Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-31, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act. The summary of the bill states:
This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act to improve the integrity of the electoral process by reducing the opportunity for electoral fraud or error. It requires that electors, before voting, provide one piece of government-issued photo identification showing their name and address or two pieces of identification authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer showing their name and address, or take an oath and be vouched for by another elector.
It also amends the Canada Elections Act to, among other things, make operational changes to improve the accuracy of the National Register of Electors, facilitate voting and enhance communications with the electorate.
It amends the Public Service Employment Act to permit the Public Service Commission to make regulations to extend the maximum term of employment of casual workers.
We support the changes to the Canada Elections Act that protect against the likelihood of voter fraud and misrepresentation. All of us who have been involved in vying for a position as an elected representative would like to ensure that those citizens who vote are able to vote honestly. All citizens want to ensure that their vote counts and also that the voting process is not subject to fraud.
Many countries of the world do not have that luxury. Many countries in fact do not have an electoral process like ours. I have said it before and I will say it again that it speaks to the excellence of the team at Elections Canada that Elections Canada is world renowned. Elections Canada not only ensures that in Canada we are able to have elections that are free, fair and above board but it also exports that level of expertise abroad. I do not think that most Canadians are aware that the team at Elections Canada is able to do this. Elections Canada does it because being able to have free and fair elections is a hallmark of a country's being able to acquire stability.
For example, this has happened in the former Yugoslavia, in the Congo and in a number of other countries in Africa. In particular, when South Africa moved out of the dark days of apartheid and into the rainbow nation it is today, it was able to do that in some small part with the help of Canada, Canadians and Elections Canada. It was a very proud moment for those of us who have had dealings with the country of South Africa that we were able to see the country metamorphose out of the dark days of apartheid into a new era where people are treated equally.
During the time of the election in the early 1990s there was great fear within the country of South Africa and elsewhere that the country would implode in a bloodbath, but it did not happen for many reasons. One small reason it did not happen is that Elections Canada was involved in the elections that were taking place. Why was Elections Canada asked to participate? Because the men and women who serve in that area are people of excellence and are above reproach. They are public servants who do an unbelievable job for all of us here and abroad.
It is quite tragic that the head of Elections Canada, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, a person who served the public for more than 16 years in that post, if my memory serves me correctly, has left that post. We do not know why he left, but I will say that losing a superb public servant like him is a loss to Elections Canada, a loss to Canada and a loss to the international community. Thankfully, within days of Mr. Kingsley's leaving that post, he found another job in Washington, one that enables him to use his expertise and his skills to deal with elections all over the world. This is another fine example of a Canadian who is able to use his or her expertise in the service of many.
Unfortunately, we have lost other superb public servants since the government came on board. Mr. Peter Harder, the deputy minister of Foreign Affairs, comes to mind. He is leaving his post. If memory serves me correctly, he has served in the public service for some 29 years. He served as deputy minister of various departments. He acquitted himself with excellence and served many different governments, both Conservative and Liberal. He did this in the best interest of the country and the departments in which he worked. It is a huge loss. The reasons, I am sure, are personal, but it is unfortunate that we are seeing this egress of individuals from our public service.
Unfortunately, the power has shifted quite significantly to the Prime Minister's Office in a way that we have not seen, certainly not in my memory, and I have been here 13 years. Even those who have served longer cannot remember a situation where so much power was centred in the hands of the few in the PMO, people who, with the exception of the Prime Minister, are unelected and unaccountable to the public.
It is a divide among not only the Prime Minister, his office, his caucus and his cabinet, but between bureaucrats and public servants who serve all governments with honour, regardless of political stripe. By not listening to the public servants in our bureaucracy, the Prime Minister is treading on very thin ice. He is also ignoring a great deal of expertise within the bureaucracy that could serve him well.
I happen to be involved in foreign affairs. It is deeply disappointing to see the way in which the Department of Foreign Affairs has been excluded from the creation of foreign policy within our country. This is an unwise move. There are a lot of very smart people in foreign affairs with a great deal of experience. Foreign affairs is not something that a person could simply pick up in a matter of months. It is a deficit of the government and we see many examples of it.
For example, in Afghanistan the government is quite appropriately supporting our troops, as we all do, and supporting the military aspect as well. However, the Prime Minister is ignoring the political solutions to Afghanistan, which are required to resolve the challenge there. If we are to deal with the insurgency within Afghanistan in the future, it has to be done through political solution, for example, by dealing with the opium crop.
Why has the Prime Minister not called Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair and asked them to stop the poppy crop eradication program? By not doing that and allowing that process to continue, it is putting the lives of our troops at grave risk. Farmers have said that if we eradicate the poppies on their farms, they cannot feed their families or themselves. As a result of that, they are going to join the Taliban, taking up arms against the group that is destroying their poppy crops. While our troops are not involved, Afghan people do not differentiate between groups in their country. In other words, they will not differentiate between Americans, Brits, Canadians, Dutch and others.
It is a very grave situation taking place right now. I implore the Prime Minister to call President Bush and Prime Minister Blair and ask them to stop the poppy eradication because it is putting the lives of their troops and our troops at greater risk.
It would be smart to listen to the public service and divert the opium crop into the development of pharmaceutical grade narcotics. One of the great challenges within developing countries is the absence of much needed essential medications, including narcotics. Imagine a people needing surgery or other medical help, such as repairing a broken arm. They would go through that without pain relief. It is inconceivable in our country, but the fact remains there is an 80% deficit of narcotics in developing countries.
Why do we not think about taking that opium crop, diverting it into the production of pharmaceutical grade narcotics, because opium is a substrate, then taking that material and producing medications that can then be sold and distributed to developing countries? This would be sensible and it would benefit farmers and Afghanistan by having a value added industry that is legal and safe. It would also undercut the financial underpinnings that are propping up the Taliban.
The second question is this. Why does the government not listen to our public service on the issue of the insurgency? We cannot win an insurgency, particularly one that has its bases outside of the country. In this case the Taliban's bases are in Pakistan. Therefore, there is no hope whatsoever of defeating an insurgency through military means when the people we are fighting flee across the border and disappear from Afghanistan.
The only solution to that is to deal with it politically. One solution could be the development of a regional working group on Afghanistan, which would involve the countries of Indian, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and others. They are all playing a game within that country while our troops are there. Unless all those countries are involved, we will never be able to resolve the internal and complex dynamic within the country.
I know the government recently, and I think wisely, put more money into the Afghan national police. However, why do we not ask our NATO partners to also do the same. They have been reticent and have not come up to the plate to support our troops, but one thing they can do is put money and resources to train the Afghan national police.
When our troops go in and take out the Taliban, there has to be a constabulary force that comes in behind them, which is able to provide security, but that is not there. The Afghan national police are seen to be as much of a problem on the ground as the Taliban. The country needs an effective Afghan national police force, and that is not happening. Police officers are paid $70 a month, they have two weeks of training and they are ill-equipped. What do they do? They become part of the problem and they engage in thuggish behaviour.
How do we stop that? We have to put in the resources. I implore the Minister of Foreign Affairs to say to his counterparts in NATO that this is something that would be palatable to the domestic constituencies within the countries that make up NATO for them to contribute finances, resources and personnel to address this issue.
Third, in dealing with the internal dynamic within Afghanistan, the government continues to talk about the Taliban today, as if it was the same Taliban as in 2001. It is not. The Taliban of 2007 is amalgam of different groups. We need to draw some of those groups away from the Taliban and allow them to become a part of the decision making process in the future of their country.
The government needs to call on Mr. Karzai to call a loya jirga, which would bring in those disaffected groups together, those that excluded from the Bonn agreement, bring them back to the table and include them in the future of their country. By doing so, we will have a situation where these groups will move from the Taliban and become a part of the future of Afghanistan. This would weaken the Taliban quite effectively.
Lastly, this ties into the opium situation. We have to follow the money with respect to opium. There are people in Mr. Karzai's government who are roundly seen as being very corrupt. While we are giving the government a lot of money, it is not trickling down to the people who need it the most, those on the ground. We need to spend an awful lot more resources to provide for the basic needs of the people to allow them to help themselves. By following the money, some of that is going to be tracked to Mr. Karzai's government, and those people have to be prosecuted.
Mr. Karzai is in a place where he has a bayonet in his chest and a bayonet in his back. He cannot do this by himself. He is going to need the partners, of which we are one, to assist him in ensuring that his government can have the transparency and accountability and that moneys that go into Mr. Karzai's government are put toward the basics such as primary health care, primary education, water security, food security, corruption and governance.
Also important is how we measure this. One particular parameter is maternal mortality, which is something we need to look at carefully. The maternal mortality statistics are astronomical. In fact, I believe they are the worst in the world. The chance of a woman dying in pregnancy in Afghanistan is 300 times greater than in Canada.
If we want to find out how social programs in a country are working, particularly in the area of the health of the people, we look at this. If the maternal mortality figures are down, it means health care personnel, medications, diagnostics and a rudimentary surgical system that is clean and effective are available. We then we know it will affect all the other parameters, such as infant mortality. We know we will be able to affect the lives of men and women. It also means there is adequate nutrition and clean water.
If we want to measure the effectiveness of how we have done in Afghanistan, the maternal mortality statistics within that country is very a sensitive indicators. Right now that indicator is the worst in the world. The indicator has to shake Canadians up. We have do a better job. It means devoting those resources not into single silo issues such as particular disease silos, but to developing an integrated health care system. This applies not only for Afghanistan, but for other countries as well.
One of the mistakes we make is we pour money into malaria, or AIDS or a number of other diseases such as tuberculosis. While this is important, a smarter way to do this would be to work on building integrated health care systems to ensure that we have the health care personnel, the diagnostics, the medications, clean water, the nutrition, the personnel and also the surgical sites and clinics, which are clean and effective and reasonably well equipped.
If we silo the medications and our health care initiatives internationally, we will not have the long term effect that we need to establish an integrated health care system for developing countries. This is exceptionally important. One of our flaws is we do not deal with the health care system as an integrated system. We do not produce a long term, stable health care system that can function on its own for a prolonged period of time.
It is a challenge. I ask the minister responsible for CIDA to contact her excellent public servants in CIDA and to work with them so that Canada is a leader, with other partners, in doing this. It is important for Canada to work in Afghanistan and in other areas.
On Darfur, which is be utterly excluded by the government, I plea to the ministers responsible to act now. The Prime Minister said “never again”. The Prime Minister said that he would not allow genocide and gross human rights abuses to occur on his watch. They are occurring now.
The atrocities of genocide and human rights abuses are not only occurring in Darfur, but in Chad and the Central African Republic. If any member has seen the movie Blood Diamond, there are some horrific scenes in it. While it is only Hollywood, it gives us some indication of the type of terror that people endure such as gang rapes, their limbs are chopped off and there is torture in ways that we cannot imagine. That is happening right now and it is happening on our watch.
God help us if five years down the line someone writes a book Shake Hands with the Devil, part two, about our failure to deal with the genocide in Darfur, Chad and the Central African Republic.
This is entirely preventable. Why on earth do we not call on other countries and work with them to send in the troops, which are required right now, to support the African Union to save the lives on the ground? We must do it now. If we fail to do this, we are simply condoning genocide. Innocent people are dying, being tortured and raped unnecessarily.
The crisis can be dealt with. Khartoum will block our efforts. This is the longest serving genocidal regime in the world. The issue before us is do we listen to Khartoum, which does not want this to end, or do we act even if this regime does not like it? I submit that we should act, get the troops on the ground, get them in now and save lives.
