Joe Comartin

[Supply, May 31st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure what constituency the member lives in, but if she has not heard the saying that I have, which is that we are all tainted by this, she has a different constituency than I do, because that is in fact the reality.

With regard to the first question, it is an apples and oranges thing to suggest that the process we initiated to deal with issues of a financial nature in this country by incorporating them into a budget bill is somehow changing the rules. That is just not correct. It is quite acceptable to do this. Governments do it all the time, either around budget time or further on in the year. As for saying that addressing pressing issues in this country is somehow breaching the rules, I reject that.

With regard to her question on the tactics the former prime minister may be using, he has every right, as do all the parties and members of the public who may be affected by Mr. Justice Gomery's findings and recommendations, to challenge them subsequently. He has the right within the existing system to challenge Mr. Gomery in the final arguments as to whether Justice Gomery has demonstrated a bias toward him.

These are all standard rights. The member is a lawyer. She knows those standards. We are allowed to use due process and our procedural rights. In my opening comments I did not suggest that he had abandoned all of those rights, nor would I suggest to him that he do so. He has a right to protect himself, as do all members of this society.

The fact remains that it was a major development yesterday when he dropped that motion to have Mr. Justice Gomery disqualified because of bias. It was a step forward in terms of some certainty that we will get Mr. Justice Gomery's report in the relatively near future, that is, hopefully by the end of this year, so that the Canadian public will have the benefit of his findings and recommendations.

As for whether there are going to be other attempts, either by Mr. Chrétien or by other parties, there is nothing we can do about that, but the development yesterday was a positive one for Canadian people.

[Supply, May 31st, 2005]

I have the support of the Bloc whip. I wanted therefore to salute the Bloc for opposing the motion and say that it was not easy for them to do so and that it is not really easy for us, either.

The basic intent of the motion, if we were to take it on its surface, although there may be some other agenda here, is that if we would be willing to support, and then the “howevers” come. With regard to expressing our disgust for the elements around the scandal that has plagued the government now for a number of years, this is an opportunity for us to be able to say that.

As with the Bloc, the NDP is confronted with the law of this land, with due process, with the civil liberties and the civil rights of the witnesses and the parties that have come before the Gomery commission. Because of those things, we, like the Bloc, are not able to support the motion. If the mover and the Conservative Party were prepared to be more reasonable we think there may be ways of amending the motion that would draw the support of both ourselves and the Bloc.

I would urge the mover and the Conservative Party to consider the suggestions that we have made so that at least the opposition parties in this House can express our disgust with regard to the elements of this scandal that have plagued the government for some time.

I would like to touch on some of the specific concerns we have. The first concern is the fact that the motion makes some assumptions about the conduct of the inquiry by Mr. Justice Gomery that are probably not valid.

Justice Gomery, in his opening statement, made it very clear that he understood the scope that the federal Inquiries Act gave him. He understood the limitations that were placed on him by previous decisions, most notably the decision in the tainted blood scandal. It was a leading decision by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1997. It has been followed repeatedly by other inquiries, both federally and provincially, that have taken place since 1997. It clearly sets out what the role is of Mr. Justice Gomery and any other commissioner conducting an inquiry under the Inquiries Act.

The motion that we have before the House today would in effect violate, to some significant degree, the protections that were established under that case. I believe there are ways around it if the motion could be amended.

Coming back to Mr. Justice Gomery's opening statement when he started the inquiry, he made it very clear that he knows he has the ability on the finding of fact to make recommendations that will point fingers, if I can put it in a very broad sense, at individuals or groups of individuals. I believe Mr. Justice Gomery recognizes his limitations in this regard.

The Supreme Court of Canada made it very clear that the commissioner, under the Inquiries Act, was not to make findings of criminal culpability and that he should avoid doing that. He also should not use specific language that would make findings of civil liability.

The Supreme Court went beyond that. I think this is really important and perhaps the Conservative member who moved this motion and the Conservative Party more generally could take some appreciation of it. The Supreme Court of Canada went on to say that not only should one avoid making findings of “criminal culpability or civil liability“, but if there is in one's findings a public perception that one has done that, one should avoid doing that also.

That is a very difficult criteria and it is one that Mr. Justice Gomery and any other commissioner has to meet. The wording was quite explicit in that decision and the decision is not one people can play with. We cannot slide it this way or that way and get around it. It is there as an absolute barrier, it seems to me, to what Mr. Justice Gomery can do in terms of his recommendations and his findings of fact.

Unfortunately, the motion that is before the House today from the Conservative Party would call on Justice Gomery to make those specific types of findings, which the Supreme Court of Canada has prohibited him from doing.

Given our rules of procedure, it may be possible for the mover of the motion, obviously with the support of his caucus, to make the necessary amendments. We cannot move a formal amendment but we are suggesting that he and his party consider that the recommendations that we are making to Mr. Justice Gomery at this point take into account the Supreme Court of Canada decision and the rules and guidelines that have flowed from it. Obviously I cannot speak for the Bloc Québécois or the Liberals but on behalf of my party I would say that if he is prepared to do that we would be prepared to support, with out vote in the House tomorrow, that type of motion.

If that motion were moved it would give us the opportunity to say to Mr. Justice Gomery that we are looking to him to be as clear as possible in his decision making and in his recommendations and it would give us the opportunity to say to the government that we expect it to then implement those recommendations to their fullest degree.

I want to deviate for a moment and talk about some newspaper and media reports that we had over the weekend suggesting that today's motion may have another agenda. I do not want to suggest that it is the agenda of the mover because I do not know that. I believe he is well-intentioned in this. However I believe there are some members of the Conservative Party who see this motion as a mechanism to be used in some future election or between now and the next election as an attack on us as being too closely associated with the Liberal Party.

The offer I have made here on the floor on behalf of my party is sincere. We are not playing any games with this. We are very much looking to add additional weight to the expression of disgust from this chamber about the conduct that went on around ad scam. We look forward to that opportunity.

If one of the agendas of the motion is to tar us as being too closely associated with the Liberals, then that is an improper strategy and tactic on the part of the Conservatives. They should re-think why they are moving the motion today. Opposition days have a proud tradition of raising issues of importance to this country and allowing us to debate those issues from all perspectives.

However if today's motion is being used for purely partisan political purposes as an attempt to embarrass our party and members of our caucus in some future election or between now and the next election, then that is not proper and it is not in the best tradition of the House. If that is their motivation, I would ask those members to reconsider.

I would like to return to the motion itself and point out some of the risks involved if we proceed with it and if the government passes the mandate on to Mr. Justice Gomery with this wording and Mr. Justice Gomery follows it.

Before I was elected to the House of Commons I was a practising lawyer for many years. If I had seen this appear as the mandate at this period of time in the course of this inquiry I would be in the federal court almost immediately moving a motion to strike down the entire work of the inquiry up to this point on behalf of my client who would be severely prejudiced. I would be able to make those arguments. Based on the Supreme Court of Canada decision and several others that have come both before and since then, I would fully expect to be successful in bringing Mr. Justice Gomery's inquiry to an absolute halt and would fully expect to receive an order that the inquiry would have to commence all over again.

I am not being extremist in that analysis. I think that just about any lawyer who has practised in the courts of this land and in front of tribunals would agree with that assessment, because what it does is say to the individual witnesses and parties who have participated in that inquiry up to this point, “Sorry about that, but the rules have just been changed”.

That is greatly offensive to our common law tradition, our respect for due process and our respect for the charter rights we have in this country. One does not change the rules of the game. One does not change the rules of procedure. One does not at the end of the process change the conduct that, in this case, the judicial officer is required to follow. One sets out the mandate at the beginning. The commissioner, in this case Justice Gomery, follows that mandate. One does not change it at the end of the process.

We expect that we are probably only a week to two weeks away from finishing the testimony. To try justify changing the mandate at this point, in the clear way that is being attempted here, is just totally offensive to our jurisdictional and juridical principles in this country, which we have had for a long time, even preceding the rights that were enshrined in the charter back in 1982. That is what would happen.

It is actually ironic that this motion is coming before the House today, because yesterday the former prime minister's lawyers withdrew on his behalf their objection to Mr. Justice Gomery. Within the court process, it was the last outstanding manoeuvre, if I can put it that way, that might have either brought Mr. Justice Gomery's inquiry to a halt or affected it in some significant way in terms of the findings he could have made.

That objection has now been withdrawn. If we were to proceed with this motion, we would be opening this door all over again. Applications could come from the various lawyers who are already there representing parties. Other witnesses could bring lawyers forward and say, “Wait a minute. I did not understand I was exposed to this risk. I did not get the opportunity to make full comment and make a full presentation. I want to have that opportunity”.

The list of potential attacks on the commissioner and on the inquiry is very long. There are parties to this that we in this House probably cannot even contemplate at this point, but certainly there are 50 to 100 of the potential witnesses and parties, from what I can see, who would be negatively or potentially negatively impacted by this.

Let us remember, going back to that Supreme Court of Canada decision, that the court was very clear. It did not want inquiries to expose, even in the public perception, the right of the commissioner to make these kind of determinations that this motion would draw us to.

It is a situation that we in the NDP are caught in. Again, as I said in my opening comments, the Bloc Québécois are caught in the same way. We have been deeply offended by everything that has gone on around the ad scam. We say that as individual members of Parliament, because this scandal taints all of us.

It is clear that this scandal was within the Liberal Party and within the Liberal administration, but the public does not see it quite that simply. The common phrase we hear is, “Well, you're all the same” . We get caught in it when something like this happens, so it is a personal offence. Even if we were to ignore the effect it has had on democracy in this country and on our international reputation, it is also a personal offence because we have all been wounded by this.

I do not think we can say in the House, perhaps even as clearly as we would like to, just how offended we are, but that is the reality of what we are confronted with. It makes it that much more difficult, then, to be forced to stand in the House and say, “I am sorry, but our party, the Bloc Québécois, cannot support the motion”. I am not entirely sure of its intent. There may be another agenda. If there is, that really is unfortunate.

Let me suggest that if we had the alternative, if we had a motion in the shape to which I am suggesting the Conservatives consider amending theirs, a motion which would recognize the limitations that the Supreme Court of Canada has placed on the role of the commissioner under the Inquiries Act, the debate could then focus more today on the scandal itself.

It could focus more on why we should be asking Mr. Justice Gomery to be as clear as he possibly can in making findings of fact, so that the public, Canadians from coast to coast, based on his report, could make a clear determination as to what happened and how we avoid it ever happening in the future. They would basically be able to reach an intelligent and informed decision in their own minds.

I do not think there is any doubt that in this country right now people have drawn a number of very clear conclusions. Some of them may not in fact be valid. Their anger toward the government of the day may at this point be overblown. Or it may in fact not be realistic and perhaps they should be angrier at the government.

In his report and the recommendations contained therein, Mr. Justice Gomery is going to play a key role if in fact his report is as broad and as clear as possible. The motion before us unfortunately has the major risk of undermining his ability to do that.

I do not want to put words into his mouth or draw up any decisions by him, but I would at least speculate that if Justice Gomery were faced with this mandate as the motion is worded now he would have serious reservations about his ability to carry through. He would be caught, as would anybody having a minimal understanding of our legal system. Particularly because of his experience, he would be caught between the Supreme Court of Canada saying that he could not do this and the House or this government saying we want him to do this. I have no way of knowing what in fact he would do at that point, but what I do know is that we should not put him in that position.

[Supply, May 31st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by greeting my colleagues in the Bloc Québécois, who have decided to oppose this motion today. In my opinion, it is not easy for them to say—

[Points of Order, May 19th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I want to indicate our party's support for the point or order raised by the member for Peterborough. However, he ignored the fact that the first time the question was asked, it came from the NDP leader. It was a proper question because it dealt with the issue of how the committee functions, its schedule, et cetera, and was more of a technical question. I want to support his position. The two questions that were asked by the official opposition I believe were also out of order.

[House of Commons, May 19th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, over the last few days I spent a great deal of time with both veterans and retirees. They all expressed their shock at the conduct of members in this chamber and the lack of ethics on the part of the government and members of the official opposition, conduct they see verging on the criminal.

We need enforceable rules in the House and a binding code of conduct to include the following: stopping all heckling in the House; stopping personal attacks by one member on another; and expanding the categories of unparliamentary language. We need to prohibit any member from profiting in any fashion by the method in which they cast his or her vote. We need to prohibit any person from inducing a member to cast his or her vote in a particular fashion which would result in profit to that member.

If these measures were implemented, they would restore faith in members of Parliament and in our public institutions.

[Criminal Code, May 17th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, if the hon. member studied the facts with regard to the gun registry, he would realize that a good deal of money is going directly to police forces across the country at the provincial level. Those are facts that the Conservative Party does not wish to address.

The simplistic approach to what is a complex problem will not be resolved by using minimum sentences. It will be resolved by having police forces on our streets to deal with it, to convince that person who is addicted to drugs that he cannot do it because he will get caught. There is a police officer on that corner and if the person attempts to break in and steal that car, he will get caught because there is a police officer there to stop him.

There was not much mention of this from the member for Langley, but we know there are organized crime syndicates. The minimum penalty will not deter those criminals at all.

I have several more points I would like to make, but having to deal with the questions and heckling from the other side, I have not been able to cover all of them in the time allotted to me.

In summary, minimum sentences do not work and they will not work in the particular case set out in the bill.

[Criminal Code, May 17th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, if the member would pay some attention to the facts, he might understand my argument.

The Johannesburg police force is just rebuilding itself. In Colombo the police force has remained reasonably intact, reasonably effective, so we do not see any corresponding levels in crime increase between those two. Colombo has it under control; Johannesburg is still trying to build its police force so it can do it.

The key is prevention and getting the message out. If we want to get a message out from government, from authority, it is that if a person commits a crime, he or she will get caught.

It was interesting to listen to the member for Langley cite some of the statistics from the insurance bureau of the stereotypical individual who commits a crime: 27 years of age, usually with some significant addiction, whether it is alcohol or drugs. A minimum fine, a minimum court time means absolutely nothing to that criminal. That person will not give one iota of thought to whether he or she will get a $1,000 fine, as the bill proposes, three months in jail or some other penalty. It will not even cross that person's mind.

If we were really serious about dealing with this issue, we would be funding our police forces so that they had enough officers on the street to deal with this type of crime.

[Criminal Code, May 17th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I am hearing from the opposition Conservative Party that it would be higher.

The reality is that they have gone to a number of provisions and the crime rate has remained steady. The three strikes law was supposed to be a deterrent. The crime rate in California has not declined and in a number of cases where the three strikes law was applicable, the crime rate actually went up. That cannot be argued.

If we look to the European experience in particular, more progressive approaches have been taken to deal with criminal behaviour. The Europeans have been able to drive their crime rate down as we have in this country.

It was interesting to listen to the member for Langley because he kept emphasizing that we have a serious crime problem. No one will deny that we have crime in this country but the absolute reality by any measure is that our crime rates are going down in every single area in the country. Whatever the crime, the statistics show that over the last two decades our crime rates have declined in every single area, whether it be violent crime or property crime. Every single rate has gone down.

We could pick isolated areas in the country. We could go into the core areas of some of our major cities and say the rates have gone up, and they have, but across the country as a whole in every single area the crime rates have declined. The reason they have declined has absolutely nothing to do with sentencing. I know our judges do not like hearing that but that is the reality. They have gone down because we have dealt with them at a societal level.

We have moved a strong police force in. Any time I have studied anything historically around crime rates, I have come away absolutely convinced that we lower the crime rate when we convince a person who has a criminal intent that he or she is going to get caught.

Since being elected, I have had the opportunity to do some travelling. Recently I was in Sri Lanka and I asked about the crime rate there. I was doing a comparison with the crime rate in Johannesburg with regard to car jacking. I spoke to police officers who had the facts in front of them, as opposed to what we usually get from the Conservative Party with regard to crime rates.

In the capital city of Sri Lanka, which is a large city of several million people, there is minimum car jackings as opposed to in Johannesburg where it is a major problem. When we look at the comparisons, the numbers are phenomenally different, multiples of hundreds of percentage points different. Distinguishing between the two, both cities had come out of some really violent history in terms of civil war and insurrection within both countries and the only answer for the difference is the quality of the police forces in those cities.

[Criminal Code, May 17th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I can only repeat what the Bloc member said, but I will do so in my own words.

I was quite impressed with his speech. I must admit I think he stole almost all of the points I wanted to make. Perhaps what I will do is make them in the other official language.

I want to recognize the spirit behind the legislation that has come from the member for Langley. I do not agree with the results he is attempting to achieve because I do not think they are going to be successful. He certainly is well motivated in trying to deal with the issue of auto theft in the country. As we heard from the parliamentary secretary, and I think as we all recognize, it is a serious issue and one that needs additional attention which obviously is to some degree under way by the attention the attorneys general from the provinces and the federal government are giving it.

As a standard position, the NDP is not in favour of minimum sentences. I want to make a few comments on that before I get to the specifics of the bill. The essential reason we are opposed to minimum sentences is that they do not work. My colleague from the Bloc pointed out a number of instances. Perhaps I am a bit more sensitive to this coming from Windsor. We can compare the crime rate in Windsor to that in Detroit, a major metropolitan centre in the United States, in terms of the sentencing principles and practices to deal with criminal offences in Windsor, and Ontario and the country more generally, and the practices in Michigan.

Our crime rate is dramatically lower than the crime rate in the United States. Again we see it even more so when we compare Windsor as a mid-size city to a major metropolitan area. Michigan's criminal statutes have a number of minimum sentencing provisions. It has clearly not deterred the crime rate there. It has really had no impact.

[Committees of the House, May 9th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I intend to use the next 20 minutes to try and calm the House down by being very boring. Perhaps that is some of the flavour that the House could use at this time.

In that regard, I will open my comments by addressing what we are supposed to be talking about, as opposed to screaming at each other. We are dealing with the first report of Standing Committee on Public Accounts on the audit and the financial management and the government's response to that, in particular with regard to the recommendations contained in that report regarding the Privacy Commissioner.

We all know of the abuse that went on and that was perpetrated by the prior privacy commissioner, both with regard to financial mismanagement and misuse of government funds and also with regard to the conduct and the way he treated his staff.

There are a total of 20 recommendations contained in the report. We have in front of us today the response by the government. In fact, the recommendations go some distance to deal with the abuse which we saw at that time. These are recommendations that I believe all members of the House from all parties accept as being needed in the sense of getting a proper response from the government.

It seems to me that we have heard from the parliamentary secretary today the government's response, enunciating that in some respects the government is accepting most of the recommendations, some of which have already begun to be implemented.

It is not a situation of which any of us can be proud. It was allowed to develop. We were not as diligent as I suppose we should have been as members of Parliament, as the conduct of the privacy commissioner got out of hand. We did get a hold of it.

I want to recognize the work that the public accounts committee did in preparing the report and the recommendation. They are recommendations that we should all accept and that the government or future governments should fully implement.

In particular there are recommendations with regard to the work that the Treasury Board should do. In terms of some of the response that we have had from the chair of the Treasury Board, I am a bit concerned about whether implementation will be carried out not only in actuality, but also in the spirit of those recommendations. I must admit I have some reservations that the chair of the Treasury Board has resisted, at least in spirit, the recommendations. This is something that again will have to be monitored both by the public accounts committee and by the House as a whole.

On the conduct of government officials, and some of this spills over to the issue we are dealing with in the sponsorship scandal, the conduct of the former privacy commissioner reflects an arrogance that also shows up in the sponsorship scandal. The recommendations in the report are also ones that hopefully would act as guidance with regard to the use of any funds being administered by the government or future governments.

The report has some very strong recommendations as to how people should conduct themselves, both in government, that is as elected members, and as individuals who are public servants. The attitude of arrogance that we saw from the former privacy commissioner is one which badly needs to be condemned. This attitude should not be emulated by any member here.

I wonder, Madam Speaker, if I could have the consideration of the other members of the House? If they want to carry on conversations perhaps they could move outside. I am being boring and if they want to leave the House, I would welcome them to do that and carry on their debate outside, if it could be so characterized.

With regard to the sponsorship scandal, some rules are being set out. I believe if we followed them across government agencies, departments and individuals, we would not see a repeat of the type of scandal we have seen.

The other point I want to address is this. The accusations flying about has led to the amendment as proposed by the Conservatives. We, as a party, are unable to support the amendment, and I want to address a few comments to that.

Speaking on behalf of my party, I want to be very clear why we are unable to accept the amendment and why we will vote against it. Part of it has to do with the process. It is very dangerous for the House at any time to give directions to any committee to the degree that has been proposed in the amendment. We have tried, and I believe we should be working more extensively on this, to provide greater independence to the committees, the standing committees in particular, and not direct them with the type of rigidity that I believe the Conservative Party is attempting to do.

We are trying to increase the democracy within the House of Commons and its committees and the amendment would have the impact of doing the opposite, if it passed and was carried out by the public accounts committee. We would be setting a dangerous precedent. On that almost procedural type of argument, we will be speaking against it.

Second, we will oppose it on the basis that we have made it very clear to the House and the country as a whole that we want the opportunity for the House to review, debate and pass a budget before an election. The content of the amendment and the intent of the mover and his party is to get the amendment back before the House at the earliest possible time for a vote and to treat that as a non-confidence vote. We believe the Canadians have made it very clear that they want this budget and the terms in it put in place and implemented. They do not want an election at this time, not until at least that event takes place. Seeing as the amendment is designed to end the sitting of the House and the government, we will, at this period of time, vote against it.