Keith Martin

[Parks Canada Act, June 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is from Alberta and in his territory there are large numbers of parks and wilderness areas. He knows very clearly the problems that our parks have had recently and also the problems they will face in the future.

He mentioned that the moneys that will be used to ensure that subcontractors are bilingual will cause a major problem within our parks. The ability of local people to earn revenues will be hampered. In fact, the ability of the parks to function and generate revenues will be hampered. They will not be able to safeguard the flora and fauna, which in many cases is under siege.

Does the member feel that the money that is going to be lost by this ridiculous amendment the government is putting forward could best be spent in trying to preserve our parks? If so, how would he preserve our parks? What would he do, if he were the minister, to make a more intelligent parks agency act?

[Parks Canada Act, June 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak on Bill C-29, the Parks Canada act.

There are problems today in our parks, from endangered species to threatened habitat to species that are becoming extinct. The mark the World Wildlife Fund has given the Canadian government is a D in its behaviour and activities toward protecting our species, the flora and fauna that inhabit our wonderful country. And today the government is pursuing a bill which deals with such absurdities as making subcontractors in our parks become bilingual. Is it necessary? The answer is no.

If the purpose of language is communication, if the purpose of language is to make people understand each other, clearly bilingual services are necessary in certain areas. It is probably not necessary for the people who clean our parks, who work in our parks in many areas, who fix our parks on a contractual basis in construction. I fail to see where those individuals need to be bilingual. The government has simply not presented an idea of why that is so.

Looking at the parks, one of the biggest problems is that of resources as all industries and ministries have. As a result of a lack of resources and as a result of a lack of leadership, a major problem is that thousands of Canadian species are threatened or will become extinct. From the Vancouver Island marmot to the eastern cougar, to the Mississauga rattlesnake, to the northern right whale, all of these species and many, many others are threatened with potential extinction.

There are many solutions that we have to these problems. I will get into those a little bit later.

The money that the government will be using to force people to become bilingual could be put into other areas such as paying for enforcement officers and conservation officers and better equipment and surveillance measures for them. That would have a much more powerful effect on our parks in ensuring that the habitats of today will be there tomorrow. Instead, the government wants to pour money into a useless and futile attempt to make parks subcontractors bilingual.

There are many problems within our own areas, including the threatened extinction of many species. A situation that many people are not aware of is that Canada is a major conduit for threatened species' animal parts. The Siberian tiger, the Bengal tiger, the clouded leopard, endangered birds, animals and plant life, Canada is a major conduit for dispersing these parts from our country to other areas. It is contributing to the decimation of the population of various subspecies of tiger in other parts of the world, particularly in Asia; the decimation of the black rhino, the Javan rhino, the Sumatran rhino, the clouded leopard, the snow leopard and on and on it goes. Canada is partly responsible for that, not because of our enforcement officers, but because they do not have the resources to do their jobs.

Furthermore, there is the current situation with respect to our law. While our law provides for some serious penalties, those penalties are not being enforced. What kind of message does that give to potential poachers? It says that they can knock off those bears and send their gall bladders to other parts of the world because they know if they get caught they will only get their wrists slapped. That is an embarrassment to our country.

Furthermore, the reason poachers and people who sell wild animal and endangered species' parts all over the world are using Canada is that we have a large border, but also that our enforcement measures are wholly inadequate. They are wholly inadequate because of a lack of resources.

There are other issues we have to deal with. The current legislation protects habitat. Habitat loss is the most important aspect of why species are becoming extinct. The federal government is not taking the leadership role to work with the provinces to make sure that larger tracts of land are being protected.

Animals and birds do not know provincial boundaries. They do not know where the line is drawn between Alberta and British Columbia. These animals need to be protected on a number of levels. It requires federal and provincial leadership in order to do that. The only time we have seen effective conservation measures being put in place is when provincial leaders have taken the bull by the horns and enacted some kind of legislation to protect them. We have seen an utter absence of leadership in this government and the previous government in trying to adjust the situation.

Here are some solutions. First, stop the forced bilingualism issue that my colleagues have spoken about before.

Second, the Canadian Endangered Species Protection Act needs strengthening. It is absolutely weak and as a result our species are paying the penalty.

Third, Cosewic is a group of independent scientists. It should be used to identify the plants and animals threatened with potential extinction which need our protection.

Fourth, we can look at other programs around the world where they have used their parks and their wild spaces to generate funds which they then pour back into their parks for expansion and preservation. This strengthens their ability to preserve the flora and fauna within their boundaries.

The golden lion tamarin, a beautiful little monkey in Central America, was becoming extinct. The Belize government made the park in which the monkeys live pay for itself through aggressive marketing. The park managed to save that species and many other species within that park. It prevented the encroachment of surrounding people and expanded the park. The moneys generated from the park went toward funds for health care, clean water and education of the surrounding people. The people benefited from the park in a tangible fashion which enabled them to act as a buffer zone to protect against poaching in the park.

We can apply that same lesson. We can use our parks in a sensible, environmentally sound way to generate funds. Rather than going toward general revenues and having the Minister of Finance spend the funds who knows where, we could ensure that at least a significant portion of those funds was poured back into the parks department for expansion and protection of the habitat for many species. There is a lack of funds. This would be a very pragmatic way for the parks to generate the necessary funds for their own preservation. It could be done in a sensible way without destroying the parks at all. We have seen where this has been done in places around the world.

Fifth, we have to ensure the penalties we have on the books are severe and that they are applied to those people who commit crimes such as poaching and trafficking in endangered species.

Sixth is the aspect of differential fees. My colleague and others in the House have mentioned that it is a sham to charge the same fees for all people. Other parts of the world have differential fees for tourists and for domestic individuals. Tourists pay more. Domestic individuals who reside in the area pay nothing or very little to come and go from their parks. This model works. It is absurd to have the same fee for those who live in the park, for those who come and go from the park and for those who reside in the area. It will hamstring the ability of the parks to generate revenues which could be used to preserve the parks.

There is an enormous challenge in front of us. The preservation of wild habitats and animal species is not an esoteric intellectual argument. The pragmatic reason for it is that many species harbour direct benefits to human beings through medicine.

On a philosophical basis, what has been given to us we have a right to give to others. The fact that many species are becoming extinct, particularly amphibians, is a cold hard indicator that our ability, our environment, our survival as a species could be compromised. Many of the species in this world are harbingers of things to come. What happens to them may ultimately happen to us.

I ask that the federal government take a leadership role with respect to the parks department. I ask that it take a leadership role with respect to our endangered species and develop and put forth pragmatic solutions which already exist in Canada to try to preserve the wild animal species, the flora and fauna and the wild spaces within Canada.

[Parks Canada Act, June 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend brought up a number of excellent points. He brought up bilingualism.

There is something called an opportunity cost. If we remove funds from one place and put them into another, we had better make sure we are getting more bang for our buck in the place we put them in than in the place we took them out of.

The government's proposal is to force subcontractors to become bilingual and ensure money is being put into something. One questions as to whether or not it is going to get the returns necessary. This is in view of the fact that today our parks are under siege and many species are being threatened or becoming extinct.

Does my hon. colleague feel that the money the government is planning to use to force subcontractors to become officially bilingual could be better utilized in another area for preserving our parks?

[Reform Party Convention, June 1st, 1998]

Mr. Speaking, last weekend the Reform Party held its seventh assembly meeting in London, Ontario. The Reform Party laid out a challenge to all Canadians, a challenge to come together, to work together and to build a stronger Canada; a Canada that lives within its means, where taxes are lower, where useless regulations are removed and job opportunities thrive; a Canada where all of its citizens, whether living in New Brunswick, Ontario, British Columbia or any of its provinces and territories have equal rights and equal responsibilities; a Canada where there is equality for all and special status for no one; where a social safety net is there for those who need it and is not used as a dependent system; a Canada where justice is put back into the justice system and victims' rights are put first; where parliamentary institutions reflect the will of the people and not the political leadership of a party; where aboriginal and non-aboriginal people work together with equal rights to build a stronger future for all.

Join Reform's united—

[Fisheries, May 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, this is more than just a concern. Perhaps treating this as just a concern and keeping it on the backbenches is the reason this is such a problem today.

I will ask once again. The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans may be the minister of oceans in the near future. He has the Strangway report. He has the facts. Will he today put the fisheries issue, the west coast disaster on the front burner instead of the back burner?

[Fisheries, May 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, British Columbia's frustration over the west coast fisheries disaster has hit a new high. Five years of inaction has resulted in the current situation.

I am asking the Prime Minister, will he today call on President Clinton to personally intervene in this west coast disaster that we have today?

[Supply, May 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her question and also for the support she has given on Motion No. 261 and her actions on prevention.

I have not discussed the issue with my colleagues but members from this party have always supported a head start program for aboriginal people. The head start program that exists today exists within the aboriginal community and has been highly effective for that.

The member for Toronto Centre—Rosedale has been working with members of the public who have been leaders in pushing forth the aboriginal head start program which has been highly effective. I am hoping we can take elements from the aboriginal head start program and use those in employing a national head start strategy from which all Canadians will benefit regardless of whether they are aboriginal or non-aboriginal.

Perhaps all members from this side do not differentiate or like to categorize people as to whether they are aboriginal or non-aboriginal but would prefer to look at everybody as Canadians, respecting everybody's differences, everybody's individualities and respecting all what those people through their differences bring to our multicultural society.

[Supply, May 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. parliamentary secretary for her intervention and for her support in passing Motion No. 261. I know she believes in crime prevention. I also thank her for bringing up the fine work that the National Crime Prevention Council has done for so long and I hope we can use the constructive solutions the council has been putting forth and enact them into this legislation rather than for us to merely talk about them.

I was not privy to the previous discussion the member refers to. The member for Saanich—Gulf Islands and the member for Surrey had come to my riding and spoken very eloquently about restorative justice, about preventive measures and I hope members on the other side would consult with them along those lines.

[Supply, May 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for bringing in the members to listen to this speech. I hope it will live up to its advance billing.

In this hopefully riveting speech I was talking about justice and the Reform Party's motion today on what we can do to improve and revamp our justice system.

The first thing we have to realize is prevention. How do we prevent criminal activity? If we are to do this we have to peer at the roots of criminal activity. If we look at the people who are incarcerated in our jails many of them have had family histories that can only be described as a house of horrors. While their history does not exonerate them from their actions, perhaps it makes us understand how they came to have fractured psyches.

It starts often at time zero. It is estimated that half of all people incarcerated in our jails have fetal alcohol syndrome or fetal alcohol effects. Fetal alcohol syndrome is the leading cause of irreversible neurologic damage in our society today. It is increasing in geometric proportions. Some communities have incidence rates as high as over 60 per 1000 live births. These people have IQs of an average of 68. They have a great deal of difficulty in interpersonal relationships, a great deal of cognitive disabilities. It makes it very difficult for them to interact and engage in society. Some of these people go on to lives of crime or at best have difficulty interacting in society. We need to prevent this. In order to prevent it, we have to work in utero.

We also have to make sure that children are not subjected to abuse, sexual abuse, violence, improper nutrition or more subtle factors such as improper parenting and inconsistent parenting. All those factors in a cumulative effect have a dramatic effect on the building blocks of a normal psyche during that critical first eight years of life and in particular in the first three to four years of life.

Study after study demonstrates that the input we make in the first four years of life has a dramatic and profound effect on those individuals and is also highly cost effective. Programs from Moncton to Hawaii to Michigan have demonstrated a 50% to 60% reduction in youth crime, a 50% reduction in teen pregnancies, higher rates of employment, less dependence on welfare and a $6 saving for every $1 invested.

Head start programs are a win-win situation if they are done properly. I was very pleased that Motion No. 261 calling for a national head start program was passed yesterday by this House and I want to thank all the members who supported it from all parties, except the Bloc Quebecois that voted against it, and I applaud them for putting partisanship aside for the betterment of the children of this country. My hope is we will be working together to make this a reality.

Already five provinces and territories are on side and they want to work with the federal government, with parliament, to make this a reality. We can save a lot of people's lives and save a lot of money.

My colleague from Fraser Valley East put forth a very comprehensive victims bill of rights that we have been pushing forward. The government should adopt it. Far too many times we see victims are left in the shadows and salt is actually poured on to their open wounds as the result of a system that puts a preferential onus on the convicted and not on the victim.

We need to look too at alternative measures of sentencing. Restorative justice has been used in British Columbia and is starting to be used in a very cost effective manner. In British Columbia under this program it costs as little as $290 per individual, a dramatic saving from the $95,000 it takes to incarcerate a youth in a jail for a year.

Restorative justice works for a select group of individuals who are first time offenders for non-violent offences and where they have the approval of the community and, most of all, the approval of the victim. In a restorative justice program the incidence of recidivism has dropped dramatically. It is over 95% successful for individuals selected for that program.

We should also look at tougher penalties for individuals who are committing violent offences, repeat offenders, pimps, individuals who have shown an utter disregard for society. This population needs to be separated from the other individuals who are non-violent offenders, non-repeat offenders, first time offenders where there is a hope of trying to break them out of a cycle of crime, punishment and recidivism. My colleagues have put forth many constructive suggestions along those lines.

We have to look at naming young offenders, not only those who are committing violent offences, who are 16 and 17 years of age, but all violent offenders. The rationale is if we accept that restorative justice works at least in part on the principle of shaming, then why do we not name all individuals who are young offenders and committing offences, be they violent or non-violent offenders? Society has a right to know. The neighbour has a right to know whether the person beside them is a B and E artist or a sexual predator. The public has a right to know and public safety must be first and foremost in our justice system.

While these individuals are in jail let us make it obligatory that they engage in counselling sessions for violent behaviour or for their substance abuse problems. Let us make it obligatory that they take training programs so that once they get out of jail they can take up a role as an integrated part of society. There is no obligation. Right now people can be let out of jail and paroled with spending as little as one third of their sentence. When a person gets sentenced for nine years, they can be out after three. What kind of justice system is that?

Perhaps it is a better thing to say they are going to be sentenced to nine years but that they can earn having that sentence whittled down if they take the measures necessary to treat whatever problems they have, be they psychological, to get the skills necessary to become a functional member of society.

Also we have to look at post-discharge issues. When criminals get out of jail, we should have the systems in place to help them integrate into society. Many of them get lost in the shuffle, fall through the cracks and go back into a life of crime.

Let us talk about streamlining the justice system. We have a justice system that too often engages in a system where somebody is arrested and it takes a long time for that person to get to trial and be convicted. Justice delayed is justice denied. We can put forth a streamlined system and this is not difficult.

We should have immediately put forth a small group of individuals who can take constructive suggestions from around the world that have worked to implement right away into our system, to streamline it so that we manage to get the arrested person through to the court system to be judged by their peers and to either be exonerated or convicted and sentenced in an expeditious fashion.

This would be fair to society and to the victims. We also need to look at the system of how we put accountability into our system. Why do we not examine electing judges? Look at the experience in California where they have managed to elect judges while still managing to retain that separation of judicial independence from other parties such as this House.

It is possible to do that. It is possible to have elected judges and to still maintain judicial independence. It is just the way in which the individuals are elected. It would add accountability to a system that desperately needs an element of accountability.

We need to consider looking at changing our system of legal aid. Look at the public defender system. Again in certain parts of the United States they have managed to institute a public defender system that saved taxpayers millions of dollars while still, with retrospective analysis, showed that those individuals got as good or better treatment under the law as they would have in the existing system.

Look at a public defender system to replace the legal aid system we have now that is actually crushing under the demands placed on it.

If we fail to act that will be our biggest crime in this House. We have an opportunity not to study these issues for the nth time as we are apt to do in this House of Commons, not continue to examine an examination or study a study, but use the studies that have been done in this country, use the constructive solutions that have been put forth not only here but around the world, take the best of these solutions, discard what does not work and implement it.

For heaven's sake, for Canadians, for the victims, for the people we can prevent from getting into a life of crime, let us act now.

[Supply, May 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Prince George—Bulkley Valley.

Let us look at the problem. The problem today is that crime is increasing. Some like to trot out statistics that it is not. They say it is going down. The reason crime is increasing is that 50% to 60% of non-violent crime and 40% of violent crime is not reported to the police. The fact is that crime is increasing. Youth violent crime in particular is increasing. It has doubled since 1986. What can we do?

There has been a failure of the system to deal with it. Our traditional response of detection, detention and deterrence simply has not worked. If one looks at them carefully the statistics bear that out. We have not been able to put forward a system that protects victims rights. We do not have a system that prevents crime, but there are solutions out there. What can we do?

I will put forth some constructive solutions that members of my party and other parties have been putting forth for some time. The first thing—