International Cooperation.

Just to give an example, this morning in some of the national newspapers in this country in response to information that this same member gathered from the same government in the spring response to written questions, very interesting, factual and needed information came out.

The hon. member was doing her job in asking those questions and that information was necessary for the debate that is going on around that issue in the country. It is just a glaring example of why we need to be able to ask these types of detailed questions. She was very successful in the information she received.

Similarly, to the question she is asking now in Question No. 90, there is information there that the country needs to have as this debate goes on with regard to our deployment of troops and resources in Afghanistan at the current time.

My argument in summation refers to the fact that Standing Order 39 was changed. It limited these questions. She stayed within those boundaries. The questions have to be of reasonable length. If we look at the practice that has grown since the reincarnation of Standing Order 39, she has stayed within the practice that has grown up in that period of time, a practice that the political party now in government followed when they were in opposition.

[Points of Order, September 22nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

Earlier this week the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons raised an objection pursuant to Standing Order 39 to question No. 90 from the member for New Westminster—Coquitlam. The basic argument was that the question was too long. On that basis the parliamentary secretary was arguing that it was out of order and should be struck from the list.

The purpose of Standing Order 39 is analyzed in Marleau and Montpetit at page 438 which states that those questions are put on the order paper “with the intent of seeking from the ministry detailed, lengthy or technical information relating to public affairs”.

Standing Order 39 is quite clear. There are certain rules that allow us to place before individual ministers, and in rare cases other members of Parliament, detailed questions for information that we require in order to perform our functions as members of this House.

The question that is being challenged by the parliamentary secretary is the only one on the order paper by the member for New Westminster--Coquitlam. Standing Order 39 allows for up to four questions to be on the order paper at any given time by any given member in the House. This is the only question she has on the order paper at this time. Without question it is lengthy; the question has a number of subsections in it.

There used to be no limit to the number of written questions a member could put on the order paper. About 10 years ago a new rule was introduced that limited the number of questions a member could put on the order paper to a maximum of four at any given time. My colleague is clearly in compliance with that part of the rule in the sense that she only has the one question.

The question is with regard to Afghanistan and the deployment of military resources there. What you have to do, Mr. Speaker, in making your determination as to whether the request from the parliamentary secretary is a reasonable one, is to look at the practice that has grown since the change in the Standing Orders. In particular, I would call to your attention questions that were put forward by Mr. John Cummins, who was a member of the Conservative Party in the last Parliament, and questions--

[Request for Emergency Debate, September 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I reported this request to your office pursuant to Standing Order 52(2) for your consideration in granting an emergency debate. As probably just about every Canadian knows, the O'Connor commission issued its report, which was tabled in the House on Monday afternoon of this week.

In response to that, we have two points that I think support my request for an emergency debate. One is the absolute outrage in the country, both immediate and continuous right up to the present, as to the way Mr. Arar himself and his family have been treated by police authorities in this country.

In response to a series of questions both on Tuesday and again today in the House, we keep hearing from the government that it is going to respond. It is quite obvious that it is delaying this. The Canadian people do not want it delayed. I believe it is the responsibility of the House and individual members of Parliament to speak out on this issue. The opportunity for them to do so with regard to the way Mr. Arar was treated, the way his family was treated, and how we should respond to that and how quickly, all of this is the proper substance of an emergency debate. We should pursue that.

The secondary point I raised in my letter to you, Mr. Speaker, was with regard to the need for immediate attention by the House of Commons in terms of giving advice to the government and expressing its opinion with regard to the other three individuals who were named in Mr. O'Connor's report, but who were not the subject of the mandate the Canadian government had given him when the commission was originally established. Those three are Mr. El Maati, Mr. Almalki and Mr. Nureddin. Again, in the report, Justice O'Connor makes recommendations that something needs to be done on this and their cases taken up.

In regard to that, it is in the nature of an immediate response that is required, the nature for which we should be having input from members of Parliament. That would lead, I would argue strenuously, you to conclude that it is a proper subject of an emergency debate with regard to those three individuals and the comments and recommendations that Justice O'Connor made with regard to them.

In totality, if I may summarize, I am not seeking an emergency debate on the entire report. The government's position is fair that it needs more time to consider all of the report, but with regard to these two issues, because of the outrage this has caused in the country and because of the demand within the country that we respond quickly on both of these issues, we should be having an emergency debate. I urge you strongly, Mr. Speaker, to grant it.

[Canada Elections Act, September 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I did not get any implication from the member that he was accusing the Liberals of illegalities but more of moral bankruptcy, and he is right. The issue of those types of loans was raised in 2003 at committee by one of our members who is no longer in the House that this was a glaring loophole. We are seeing that loophole being exploited at this point.

What are they thinking Canadians will think about that? It clearly is a loophole and it is a wonder that the government did not plug it. Some more work for its members to do.

[Canada Elections Act, September 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I could not have said that better myself.

What we are doing here with regard to fixed election dates is a very small part of the electoral reform this country needs. Floor crossing is one of the issues that badly needs to be addressed given how the electorate has been so abused by both the Liberals and the Conservatives in the last two Parliaments.

A number of other amendments and changes to our laws are needed. Some are extensive while others are fundamental. In the last Parliament, Mr. Broadbent led the way at committee by proposing a number of necessary amendments to our laws and to our system. I was just reading one of the reports from the committee before I came over here today. The Conservative government supported a number of those amendments and yet we have seen no sign of them. We see things like the push for an elected Senate being sidetracked to a significant degree by the appointment of unelected senators by the government and by simply moving to change the time they will be in office.

A number of things rapidly need to be done and the government is just sitting on its hands with regard to them. We really have to question its intent and its sincerity in this regard.