Keith Martin

[Supply, November 22nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask for the unanimous consent of the House to divide my time with my colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan.

[Supply, November 22nd, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I could not help but hear the absolutely incorrect comments, and that is putting it kindly, by the member from the New Democratic Party.

It is true that the Reform Party stands alone in opposing the Nisga'a treaty. It is not because we are against the Nisga'a people. It is not because we want to keep the Nisga'a people or indeed aboriginal people under the hammerlock of separation and impoverishment that they have been subjected to for more than 100 years. Rather, the Reform Party wants to liberate aboriginal people and make sure they have the same powers, the same equalities and the same rights and responsibilities as non-aboriginal people.

In 1969 the then aboriginal affairs minister who today is our Prime Minister said very clearly that the aboriginal people stood at a fork in the road. They could either pursue a course of separation and marginalization and of being treated differently, which I might add the Nisga'a treaty epitomizes, or they could move forward in the ability for them to live by their own cultural traditions and rights and responsibilities in the context of being equal with other Canadians.

Does the member from the New Democratic Party agree with the white paper on aboriginal affairs put forth by our present Prime Minister in 1969? Does she agree that the rights and responsibilities that exist under the Nisga'a treaty, the right to own land and the benefits from the Nisga'a treaty, are accrued to the aboriginal leadership and not to individual aboriginal people?

[Health, November 19th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, let us talk about a Liberal quality health care system. Some 188,000 people are on a waiting list. People in Quebec are having to go down to the United States to get cancer treatments. Emergency departments in Quebec are so full they are telling people “Don't come to our emergency department”. That is Liberal health care.

How can the government possibly penalize the provinces for trying to save publicly funded health care when all it gives is 10% of the total cost of federal spending for health care today? If that is the case, will the government restore the $21 billion—

[Health, November 19th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, Premier Klein recognizes that the Canada Health Act system is failing Canadians, particularly poor and middle class Canadians. Now the Premier of Ontario has written to the Prime Minister saying “Provincial governments have not cut health care funding; the federal government has”.

My question is for the health minister. If the health minister truly believes that putting more money into the health care system will fix the system, will he restore the $21 billion the government has taken out of health care?

[Health Care, November 19th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, this week we witnessed a landmark in health care in Canada. Premier Klein recognized that the Canada Health Act is broken, and he is trying to fix it.

There are currently 187,000 people on waiting lists for surgery alone, and these people are waiting 12 weeks or more for their surgery, more than they have ever waited in the recent history of Canada.

The government has gutted the Canada health system. It has ripped out $21 billion from health care in the country. What is an example of that? In Quebec, cancer patients are being sent south of the border to get the health care they require. In my province, cancer patients are waiting two months to get radiation therapy for cancer.

Premier Klein and Premier Harris are trying to fix the publicly funded health care system. This government has been gutting it.

All we see from that side is rhetoric and trying to penalize other people who are trying to fix the publicly funded health system that this government has gutted.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, November 18th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak to Bill C-3. For years the Reform Party has tried to implement and give the government constructive suggestions to improve our youth justice system.

Today I am going to focus, in part, on the issue of prevention. The most important thing the government can do in dealing with youth crime is to prevent it. It need not look any further than the work that has been done in Canada and in other countries for ways to prevent crime.

Let us look at the antecedents of crime. Children who are incarcerated frequently have a common denominator. Many of these children have endured lives of trauma. They have been subjected to drug abuse, violence, improper nutrition, or a combination of the above. Many have been subjected to drugs and alcohol in utero, which have produced an epidemic of fetal alcohol syndrome and fetal alcohol effects, not only in the general population, but also in the sub-population of those children who are incarcerated.

While this does not exonerate them from the crimes they have committed, it gives us an understanding and an insight into why these children have committed offences.

Recent neurological and neuroscience experimentation, particularly using the positron emission tomography unit, shows very clearly that the most important development of the brain takes place in the first six to eight years of life. During that period of time the neurons in children's brains develop the important connections which enable them to understand and process information properly, to empathize, to have sympathy and to develop appropriate interpersonal relationships with others. If in that developmental stage children have an opportunity to develop without trauma and abuse, in a proper environment, in a loving, secure environment, with adult care, we would have children who have the best opportunity of developing interpersonal skills which will enable them to become integrated members of society as adults. If damage occurs during the development of the brain there is the risk of numerous psychological problems.

I have worked in jails both as a correctional officer and as a physician. I was struck by the number of children who have been subjected to lives which we would not want to wish on anybody. We know that subjecting children to those kinds of traumas during their developmental stage will likely result in future problems and we need to prevent that.

A head start program or an early intervention program works very well. If we look at the program in Moncton, in which the Minister of Labour and her husband were leaders, the program in Michigan, the Perry preschool program, and the program in Hawaii, the healthy start program, we see some dramatic results. The Hawaii program is an early intervention program which makes sure that children have their basic needs met and it strengthens the parent-child bond. They saw a 99% drop in child abuse rates.

If we look at the programs in Moncton and Michigan, which have been in existence for over 25 years, we see that there was a 60% drop in youth crime, a 40% reduction in teen pregnancies, less dependence on welfare and fewer kids dropped out of school. As an aside, in my province of British Columbia this is a serious problem, with 30% of students dropping out before their time.

The bottom line is that an early intervention program uses existing resources to strengthen the parent-child bond, teaches parents to be good parents and ensures that children have their basic needs met. A loving, secure environment, proper nutrition, freedom from trauma, abuse and violence will give us the best chance of having children who will become integrated members of society and who will not run afoul of the law. Ultimately there was a $6 to $7 saving for every dollar that was put into these program.

I hope that the Minister of Justice, whom I know has been a very big supporter of this, the Minister of Human Resources Development and the Minister of Health will work with their counterparts and use the motion that was passed by Reform in May 1998 calling for a national head start program, which would ensure that all children across Canada have, if they so choose, access to the program.

The program would not only be for so-called traditional high risk families. It would not only be for the poor and the impoverished, because there are huge numbers of children in some of the most affluent environments of our country who are treated as little more than pieces of furniture. While those children may have a Mercedes Benz in the driveway, it does little to help them have the loving, caring, secure environment with proper parenting and good adult supervision that they require to develop that neurological and psychological base which will enable them to be productive, integrated adults of society.

I ask the ministers to work with every member of the House to make sure this becomes a reality. If they do not act, if they fail to deal with this now, they are planting the seeds for future problems. The solutions are out there. Canadians have been leaders in head start programs. We have been leaders in prevention. Now all that is required is for the government to take the bull by the horns and deal with the problem in a productive, cost effective way.

I would like to talk about the issue of dividing the Young Offenders Act. Reform for a long time has been calling for ways to deal with the Young Offenders Act in a much more expeditious way. We divide up two populations of people. One group consists of habitual violent offenders, whom we believe should be incarcerated so they will not harm individuals in the public domain. The other people we should look at are first-time non-violent offenders. We should try to find alternative ways, such as restorative justice, to give these people the best chance to leave the cycle of crime, punishment and recidivism that is far too prevalent in the young offender, and indeed the adult system that we have today. My colleague from Surrey, British Columbia, has been a leader in that.

How people are defended in our legal system is another issue that is very important to the people in my province. Our system right now is very costly. I personally propose that a public defender system be looked into. It would get rid of the expensive nonsense that is taking place in our courts today where lawyers use and manipulate the system to ensure that cases are dragged on far too long, sometimes to the detriment of their clients. There are better ways of doing this. We need to look at a public defender system that ensures the accused has a safe trial and is represented properly, but that there are savings to the taxpayers. We need to have a more efficient system that will not clog up the judicial system as it does today.

Our courts across the country are clogged. They are clogged in part by the bureaucratic and legal entanglement that we have allowed to creep into the system. A public defender system is not the magic bullet that will cure this but it would go a long way in streamlining the system so that we have a fair judicial system.

It is interesting to to look at the American experience. When it compared a public defender system to one where individuals had the right to access government-paid individual lawyers, it found that the public defender system provided just as good a defence for the individual. There was no difference in sentencing, and there were huge savings to the taxpayers. The public defender system is something the Minister of Justice could look at and implement if she so chose to.

The corrections side is another issue that is very important to the people in my province. Because of a lack of resources in my province, it is eliminating psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors and anger management counsellors who are necessary to ensure that the people in jail have the treatment they require so they do not commit other crimes and be convicted in the future. The province is now firing all those people and letting the correctional officers have a one-week training course so they can become counsellors.

The correctional officers do a fantastic job of being correctional officers but they are not counsellors. As a result of this short-minded, myopic plan that the government has, the bedrock of our rehabilitation is being removed. We will sow the seeds of future problems if we do not address this problem right now.

[Health, November 18th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Health is rising up on his hind legs criticizing Premier Klein for trying to save our publicly funded health care system.

This is what has happened on the government's watch. It has cut transfer payments by $21 billion for health care. Waiting lists have grown to 187,000 people. In Montreal, emergency rooms are pleading for people to leave and go somewhere else because they are over full. Canada now occupies the lowest third of the rung in high tech, behind Hungary and the Czech Republic. In 11 years we will need 113,000 nurses and we will not have them. Furthermore, in 1997, 84 medical services were delisted from the health care system.

We have a big problem. The government's health care legacy is to deprive the poor and the middle class from the health care they need and to shepherd the demise of the publicly funded health care system in Canada.

[Petitions, November 17th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of Mrs. Sanrin Son and 157 other Canadians, I present a petition that calls for the genocidal dictator of Cambodia, Mr. Hun Sen, who has committed human rights abuses, war crimes, genocide, and is implicated in the murder of Mrs. Piseth Pilika of Cambodia, to be tried for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

This brings to the attention of the House the egregious situation taking place in Cambodia today and calls for justice to be served.

[Income Tax Act, November 17th, 1999]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-322, an act to amend the Income Tax Act and the National Defence Act (rental of a residence).

Mr. Speaker, this bill comes from the men and women who work at MARPAC in my riding of Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca. Indeed, it is for defence workers all across the country.

Although the government has given the military men and women a raise, it has not rolled back their rents and is making their accommodation assistance allowance less than what it was before.

The bill will enable the government to give the men and women up to a $400 tax deduction on the rents that they pay and will also roll back the rents on the private-married quarters to what they were in January 1995.

The bill will give some badly needed economic help to the men and women in our defence department who are suffering right now in so many ways. It is a way for the government to get the resources without necessarily asking for more money. It will put money in the pockets of these people who are giving their lives and putting their lives on the line so we can live in peace and security in our country.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Organ Donation Act, November 16th, 1999]

It is 12.1.