Joe Comartin

[U.S. Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, October 24th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps at this point we can insert a little more civility into the exchange in the House.

I rise this evening to speak to the western hemisphere travel initiative which, as I heard one of my colleagues say, is really a misnomer because this is not at all about travel initiatives. It is just the opposite. It is about inhibiting the free flow of both passengers and cargo across the Canada and U.S. borders.

The point I want to make very succinctly is that this will be a catastrophe.

My colleague from Windsor West has already pointed out that a study has been undertaken and produced as to the impact. I have to say that study almost certainly does not fully encompass the damage it will do to the Canadian economy and equally to the American economy.

We can speak to this from the Windsor area with a great deal of expertise because of our experience ever since 9/11 struck us.

Since 9/11 we have had the chambers of commerce on both sides of the border say that the economies of the three states immediately bordering us and the province of Ontario have lost billions of dollars. The last figures I saw for the end of 2004 were approximately $12 billion to the economy of Ontario and roughly $7.5 billion U.S. to $8 billion U.S. to the economy in the U.S. What we are expecting to see as a result of this passport initiative on the part of the U.S. government is an increase in those losses in the billions of dollars.

To make this simple and clear, I always point to the gaming industry in Windsor and in Niagara Falls. They are probably both going to take a hit of at least a couple of hundred million dollars just in that one industry. That does not include the rest of the hospitality industry that feeds off the gaming industry in those two cities. This will be multiplied right across this country and on both sides of the border.

A number of times this evening I heard members from the government side say that maybe we should be investigating alternatives. I want to say very clearly to them, from all the experience I have had as a representative on the public security subcommittee of the justice committee, that there is no alternative. We have heard about drivers' licences. It is not an alternative. It does not work because we do not have the technology to make it work.

It was interesting to hear the former minister of immigration talk about his high-falutin idea of an ID card. It does not work. The technology is not there. We are nowhere close enough to a foolproof system in biometrics to make an ID card work.

Suggestions have been made about using our SIN number and SIN card, similar to the one they have on the U.S. side but , again, we do not have the technology to make that work.

There is no alternative. The only approach we can take as a government is to convince the U.S. that there is no alternative, that this recommendation, which has now turned into legislation, has to be reversed. At the very least, we need legislation moving through both the Congress, that is the House of Representatives, and the Senate in the U.S. to back this up to see if somewhere further down the road we might be able to develop technology that would make this possible. However it is clearly premature at this time because we cannot do it.

We, the border caucus on the Canadian side, have been meeting quite regularly, both in person, by telephone and through written communication, with the northern border caucus from the U.S. side. These are members of Congress from the House of Representatives. We have had a great deal of exchange. The points that I have just made have all been canvassed and been accepted by both sides, that we cannot do it and that these phases that are coming have to be delayed at the very minimum.

The concern that we have primarily is that we all know as parliamentarians, as legislators, how difficult it is to get a piece of legislation through our respective parliaments and on the U.S. side, the house of representatives and the senate, and on to the President for signature. That is what is required in this case because this law has already been passed. It is quite clear that for a number of representatives on the U.S. side, they just missed the boat.

Senator Clinton has been very clear in her admissions that it came as a shock to her that this provision had been in the legislation that she had in fact approved as it went through the senate. We have heard the same thing from a number of other members of the house of representatives and the senate. However, in order to correct that, there is only one way to do it.

This is not something where politicians can stand up and say they are going to postpone it. There has to be a piece of legislation and I am not hearing from the government any sense of the crisis that we are faced with and the urgency of getting the federal government on the U.S. side to accept that it is going to have to pass a piece of legislation doing one of two things. It must either repeal the provisions of the three phase-in periods for the demand for passports if one wants to go back into the United States, whether one is an American or a Canadian, or from some other country. Or, if it is not prepared to go that far, then it must pass a piece of legislation that would authorize either the President or some other person of the administration to delay the implementation of this until we in fact can do it effectively, from a technological standpoint and from a manageable cost efficient standpoint as well.

In that regard, the provisions that we have at the present time for providing passports are overtaxed, both on the Canadian side and on the U.S. side. Americans have many fewer passports on a per capita basis than we do, but neither one of the countries, neither Canada nor the United States, could in fact meet the demand that will be forthcoming for these passports.

We cannot do it in Canada in that short period of time nor can the United States. It is just not feasible for this to be implemented from a practical standpoint. We do not have the resources on either side of the border to make that many passports available to our citizenry in that period of time. It is not possible to do that.

I want to finish with the point that has been made repeatedly this evening but has to be emphasized. We know that a good number of the legislators on the U.S. side realize now that this bill when it went through should not have gone through. In fact, it was a mistake. President Bush himself has made comments using terminology around the sanity of the people who passed this and the intelligence levels of the people who passed this law. He made those remarks off the cuff, but they were an accurate reflection of what happened. This does not meet the test of reality and it has to be changed. There is strong support for that.

I have heard a number of comments from columnists in our newspapers that the debate this evening was going to be anti-American. It shows the ignorance of those commentators because we know that a majority of the senate and the house of representatives realize now that this piece of legislation was a mistake. It is not anti-American; it is not necessarily even pro-Canadian. It is simply facing the reality that this is not a feasible process and that the U.S. Congress, senate and house of representatives, and ultimately the President, have to move a piece of legislation to repeal this law.

Let me make one final point going back to the impact that this is going to have if we do not change it. I went through and analyzed just the economy in my home riding. We have a sizeable gaming industry now. It is the fourth largest employer in the city of Windsor. We have a reasonably sizeable convention industry.

We have a large number of cultural exchanges between ourselves and the United States. We have sports teams, mostly youth teams that move back and forth on a regular basis. We have a great number of people who go over to the United States and vice versa. People come to Canada for recreational purposes. We have a large number of people who work on the U.S. side but live on the Canadian side. Finally, we have a good number of students who move back and forth on both sides of the border. Every single one of those categories are going to be negatively impacted by this law. Hardly any part of the economy is not going to be touched.

Therefore, there is a crisis. It is one that the government has not been meeting face on. It is time for it to do that.

[U.S. Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, October 24th, 2005]

Mr. Chair, I would like my friend from Welland to sit back and pretend to be Condoleezza Rice watching this debate on television and listening to the chair of the justice committee and similar wording from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness who is responsible for security in this country and she hears words like “maybe we should ask them to reconsider”. They have both used those terms this evening and I think we heard it from one other member. If I were Condoleezza Rice listening to this debate, as I am sure some people from the U.S. state department probably are, I would be thinking, “They don't really care. They're not really serious”.

We have to start speaking in terms of we are demanding that this change. The member has indicated that he is fully aware, as are any number of parliamentarians on the U.S. side both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate and in fact the President himself, that this does not make sense.

Why are we not using those kinds of terms? Why is the government not being strong and forceful on this point? We have to communicate strongly the type of impact this is going to have on us and on the economy in the United States.

I would like some comments from the member in that regard.

[U.S. Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, October 24th, 2005]

Mr. Chair, as much as I admire the member from Thunder Bay, I am having problems with his approach. It is perhaps overly Pollyannaish. I do not know if he will appreciate this, but I do have this question for him on the provision for the three phases of passport requirements.

The first is for members from the Caribbean and the rest of the western hemisphere, excluding Mexico and Canada. That comes into effect in about two months' time. That is legislated. A year later, anybody travelling by sea and air from Mexico and Canada will require a passport. That also is legislated. In January 2008, everybody going in by land, sea, or air will be required, by legislation in the U.S., to have passports.

As for these initiatives of working with our local communities, we all do that. I am from Windsor. On an ongoing basis, we have a significant working relationship with the city of Detroit and any number of smaller communities on the other side of the border.

But there is nothing those communities can do: this is federal legislation. This requires the President of the United States and the Congress and the Senate to change the law. There is nothing we can do. I wonder if my colleague understands that. I wonder if he has any other suggestions as to how we do this without getting directly to the President of the United States, the senators and the congressmen in the U.S. for legislation to repeal these provisions or at least delay them.

[U.S. Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, October 24th, 2005]

Mr. Chair, let me say to my friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs that this is almost surreal. We have the President of the United States, after this legislation has gone through, making comments to the effect that it appeared he did not know about it. I forget what the term was that he used; perhaps it was “amounting to stupid”.

We have Senator Clinton, one of the leading Democrats in the Senate, in a border state to Canada, admitting in public that she did not know this provision had become the law.

My colleague from Windsor and I have on several occasions now met with the northern border caucus from the House of Representatives in the U.S. To an individual, that northern caucus is opposed to these provisions.

We see a huge number of elected officials in the United States who are opposed to doing this. They recognize, as the parliamentary secretary just mentioned, that this negative impact will not be on Canada alone, but that it is going to have a major negative impact on those 38 states that see us—and we are—as their major trading partner. It is going to mean huge calamities for cultural exchanges.

We know all that and so do they, but the issue is, and this is where the surreal part comes in, who is running the government over there? Is there any possibility that we are going to get through to the real decision maker, which appears to be someone in Homeland Security as opposed to the elected officials?

I would ask the parliamentary secretary if we are doing anything to identify where the decision making is to see if we can get this decision reversed.

[Intergenerational Transfer of Farms, October 20th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I consider it a privilege to speak in favour of the motion.

I would like to thank the Bloc member for Châteauguay—Saint-Constant for her work on this motion. It is a very important motion.

It is very important for the people here who do not come from a farming background to know this. We must keep our farms for our family members.

I come from the village of Stoney Point in Ontario. I look at my family, the Comartins. They are trying very hard to keep the farm in the family. But every year, it gets harder. There are problems with other people, especially syndicates that want to buy up these farms and have more money to do that.

In addition, there has been constant incursion by urban and suburban pressures to sell the farms. I have heard several speakers talk about the love that people have for the land and the importance of that attachment. That is personal. One might ask if we as legislators have to be concerned about that. For the cynical, we may say no.

There is a much more important reason why we have to protect the family farm. We simply cannot allow the production of our food supply to be more concentrated in fewer hands. That is the pattern in Canada and across the globe. We have to fight against this pattern. The government needs policies to prevent this from happening.

It was interesting to listen to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance arguing that the capital gains provisions protected family farms. We had those same capital gains provisions back when I started practising law in 1973. Those provisions have been around unaltered for over 30 years. Land values have increased. The cost of living has increased dramatically in that period of time, but those capital gains provisions have not been changed at all for more than 30 years.

I acknowledge the work that has been done by the member for Châteauguay--Saint-Constant in drawing this to our attention. It is one of the reasons why I believe all members should support the motion, a motion that the government should look very closely at implementing.

Similarly, with regard to extending the provisions beyond the limited number of people who can benefit from inter-family and intergenerational exchanges of the property, it is important that be broadened.

I come back to my family. I look at those members of the family who are committed to the farm and are willing to stay around. They are not always children, but oftentimes they are nephews and nieces, sometimes grandnephews and grandnieces who are committed to the family farm. They want to farm, but they need financial assistance and policies to make that possible. The pressure of the competition is quite phenomenal. That is true not just in my home area but right across the country.

Another point on the capital gains issue is this. The parliamentary secretary made the point that it was not $500,000 but $1 million because both spouses were entitled to the farm. This shows a real lack of knowledge on his part. In the vast majority of cases intergenerational transfer occurs after one of the parents has passed away. Therefore, we are only talking about one capital gain, not two. In most cases the first parent who dies is the male. The spouse may stay on the farm for a few years after his death. The double capital gains provision is of no help in protecting the surviving spouse from those implications.

I know there are only a few words in the motion with regard to this, but the provisions that would expand the ability of owners to use the land provisions to protect themselves, which would not affect their RRSPs but it would their transfers, is a good idea. It is creative and it is one that the government could easily follow.

The parliamentary secretary made the comment that nothing is free. The government is quite prepared to make substantial tax benefits flow to oftentimes major corporations and multinational corporations. Many times that tax benefit does not even stay in Canada. That money flows out of the country, mostly to the United States but also to Europe and the far east.

If we are looking at having to pay something for this, we will have to give something up. If we look across the whole spectrum, the family farm should be at the top of the list, not as we saw from the government and its willingness to give a billion to two billion dollars in tax breaks to the multinational corporations and the large profitable corporations in the country. It is not needed there. It is needed in the family farm. The provision that the member suggested is a very positive one.

I have some reservations with regard to a transfer of money to the provinces. I always worry when that is not quantified. The need for further assistance to the family farm for the transfer of ownership from this generation to the next and the one after that is so obvious. Even though I have some reservations about it the transfers to the province, it will not limit the support that I have expressed for the motion overall.

I want to finish with a couple of experiences I had as a member.

A about a year or two years ago, a delegation of farmers, mostly from the western provinces, met with our caucus. It was intergenerational. They made the point that has been made this evening about the age of the average farmer in Canada being in the mid to late 50s. It is probably approaching 60 now. Their fear was being unable to put in place the proper economic circumstances that would allow the next generation to acquire the family farm. There were probably 15 or 20 different families around the table. Every one of them had children and in some cases even grandchildren who were old enough to take on the farming responsibilities. Every one of them said that it would not happen. The economic circumstances were such that they were unable to do that. It was really sad.

The other one happened this summer. Our leader was in the riding and we met with farm groups. We heard exactly the same story from the county of Essex. About 10 different families were represented. It was a small meeting of some of the leadership. In every case there were serious reservations and outright expressions of impossibility of being able to transfer. For that reason, every member in the House should support the motion.

[Criminal Code, October 20th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-64 addresses a gap that we have in the Criminal Code which is clear why our former colleague, Chuck Cadman, raised the issue. It deals with the issue of tampering or altering in some fashion the vehicle identification numbers of motor vehicles. The approach he took is somewhat similar to what is in the government bill before us today, and would go toward making the alteration of the VIN number a crime under the Criminal Code and that definitely is something that we need to address.

We have heard from other members that 170,000 vehicles were stolen in Canada in 2004. We all know that there are different types of people who steal vehicles. The bill addresses the theft of motor vehicles by organized crime more than the other two groups which would be the person stealing for what I euphemistically describe as joyriding, or the person who steals it for the use in the commission of another vehicle.

In the vast majority of both of those cases, there will be no attention paid to changing the number since the purpose of the theft is for other reasons. We are told by our police forces that approximately 60% of all vehicles stolen are stolen by organized crime gangs. They are the ones we are really after with regard to this amendment to the Criminal Code.

There is a term in the bill which says how the alterations can occur, but the key word is alters rather than removes or obliterates because the purpose for the resale of the vehicle, once it is stolen, is that a VIN has to be there in most cases. A good number of these vehicles are moved out of province and in a large number of cases, out of country, but when those resales occur, there has to be a VIN on them in most cases in order to have a purchaser accept the vehicle.

There can be a number of times when the purchasers themselves are involved in criminal activity, but in most cases these resales are to people who are innocent third parties and have no idea that the vehicle has been stolen. The reason they know that it has not been stolen is because the VIN has been altered and appears to be accurate reflecting the ownership.

Assuming the bill gets through second reading of the House, it will go to the justice committee. Our party will support the bill for that purpose, but I want to signal to the government at this point, as we have heard already from the Conservative Party and its justice critic, concerns about the first subsection. I share with the member for Provencher concern over why it is necessary to add the additional wording after “without lawful excuse”. It appears to be placing an unnecessary burden on the Crown of another element of the offence that would have to be proven in the court and proven beyond a reasonable doubt in spite of the type of wording.

I look forward to some explanation from the justice department lawyers as to why they felt it necessary to put this in because as I see it right now, and again this is from my experience in the criminal courts, that does not appear to be necessary. We have other offences within the Criminal Code where the terminology “without lawful excuse” exists without additional wording and those Criminal Code charges are of long standing, going back probably to the start of the Criminal Code and have certainly been used repeatedly in any number of criminal charges that have been successful.

The second point I would make with regard to my reservation about the bill addresses the sentencing component. Like my colleagues from the Conservative Party, I am not a believer in the use of minimum mandatory sentences, just the opposite, in fact. I am not promoting that in this case but we need to look at what we are really trying to do here.

We are trying to get at organized crime stealing vehicles. In the course of that activity they need to alter the VIN number in order for their resales to be carried out. If that is the target group of this amendment to the Criminal Code, it seems to me that we should be putting in clauses, as we have done in a number of other sections of the Criminal Code, to address to the courts a mandatory direction that if the individual who is convicted of this crime is identified as being a member of an organized crime gang, that would be an aggravating factor in the sentencing.

We have to recognize as well that in the vast majority of cases if people are going to be convicted of this charge, they are also going to be convicted of theft but they may also be convicted of being a member of an organized crime gang, which is a separate offence. If those convictions are before the court, then I suggest to the justice department that it would be appropriate that their involvement in an organized crime gang would be a fact that the court should be made aware of and that the court should be mandated to take that into account as an aggravating factor in the sentencing process so that the conviction would result in a sentence that would be closer to the top end of the maximum that can be apportioned in the circumstances rather than at the lower end.

On the other hand, there are 16-year-olds who take vehicles and alter them. We have to appreciate that a lot of people think of the VIN number as being a number that is buried somewhere inside the engine component of a vehicle. That is not the reality. The VIN number is oftentimes on or under the dashboard. It is easily accessible and so there may be very unsophisticated, first time criminals altering it, maybe for the purpose of resale. Our courts would look at that fact and then maybe decide there is a potential for rehabilitation and would not want a mandatory minimum because the person was not involved in organized crime and therefore it would not be an aggravating factor.

We are at a stage where the NDP will be supporting this at second reading and referred to committee where the two areas I have expressed concern over can be addressed with perhaps amendments from the government or the opposition parties.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, October 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the private member's bill that we are debating this evening is fairly straightforward in its attempt to address a problem that I believe all members of the House recognize. Some of us perhaps have more knowledge than others, but certainly the member for Prince George—Peace River has drawn that to the attention of all of us. As we heard from his speech this evening, we are certainly aware of the problem of drug abuse. As parents, both he and I agree that it is always a particular concern when that drug abuse involves children.

The bill is framed in such a way as to introduce, into the offences that already exist, minimum penalties. Generally, as a party, we have been opposed to the use of minimum mandatory sentences across the board. We have recognized that there are occasions when in fact they can be useful as part of an overall strategy of controlling criminal behaviour.

As my friend from the Bloc pointed out in his speech, we have already referred to this once in the House today. The use that we made of minimum mandatory sentences to deal with the crime of impaired driving was one that we can point to with some degree of satisfaction as having been successful. However, we have to be very careful to place undue emphasis on the role that the use of minimum mandatory sentences vis-à-vis impaired driving charges had in the overall success of that strategy.

In all the studies that I have seen, the reality is that the role that we played as a government in public education was much more influential in changing people's behaviour than the use of the minimum mandatory sentence. I will not deny that is was a factor because it was part of the education.

Therefore, when groups like MADD or police forces went out into the community and said that if people are caught in a state of impairment from alcohol while they are driving, here are the types of penalties they are going to be faced with. It helped them in that education process and in fact it was quite successful. We also have to recognize, and this again is a reflection of the fact that the use of minimum mandatory sentences is not by any means and far away from a panacea.

We have seen in 2004, that in spite of having those penalties, impaired driving convictions for the first time in more than seven years actually spiked up. It is the first time that we have actually seen an increase. I think that is more of a reflection that we have tended to as a society to step back a little. We have not been as aggressive in pushing an education program. There are not as many ads on TV or in the newspapers. That is not because of any lack of work by MADD because it has continued to be a strong proponent of an education program and in fact conducting that education program as often as it can.

However, there has been a step back and we have seen a spike in the number of convictions without any change in the law as a result of that. The law remained constant with the minimum mandatory sentence in it. We have to be conscious of when it can be used and how it is used. I have concerns about using it in these circumstances. I think it would be appropriate for us to be looking at the bill in light of further investigation.

Like the Bloc Québécois, I intend to recommend to members of our caucus that we support it at second reading, even though I want to say publicly here that I am opposed to minimum mandatories in almost all cases. I believe, particularly in this one, that I will hold that position, but I am open enough to say that we should send it to committee. In committee we will hear additional evidence with regard to the possibilities of amendments that would be satisfactory to the member for Prince George—Peace River and to the rest of the committee, and then bring it back to the House for ratification.

I want to point out one of the proposals that I may be making. It would look at having specific sentencing guidelines that would be in line with mandatory directions to the court of taking circumstances into account if the drug were sold in the vicinity of an elementary or secondary school. On the other hand, if we look at the existing law, we are very close to those guidelines already being mandatory in terms of the considerations that the courts have to make when sentencing an individual convicted of this offence.

The other possibility may be to say that we are in a situation where this is of such scale that we have to use minimum mandatories for a period of time, but put in a mandatory section in the bill, an ultimate law, that would sunset it after a specific period of time. Again, that may be a recommendation that I will be making to my colleagues in committee.

There is no questioning the intention behind this bill. All parties acknowledge the problems that we have with drugs, particularly among our youth and children. We are willing to address the issue more specifically. Hopefully, in committee, we can come to a resolution that will satisfy all parties. I expect my party to be supportive, to send it to committee, and at that point to have further investigation and come to a resolution.

[Criminal Code, October 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP intends to support this bill. As we have heard throughout this debate, it makes provisions for a common problem that a number of urban centres have been experiencing.

Oftentimes we hear individual stories with some great tragedy of innocent bystanders being severely injured or in many cases killed. My party has a particular concern with that. The wife of the former premier of Ontario lost both her parents as a result of an incident like that back in the early nineties. Therefore, we are particularly sensitive to the consequences of this type of criminal behaviour.

We also acknowledge the work of one of our former members, Mr. Cadman from Surrey North, who brought this issue to the House by way of a private member's bill, Bill C-230, and publicized the need for additional criminal legislation to deal with this criminal behaviour.

The bill is fairly straightforward in terms of dealing with the sentencing consequences of someone convicted of street racing. It is a measured response to the problem. We have the ongoing debate in this chamber, certainly in the justice committee, over the use of mandatory sentences. I have no hesitation in saying that in the vast majority of cases, I am convinced that mandatory sentences are unconstitutional, offensive to the charter and quite frankly useless for the purpose for which they are intended, which is to deter crime.

However, there are exceptions to that. We saw that most tellingly in the use we made of minimum mandatory sentences with regard to impaired driving. We have to be careful of overemphasizing the effectiveness of that tool. It is my belief and conviction, from everything I have read and studied, that in this case public education, the work of groups like MADD and the work of our police forces to educate the public of the scourge of impaired driving and its impact on families and communities, is most telling in getting the rates down.

It is also interesting to look at that. There was a blip in 2003-04 where incidents of impaired driving edged back up. The law did not change. The penalties were still as severe, but it began to edge back up a little. I think there was a reduction in the amount of educational work, such as ads in the paper and public meetings. As a result, there was a slight increase.

Similarly with this bill, the introduction of mandatory one year suspensions, which then go progressively higher for repeat offences, can be part of the tools we need to reduce and try to eliminate this criminal behaviour. However, it will not be successful by itself. I suggest that it will be a small part of it. We need to take on a strong campaign of public education to reach those individuals who would consider involving themselves in what they oftentimes see at the beginning as fairly harmless conduct, hijinks of youthfulness. We know better. We know the potential consequences.

In that regard, one thing we have to do is talk to automotive companies. A recent documentary on the amount of money spent on promoting the sale of vehicles indicated that in some markets as much as 80% was used to promote the use of automobiles that is clearly illegal. That is conduct in operating a vehicle that would be at the minimum speeding, but oftentimes would amount to careless if not reckless driving and those charges under our provincial and federal statutes. We need the kind of campaign that would say to automotive companies that they have to change the way they promote the sale of their cars. It is no longer acceptable in this society because of the permissiveness it gives to young people in particular to think it is natural to drive in urban settings in a reckless, dangerous manner. They think it is acceptable. They think it is sexy.

We recognize the need for the amendments to the Criminal Code, and we will support them. I look forward to the bill going to the justice committee where it will hear additional evidence as to whether there are any additional steps we can take by way of amendment to strengthen the bill. As of now we will be supporting it.

[Criminal Code, October 17th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I do not want to suggest that I am an expert by any means, but I agree with the minister that there is a problem with definition.

For instance, the UNICEF figures include a good number of children who are being used as child soldiers, almost always domestically but sometimes transported over international boundaries. There is a problem with that and I understand. However, that should not give us any reason not to get full control on what the situation is in Canada.

I have the sense, from everything I have investigated, that there is minimal work being done around farm labour. We have international agreements with a number of countries, Mexico and the Caribbean in particular, where we have a regulated system for workers to be brought in, so there is no particular incentive in that area of the economy for us to be seeing people victimized as part of gangs.

However, the department needs to work on this. The government overall needs to work on this more. We will be unable to effectively enforce this legislation unless we know with what we are confronted.

[Criminal Code, October 17th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, at the committee when we were doing what was a brief review of the legislation, because it had such overwhelming support, I asked a couple of questions. I was a bit disturbed at the lack of knowledge in responding to them. We have not identified the size of the problem in Canada in terms of criminal activity. I think this is problem because of the way we go about enforcing our laws.

We have this image that this is all about victims and the sex trade. We hear more about this from the Conservatives than from anybody else. I have looked at figures in the United States and less than half of the victims of this crime are being victimized in the sex trade. The majority of the victims are being used on farms in that country, in the garment trades and other types of trades where people are working in horrendous conditions in small out of the way factories with no protection. I am concerned about this. However, the witnesses who appeared at committee were perhaps unable to give us a clear picture of the situation in Canada.

I would encourage the minister, in the ongoing cross-ministerial investigation, to get a better handle on the nature of the problem rather than just concentrating on sex trade victims as much as that is important.