Joy Smith

[Status of Women, March 8th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, Canada's theme for International Women's Week is “Working Together: Engaging Men to End Violence against Women”.

Our Conservative government is taking concrete action to eliminate violence against women and girls. We have been working with communities to improve safety and security and have supported a number of important projects that work to end violence across the country.

Could the Minister for Status of Women please inform the House on Canada's international leadership and our efforts to combat violence against women?

[International Women's Week, March 7th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, as we celebrate International Women's Week, we must work together to engage men to end violence against women.

Sex traffickers earn an average of $280,000 annually from every victim under their control. Thirty-nine percent of child pornography images involve children three to five years of age. The average age of entry into the sex trade in North America is 12 to 14 years old.

Unfortunately, human trafficking is occurring in towns and communities all across our nation. In the last three months here in Canada, human trafficking charges have been laid in Montreal, Sudbury, Calgary, Edmonton, North Bay, Winnipeg and right here in Ottawa, when a 27-year-old Ottawa man was charged with kidnapping and human trafficking after police say a woman was forced into the sex trade and controlled.

Our government has taken concrete actions to eliminate violence against women and girls. Canada's national action plan to combat human trafficking was launched to ensure the safety of women and girls across Canada. Our government will continue this good work.

[Technical Tax Amendments Act, 2012, February 15th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening very carefully, but there is something I would like to hear a clear answer to.

In the House we often hear about the NDP's $21-billion carbon tax scheme. It has been in the NDP platform. Also, on September 14, in a Financial Post interview of the NDP caucus chair, he expressed his frustration that our government has rejected a carbon tax policy, which we do. We do not believe it would do anything to help our country.

Would the member please clarify this $21-billion carbon tax scheme, because it was in the election platform of the NDP.

[Justice, February 11th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, since first elected in 2006, our party has been steadfast in our commitment to put the rights of victims ahead of the rights of offenders. We have enacted over 30 measures aimed at keeping our streets and communities safe. However, there is still much work to be done when it comes to further strengthening Canada's justice system.

Canadians have expressed concerns with the number of high-risk accused persons found not criminally responsible. Can the Minister of Justice please provide the House with details on his latest justice bill, the not criminally responsible reform act?

[Sodium Reduction Strategy for Canada Act, February 1st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened with interest to the other members who have spoke in the House and I agree with the member for Vancouver East, as does the government, that the average sodium intake in Canada is definitely higher than it should be.

We are committed to the goal of lowering sodium intake from 3,400 milligrams per day to 2,300 milligrams per day by 2016. I am happy to report that early studies indicate that we are already on track toward reaching this goal without heavy-handed legislation or regulations. That is why I do not support this bill.

The Government of Canada currently takes a voluntary multi-stakeholder approach to sodium reduction, as recommended by the report, “Sodium Reduction Strategy for Canada”. Despite, the call from Bill C-460 to implement this report, the bill does not follow the report's key recommendations. It fails to capitalize on the benefits of the current collaborative approach and would increase burden to industry through new legislative and regulatory measures. The bill may also pose risks to food safety and health and carries financial cost to government, industry and Canadians. The measures proposed in the bill ignore the shared responsibility in reducing sodium intake in Canada. For sodium reduction efforts to be effective, responsibility must be shared among Canadians, the food industry and federal, provincial and territorial governments.

Industry has accepted the challenge of reducing sodium levels, while maintaining food safety and consumer acceptance. In fact, industry has responded to the demands of Canadians and is putting more healthy choices onto the Canadian marketplace. We are already seeing positive progress toward meeting the sodium reduction targets. Data recently collected from a sample of breads, breakfast cereals and canned soup shows that sodium levels have been reduced by 10% overall in these product categories. This is one-third of the way to the 2016 goal.

The fact is that these early achievements have been made without the heavy-handed measures proposed by the bill. Why change things now? We are on the road to recovery, as it were.

As Canadians, we have a critical role as well. It is the responsibility of all of us as individuals to become aware of nutrition issues and what is in our food so we can take more informed choices when we are the grocery store, when we eat at home or when we eat out. However, health is not just about eating; it is also about exercise and fitness.

Finally, this government's role, along with provincial and territorial governments, is to help promote the healthier choice as the easiest choice for Canadians. We do this through a three pillar approach that includes awareness and education for Canadians, guidance to industry and research.

The Government of Canada's current approach to sodium reduction strikes the right balance and respects the responsibilities of all stakeholders. Let me describe some of the work that our government is doing.

As members know, in 2010, our government launched the healthy eating awareness and education initiative to raise Canadians' awareness about the benefits of healthy eating. The goal is to help inform Canadians so they can choose a healthier choice. This initiative promotes plain language messages about healthy eating, sodium reduction and healthy weights for Canadians.

The first two years concentrated on the Nutrition Facts Education Campaign, with a focus on percent daily value. The percent daily value can help Canadians determine if a specific amount of food has a little or a lot of a nutrient, such as sodium. This government has used innovative ways to deliver this campaign with the collaboration of Food & Consumer Products of Canada and its member companies.

Public opinion research results have shown an increase of 5% in the use of the nutrition facts table over a two-year period. In addition, almost half of those surveyed said that having nutritional information available had influenced the decisions they made when buying food.

The Eat Well Campaign was launched in September 2012 and includes messages on sodium reduction. Early findings show consistent positive indicators of intent to change behaviour. The Eat Well Campaign continues to work with the provinces and territories, non-governmental organizations, health professionals and retailers as we move forward.

This demonstrates that, while still in the early stages, the current approach is working. That is why this government continues to collaborate with various stakeholders and has done so recently to develop guidance to industry to reduce sodium in processed foods.

The Government of Canada released guidance for the food industry on reducing sodium in processed foods in June of 2012. The bill proposes that this guidance be put into regulation. This is unnecessary. Health Canada's guidance notes specific sodium level benchmarks for processed food categories. It is intended to serve as a guide for the food industry to reduce sodium in its products. This will help Canadians reach the 2016 average sodium intake goals.

If passed, the bill would require that benchmark levels set out in the guidance become mandatory limits, with warnings on labels for any prepackaged foods that exceeded these levels. However, the benchmarks are based upon averages for entire food categories, such breads or cereals. They were not designed to apply to individual foods.

As a result, the requirement for labelling of individual products with warnings stating that the food does not meet Health Canada's sodium reduction targets would be misleading to Canadians and go against the intended purpose of such a label. Furthermore, the guidance cannot be put into regulation as it is simply not possible to enforce an average.

In addition, the bill does not take into consideration food safety or food categories such as prosciutto, which are not expected to follow guidance given the nature of the product.

Indeed, the bill would pose many challenges. While unintentional, implementing the bill may potentially have negative impacts on food safety and health; I repeat, negative impacts on food safety and health. Salt- and sodium-containing food additives play important roles in the preservation of numerous foods, such as processed meats and cheese.

The bill's 90-day coming into force period would require a rapid reduction of sodium. The bill simply does not anticipate the food safety consequences that this could create. For products that cannot meet the sodium levels within the short timelines proposed by the bill, warning labels would be required. These warning labels could very well have negative health impacts that the bill, again, would not address.

A warning label for sodium alone could be very misleading to Canadians. Sodium is not the only nutrient that needs to be considered when trying to make healthier choices. A product without a sodium warning label may be perceived as a healthy choice, but may not actually contain the nutrients required to support a healthy diet.

Warning labels on foods may not achieve the desired health benefits and may not be appropriate, as risk is not associated with consumption of a single food or nutrient but, rather, overall consumption patterns.

This government's approach has been to encourage healthy eating through positive messaging, awareness and education activities, as I have described, not through unnecessary and misleading warning labels. Almost all prepackaged foods already require a nutrition facts label that has nutrient information, including the amount of sodium preserving. This table gives Canadians the information they need to make informed choices.

Finally, the bill would impose a considerable and unnecessary regulatory and administrative burden on the government and on industry. To illustrate, there are upwards of 100,000 prepackaged foods on the Canadian market, and each of these products would fall under the requirement to provide the Minister of Health with information on sodium content. A public registry would have to be established to communicate this information. This enforcement cost would be significant and would require new resources. The added compliance burden to industry would also be significant. This could result in costs being passed on to Canadians. In addition, it is unclear what the database would be used for.

As I stated earlier, a food low in sodium is not necessarily a healthy food. It would be inappropriate and misleading for people to use a registry that did not present the complete nutritional picture as a guide to healthy and unhealthy foods.

Multi-stakeholder efforts to reduce sodium intake in Canada are still in the early stages, and despite this, we are starting to see progress. It will take time for the food industry to adjust its products so they continue to be safe and acceptable to Canadians. While promoting sodium reduction is worthwhile, the bill fails to make the case for changing course now to take on such a heavy-headed expense of an unnecessary approach.

For all of these reasons, I cannot support the bill. It is my belief that the majority of the House would agree.

While it is well intentioned, I do not think that all the factual information has been examined. We do not want to take a heavy-handed approach. We want to do as we did with trans fats. We did this voluntary approach in trans fats. It worked. Now the trans fat issue looks very good compared to the way it looked before. We are doing the same thing with sodium intake.

This is an issue that our government takes very seriously, but we want it to work out. We believe that this voluntary approach will work.

[Criminal Code, January 29th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, tonight I am so pleased to have the opportunity to support Bill C-452, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (exploitation and trafficking in persons).

As I have listened to the speeches tonight. It warms my heart to see members in the House who have worked together, and are continuing to work together, to stop this heinous crime in our country.

The member for Mount Royal has done much over the years to stand up for human rights. His Bill C-49 did much to bring the awareness of human trafficking to the forefront, and I thank him for that.

I also want to thank you, Mr. Speaker, as the member for Windsor—Tecumseh. When I first started working on my Bill C-268, I remember your support and your questions. I remember your input in making that bill go through.

As parliamentarians we are standing up against the perpetrators who feed on innocent victims in our country. Now public awareness is coming to the forefront. This is a pressing issue that we are addressing. Human trafficking, as we all know, continues to be a violation of fundamental human rights whose protection forms a basis of our free and democratic country. I want to thank all members for the input we have heard today.

Before I turn to the proposals in the bill itself, I would like to make some general comments on the nature of human trafficking and its severe impact on the victims to underscore the importance of ensuring the strongest possible criminal justice response to this crime.

Traffickers force victims to provide labour or services in circumstances where they believe their safety or the safety of someone known to them will be threatened. If they fail to provide that labour or service, they are deprived of the very rights that underpin a free and democratic society, a society that we hold dear in Canada.

The reality is that victims often suffer physical, sexual and emotional abuse, including threats of violence or actual harm to their loved ones. It does not only encompass the victims. One technique the predators have is to threaten their siblings and their relatives by telling them that they will be next. I have numerous cases where that has happened. That is how they control the victim from whom they earn so much money. Records show right now that a perpetrator earns between $250,000 and $260,000 a year from a victim. It is all about money. It is all about a despicable crime that is happening in our country that touches everybody. Everybody should be aware of it because sooner or later they will hear about it or be touched by it.

In Parliament today we are taking one more step to ensure that Bill C-452 is passed, examined in committee to make it even stronger. By working together, we can make this happen.

To further aggravate the human trafficking problem, the type of criminal conduct is not just something that happens occasionally on the margins of society. Rather, it is widespread in our communities as evidenced by the global revenues generated by it, which are estimated to be about $10 million U.S. per year. This puts human trafficking within the top three money-makers for organized crime. However, it is not just organized crime that is involved in human trafficking. So too are entrepreneurial people who feed off the suffering of innocent victims and control them so they can have money in their pockets to have a better life.

What are we doing about it? I am pleased to report that the government's response to this crime is strong and multifaceted.

First, we have a veritable arsenal of criminal offences that apply to this reprehensible conduct. In 2003 three trafficking offences were added to the criminal code. In 2010 a new offence of child trafficking was enacted through Bill C-268, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (minimum sentence for offences involving trafficking of persons under the age of eighteen years), which was sponsored by myself at that time. This offence imposes mandatory minimum penalties on those who traffic in persons under the age of 18.

In 2012 former Bill C-310, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (trafficking in persons), which was another bill sponsored by myself, extended extra territorial jurisdiction for all Criminal Code trafficking offences and enacted an interpretative tool to assist the court in interpreting the trafficking in persons provisions. Why did that happen? When we sat in a court, we heard lawyers trying to prove that the victim initially was not afraid. Was not afraid, why? How perpetrators work is the victim is not afraid. Most perpetrators come on as the victim's friends. They give the victims everything they want. It is only after they separate them from their infrastructure, family, community and friends and get them alone and take all their identification does the relationship change.

That is when the victims are beaten, raped and shot up with drugs. They are unrecognizable when they are seen on the street corners. These are innocent victims who need the love, care and rescuing to renew their lives. Many young girls who have been rescued are doing phenomenal things.

I was at a special event for Walk With Me, with Timea Nagy, a former trafficking victim in our country. She has done much to rescue victims, much to help restore the lives of these innocent victims.

All of these things, in addition to the trafficking specific offence contained in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, section 118, which prohibits transnational trafficking and the numerous Criminal Code offences that address trafficking-related conduct, such as forcible confinement, kidnapping, sexual assault and uttering threats, are few examples of the arsenal of crime bills that we have to protect the innocent victims in our country.

That is not all. In recognition of the multifaceted nature of this problem, our government launched the national action plan to combat human trafficking June 6, 2012. The action plan recognizes that a comprehensive response to human trafficking must involve efforts to ensure what we refer to, and I know everyone here in the House is familiar with, as the four Ps: the protection of victims; the prosecution of offenders; partnerships with key players; and the prevention of the crime in the first place.

All activities are coordinated through the human trafficking task force, which is led by Public Safety Canada. This is without a doubt a comprehensive response to a complex problem, but more can always be done. Where more can be done, more should be done, especially when efforts serve to address a crime as insidious as human trafficking.

That is why I commend the member for Ahuntsic who has put forward Bill C-452, which proposes a number of reforms that would strengthen the response I have just described.

It seeks to impose consecutive sentences for trafficking offences and any other offence arising out of the same event or series of events. The bill would also create a presumption that would assist prosecutors in proving the main human trafficking offence. It would require a sentencing court to order the forfeiture of the offenders property unless they could prove their property was not the proceeds of crime.

The very first trafficking case that came to justice in Canada was a very short while ago. It was the Imani Nakpangi case where a 15 and a half year old girl was trafficked. He made a lot of money out of her, over $360,000 that we know of today. The forfeiture of the proceeds of that crime is so important. Bill C-452 has that element in the bill.

Although some amendments would be required to address specific legal concerns, Bill C-452 would undoubtedly strengthen the response to human trafficking and as such merits all our support.

Legal concerns would have to be addressed. For example, the bill should not overlap with amendments that have already been enacted by previous bills, such as Bill C-310, as this would cause confusion in the law. We do not want that to happen. The bill should also avoid compromising the government's efforts to defend the living on the avails offence along with other prostitution-related Criminal Code offences. These are the kinds of things that we will examine and work on in committee, and we are very proud to do that.

I want to thank the member once again for her hard work on this human trafficking issue. I want to thank all members in the House for taking up this cause and protecting the rights of innocent victims.

[The Criminal Code, January 29th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her comment about members of the House trying to make Canada a better place and her comment that the trafficking of women and children in this country right now is appalling.

Two weeks ago in Edmonton a girl was rescued from a trafficking ring. It was just a classic case of how these predators work.

I would like the member for Ahuntsic to explain what a classic case looks like, because people need to be aware that this could happen to the girl next door.

[PETITIONS, December 12th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present over 5,000 petitions from people all across the country who acknowledge that the medium age of entry into prostitution is 12 to 14. The petitioners call on the House to request that Parliament amend the Criminal Code to decriminalize the selling of sexual services, that it criminalize the purchasing of sexual services, and that it provide support to those who desire to leave prostitution. This would be a help to the criminal laws we are trying to put in.

[Petitions, November 30th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I have three petitions from roughly 75 people who have written asking the government to recognize the importance of the ELA to the Government of Canada's mandate to study, preserve and protect aquatic ecosystems; to reverse the decision to close the ELA research station; and to continue to study and provide financial resources to the ELA at the current or higher level of commitment.

[Committees of the House, November 29th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to say that the member does make a good point about the collaboration between the provinces and the federal government. We are doing that on a daily basis.

It is a very exciting time right now on committee. We hear the administrators of hospitals, the doctors and the nurses come in and talk about their innovative programs, which are provincially structured but by the same token under the umbrella of the federal transfer payments that went to their provinces. This collaboration is very good because it is not only collaboration between the provincial and federal governments, it is also collaboration between the doctors, the nurses and the patients. We are hearing more and more that patients have to be an integral part of their healing and about healthy living. We are also hearing about end of life issues in an aging demographic, where people are healthier if they stay at home. They are more restful if those kinds of health provisions can be provided for them in their own homes.

It is very important that this collaboration continue. I am very proud of what is happening right now.