Keith Martin

[National Head Start Program, November 18th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to introduce in this House a motion that asks for the unanimous consent of the House to develop, along with provincial counterparts, a comprehensive national head start program for children in the first eight years of life, to ensure that this integrated program involves both hospitals and schools and is modelled on the experience of the Moncton Head Start Program, the Hawaii Head Start Program and the Perry Preschool Program.

This motion could be the greatest single effort of this House to decrease youth crime in this country that we have ever seen. I ask the government to work with the provincial counterparts on this matter.

[Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, November 4th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, fetal alcohol syndrome is the leading cause of preventable birth defects in Canada. Among other things it causes devastating neurological damage. With an average IQ of 68 most of these children cannot function in school. Many run afoul of the law and it is estimated that half the people in jail have FAS or FAE.

Yesterday the justice minister glibly suggested that this was Manitoba's problem. This is everybody's problem.

Today I challenge the Minister of Justice to meet with her provincial counterparts to amend the Mental Health Act so that a woman can be placed in a treatment facility if she wilfully consumes substances that will damage her unborn child.

This is not an abortion bill. This is a bill to prevent children from being poisoned so that they too can have a fair chance in life.

[Health Care, November 3rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, on Friday the supreme court gave the power to this House to protect fetal rights. The Minister of Justice said she would do nothing.

Our jails, our detox units and our psych units are filled with the broken minds of people who have been damaged before birth.

Is this minister going to do something to protect children before birth or is she and the government going to continue to do nothing?

[Foreign Policy, November 3rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the world is poised to sign a land mine treaty in December and Canada has been a leader in this success. But this is just the beginning.

If we are to work toward a safer world we must address the precursors to conflict and formulate responses to them. Human rights violations, militarization and the breakdown of civil structures all contribute to conflict. To address these requires multinational responses from NGOs and other institutions.

Canada can use its moral suasive power to create a critical mass of like minded nations to truly address these issues. We must move our foreign policy from an era of conflict management to an era of conflict prevention. We must seize the day for a better and safer world for all.

[Dna Identification Act, November 3rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to give credit to members of my party in the justice portfolio who have done an outstanding job to bring forth this issue not only in this Parliament but also in the last Parliament. It is something we find very difficult to disagree with because it does so much good not only in apprehending the guilty in our society but also in ensuring that false convictions do not occur. It helps the innocent and it helps society to prosecute the guilty.

It is a shame and the government should be embarrassed that in the last Parliament it did not take the initiative with this tool that can be so effective in helping the police do their job. Heaven knows they have such a difficult time already. In many cases their hands are tied behind their backs by bureaucratic entanglements and rules and regulations which prevent them from apprehending the guilty.

Bill C-3 and the amendments we put forward can help the police and can help society in building stronger and safer communities. This bill is a disappointment. The government has taken a very simple and good concept and has complicated it. It has not dealt with the issue in a meaningful way. It has once again merely nibbled around the edges.

That is why my colleagues in the Reform Party in the justice portfolio have been forced to put forth amendments to toughen up the bill. They do not come merely from us. They come from police officers and the public who are very knowledgeable about this issue. They have put forth constructive solutions to make Bill C-3 an effective tool and an effective weapon in defeating crime. There are many aspects that must be included in the bill.

The issue of how the national data bank will assist the police and the courts is very important. It has to be dealt with in a way that involves the following points. We have to ensure the data bank will be applied to individuals who will be convicted in the future and to individuals who have been convicted in the past. Individuals such as Paul Bernardo and Clifford Olson should have their DNA taken and put in this bank. It makes eminent sense.

I cannot think of an intelligent reason why the government would oppose that other than on purely philosophical grounds. Philosophical grounds do not make our country safe. They are important but we cannot lose sight of the fact that our objective is to make our country stronger and safer.

It does not mean that we need to trample on the rights of anybody. An innocent person would have absolutely no compunction whatsoever about having DNA extracted and put into the bank in order to be exonerated from a criminal act. That is important. If guilty of course the person would be afraid and would put up any number of roadblocks to prevent that from happening. It is very important that this bill be applied retroactively to individuals now in jail who have committed serious offences.

One thing I found very disturbing about the bill was that the government chose not to apply it to all serious and indictable offences. Why I am not sure. Perhaps only the justice minister knows the answer. What we want to do for the sake of the Canadian public is to ensure that the DNA data bank would be applied to every person convicted of a serious indictable offence in Canada. The government cannot argue this. It is irresponsible not to apply this to all serious offences.

The other point we would like talk about is to ensure that the DNA samples and data are going to be taken properly and that access is going to be only for forensic purposes. We are very sensitive to the privacy needs for all Canadians. We are also very sensitive to the needs of ensuring that we have an effective justice system and that the police have the effective tools to enable them to do their job. This data bank must be treated with that respect.

Other aspects we would like to bring up include the fact that this bill and the precursors to it have been employed in a number of countries around the world. Great Britain, many states in the United States, and a number of European countries have all brought forward their own DNA data banks and they have been very effective. They have been effective not only in apprehending the guilty but also in exonerating the innocent.

It is also important that the samples and data be kept for a number of reasons. One is to ensure that the innocent are not convicted. Also, a person who commits a violent crime today could easily commit a violent crime at some time in the future. A convicted person who spends 10 years in jail for a serious offence and is let out unfortunately sometimes will continue to commit serious and violent offences. We must have that data because it would enable us to make a rapid intervention and a rapid apprehension. One of the amendments we are putting forward is to ask the government to please ensure that this good and valuable data is not tossed away.

I would like to talk about an important issue the government has failed to do. The Reform Party caucus has continued to try to impress upon the government the need to not only apply its funds to apprehending the guilty but also to apply funds to crime prevention. The government has had one mandate and has failed to introduce into this House any effective measures to prevent crime.

In this country, crime is on the increase. The government likes to put forth information saying it is on the decrease and some statistics do show that. But when we peer beyond those statistics, what do we find? We find that only 28% of violent offences in this country were actually reported to the police. Ninety per cent of sexual offences were not reported. Sixty-eight per cent of other violent victimizations were never reported to the police. This extends beyond violent interventions into other serious interventions too.

The Canadian public is having a crisis of conscience with respect to the justice system. It is not that they have a lack of faith in the police officers, the men and women who work very hard and put their lives on the line day in and day out, 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. It is because the justice system impedes and impairs the police officers from doing their job.

We in the Reform Party have repeatedly and continually put forth constructive, pragmatic and effective legislation that this government could have adopted to try to address the serious problem of crime that we have in our country. The government has also failed to address the Young Offenders Act. We have put forth interventions on that. There is much that we have done in our party on crime prevention and the government has failed to grasp it.

We cannot simply do what we have been doing. Crime costs this country $46 billion a year. That is more than our entire education budget. It is more than twice as much as what we spend on employment insurance. We cannot continue to do it, not from human terms nor economic terms.

I implore the government to really address this problem, get to the heart of it. Engage in the punitive actions that will keep our country safe but also address in the long range measures that we can implement in a very pragmatic way to prevent crime, to address crime in its early nascent period during the first eight years of life. The government should introduce programs that are going to address and deal with those issues. If we do that it will help people not only in human terms but also in cold hard dollars and cents.

Again I implore the government to look at Bill C-3. Look at the amendments that my colleagues in the Reform Party have put forth, adopt them and I am sure we will have widespread support for this bill.

[Taiwan, October 31st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, this government is coddling China. It has not said anything about the gross human rights abuses that are going on there and it has repeatedly prevented Taiwan from integrating with Canada.

I ask, once again, whether this government is getting its marching orders from Beijing or whether we have an independent foreign policy.

[Taiwan, October 31st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, China is coming to the APEC summit meeting in Vancouver next month.

Taiwan, a democratic nation and a friend of Canada's, has been refused by this government participation in the APEC summit in Vancouver next month.

Why has Taiwan been refused participation in this important economic summit?

[Supply, October 30th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. friend, our whip, for his heartfelt intervention. None of us could have said it more eloquently, I am sure.

Working in the emergency department I have seen a lot of people die. I will have to say this. Of all the people I have seen killed none are perhaps more tragic than those individuals, particularly the young people who have died in a car accident as a result of drunk driving. I remember when I was an intern I was working in the emergency department just before Christmas. One of my colleagues, a fellow emergency room physician, was there. He went home. He was moving to Victoria and he was bringing his family. He was driving to the airport and a drunk driver crossed over the line and killed him. They brought him into the emergency department half an hour later while I was still on shift, and he was almost dead. He did die. You never forget something like that.

I think it is wise for us to remember that on a cold night, on any night, one-fifth of the people who are in their cars driving have been drinking and one out of every 25 is drunk.

[Supply, October 30th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, officially this is my maiden speech.

I thank the people in my riding of Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca for giving me another opportunity to represent them in this House. For all of us it is an enormous responsibility and an enormous honour to finally be in this arena where we can fight to make our country a better place. I know all of us here are grateful for this. I am extraordinarily grateful to the people of Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca for giving me that opportunity.

I also thank my colleague from Prince George—Bulkley Valley who has done a yeoman's job for years, in the last Parliament and now in this one, in fighting for this issue. It is perhaps one of the greatest social issues which extends across boundaries from coast to coast. It affects health. It affects welfare. It affects human beings in so many different areas. In fact it has been somewhat of a silent horror in our midst for many years. My colleague from Prince George—Bulkley Valley has stood out there, and not alone as we have been backing him, as the point person in fighting for this issue.

Drunk driving is a problem and social ill that costs us over $7 billion per year. As I mentioned in the question to my colleague, it kills over four people every day and injures over 300 people every single day. It has a social cost that goes way beyond that because it affects the family.

I would like to recite a personal situation. When I was working in the emergency department of a hospital in the the riding of my colleague for Prince George—Bulkley Valley, a code blue was called which is a major trauma. An individual was brought in with massive head injuries. He was dying. We could not save this young man.

Shortly thereafter the driver of the car was brought in, absolutely drunk. This individual refused treatment, refused to communicate with us, refused to have a blood alcohol sample taken. At the crash site this individual was trying to drag his nearly deceased friend into the driver's side so the deceased would be the culprit and he would be free.

The difficulties for the police in trying to prosecute this individual were massive. For example they had to observe the blood being taken. It had to be done in a certain fashion. It had to be done within two hours of the accident. If any of those are broken, in the words of a defence attorney who said to me “I am smart. I can get any of these guys off on a technicality”. What kind of message does this send? What kind of judicial system do we have in this country that allows somebody to murder their friend, because that is what it is when you drive a car and you are drunk, and then allows them to get off on a technicality? That hole has to be repaired.

And it is not just one hole, there are many. The justice system we have today has numerous little loopholes that enable people who are guilty of committing murder through drunk driving to get off. This has to change.

My colleagues in the Reform Party have put forth many constructive suggestions to the government. I will name a few. I ask the hon. justice minister to listen to them and adopt these suggestions.

One, when blood is extracted that it can be done in greater than two hours, four hours for example.

Two, that the blood alcohol level be dropped to 55 milligrams per decilitre instead of the 80 milligrams per decilitre which it is today, in terms of defining somebody who is impaired.

Three, that when there is a situation where somebody is involved in a serious traffic accident, a blood sample can be taken automatically.

Four, that if somebody refuses to have a blood sample taken, they will be levelled with a criminal charge of refusal to submit. If someone is innocent they should not have a problem with this. The only reason they would want to refuse was if they were guilty, is it not?

Five, we have to remove the barriers to police officers and enable them to do their job.

Drunk driving is a little window of insight into the difficulties the police have in performing their duties. For example, if an individual is caught driving while drunk, it takes about six hours of the police officer's time to engage in the paperwork in order to prosecute them. Six hours off the beat. Six hours of not being able to find and prosecute criminals. Six hours of time that could be better spent doing something productive and keeping our streets safe. That has to change. The paperwork police officers are mired in today prevents them from doing their jobs and keeping our streets safe.

Six, we have to have a victims bill of rights.

Our house leader put forward a private members bill, a victims bill of rights which the government refused to adopt. This bill of rights is rooted in fairness and sensitivity to the victims. For too long the justice department has taken into consideration the rights of the criminal and in many cases has ignored the rights of the victim. That is going to change. It must change.

We have put forth in two successive Parliaments constructive suggestions, two victims bill of rights that would protect victims during court proceedings. Many suggestions are very constructive.

For example, victims must be kept informed of all proceedings. Victims must have the right to be heard at every stage of the judicial system. Victims must be informed of when and what charges are going to be laid. Victims must have the right to be protected from intimidation. Victims must be able to have time off in order to attend court and that they do not have to bear an economic penalty during the course of their ordeal. There must be no plea bargaining or charges dropped unless the victim is aware of it. Victims must be made aware of the support services available to them.

This is not complex. This is rooted in fairness. Again it is the innocent victims who have been violated through no fault of their own. The least we can do as a caring, sensitive society is afford them the same consideration as we afford the criminals.

My colleague from Lisgar mentioned the aspect of education. Too often we ignore that. We have to address the children early on and the earlier the better. If the education system is involved not only on the issue of alcohol, but also drugs and other aspects of drunk driving and criminal activity, that will have an impact. There are some remarkably effective programs which have been created not only in this country but also in the United States.

Drunk driving is a social ill. People make mistakes. However we must have the legislative framework to enable us to do what we can to ensure that this massive social problem decreases. We cannot ignore the problem any longer.

In the last Parliament very little time was spent on this problem, yet it walks across the social spectrum. It waltzes across many different ministries. It is something which we must be concerned about.

One need not look any further than the victims. It is not only the person who is injured in a car accident who pays the price. Their families, friends and loved ones pay a price too.

I hope that we in this House can take it upon ourselves to support the very fine motion presented by the hon. member for Prince George—Bulkley Valley. I am sure there will be unanimous support for it.

[Supply, October 30th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to compliment my colleague for his outstanding and eloquent speech.

Drunk driving is an enormous problem, as my colleagues have mentioned, and successive governments have failed in bringing forward legislation to adequately address it. As we have heard before today, more than three people die every day and over 300 are injured every day because of drunk drivers.

I know that drunk driving is a problem in his province as it is in mine. I know that he has seen in his riding, as we all have, people who have died or have been injured by drunk drivers. I would like my hon. friend to give the House his opinions and his views on what the government can do to try to turn the tide in this extremely important social problem.