Keith Martin

[Foreign Affairs, November 3rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, last Wednesday the Minister of Foreign Affairs compared the evacuation of Canadians from Lebanon to “the same kind of chaos at a shopping mall at Christmas near closing time or in an airport during a snowstorm”. This is another callous, highly insensitive remark from our top diplomat, and the international community is noticing.

Will the Minister of Foreign Affairs apologize for likening tens of thousands of Canadians caught in a war zone and fearing for their lives to this? Will he apologize to those Canadians?

[Juvenile Diabetes, October 31st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, many years ago Canada led the way in the discovery of insulin and in doing so gave those who suffer from type 1 diabetes a new lease on life. Tragically, the incidence of this chronic disease has not decreased but has increased and sufferers are contracting it at an earlier age, many of them just mere children.

Juvenile diabetes has a profound impact on the entire body and can cause blindness, amputations, kidney failure and premature death from heart disease. However, there is hope. We can find a cure.

Here is the challenge to the government. Give a five year commitment of $25 million a year and we will be able to find a cure for juvenile diabetes through islet cell transplantation, regenerating the body's own beta cells, and finding new therapeutics to predict, prevent and reverse complications.

There are 200,000 individuals in Canada who suffer from this disease. We ask the Government of Canada to make a five year commitment of $25 million a year and we will find a cure for juvenile diabetes.

[Committees of the House, October 24th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Mississauga South for his very hard work on the Standings Orders and on democratizing the House. He has been a respected member of the House for a long time. Members of the government would be well served by listening to his interventions and solutions. He is a very thoughtful individual who has come up with umpteen constructive apolitical solutions that would allow all members of the House to serve the public, our masters, in a more constructive and effective way.

If government members were willing to do so, they would be wise to implement a number of solutions that the member for Mississauga South has offered. He has conducted himself in a very forthright, democratic and fair-minded fashion. He has put forth solutions based on his vast experience and knowledge of the rules of the House. The government would be wise to adopt a lot of those solutions in the House in the interests of the public.

[Committees of the House, October 24th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, he talks about keeping one's word. I think the government has a lot to answer for in a lot of areas, including the issue of Mr. Fortier, who was appointed to the Senate and then became a cabinet minister.

I cannot think of any example of a situation like that, at least not in the 13 years that I have been here, whereby a government appointed somebody who is sitting in the other chamber to be a cabinet minister and who therefore is hidden from the ability of the people in this House to ask questions and also hidden from being accountable while responsible for a department.

The members of the public who are watching us know this very clearly. For those who do not know this, I do not know if they cannot possibly fathom why on earth a government would be talking about accountability. Why would a Prime Minister be trumpeting accountability with one arm and muzzling his MPs and his cabinet with the other arm while appointing members of the Senate to be members of his cabinet, to be responsible for departments but shielded from the type of accountability and questioning that every other cabinet minister in this House is responsible for?

[Committees of the House, October 24th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is of course free to make his comments in this House. It is one of the great advantages of living in our beautiful, democratic country, but the member should understand very clearly, and I hope he does, that he needs to look back in history a little and understand that it was his party that supported these Standing Orders.

What we are debating today is that we are supporting the ability for us to have orders upon which we can work and ensure that this House is democratic, to ensure that we as members of Parliament are able to put forth solutions and ideas and have public debates, not to hijack anybody's agenda.

I will give one example. I would ask the member or any person in the government this question. How on earth is it hijacking the government agenda in allowing a rule to exist that enables members of Parliament to question not only the Prime Minister but the Leader of the Opposition in speeches they make on government motions? They are 10 minute speeches. That is not hijacking. That is democracy.

[Committees of the House, October 24th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for allowing me to speak today to this extremely important issue.

For those who are watching this, it may seem a rather arcane issue dealing with the provisional Standing Orders but these are the rules upon which we can function and serve our constituents and our country in the House. These are the rules that have been put together to enable us to serve our country and our communities.

None of this is new. These provisional Standing Orders were put forth and supported strongly by the Conservatives when they were in opposition and by us in an effort to open up this place and make it more democratic.

How extreme are the provisional Standing Orders? What are these rules that we are actually talking about? Why do we want them to continue and why does the government wish that they not continue?

One of the Standing Orders would allow individuals in this House to question the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition for 10 minutes after they make a speech on a government motion. What is so flawed and so bad about enabling members for the first time to ask questions of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in response to words they have uttered in this House?

This is the type of questioning that is the pillar of our Westminster system. It allows members to represent their constituents and ask the person who holds the highest office in the land the questions that their constituents are concerned about. This was never allowed before under the provisional Standing Orders.

It is logical that the Conservative Party would have supported this in opposition and why my party supported these particular changes. It was a very important move to open this House up and become more democratic.

These rules also allow members to split their time with other members. One of the frustrations I think we all have, because there are limited times and limited slots in which to speak, is that we all wish to have an opportunity to speak to particular motions that occur.

Historically, a member only had 10 minutes to speak and therefore only a few members of Parliament had the opportunity to articulate their views and those of their constituents in this House on a motion. The changes we are talking about today allow members to split their time. It allows more members to voice their views in this hallowed chamber. Is that so bad? Is that so undemocratic? Is that such a violation that the government cannot live with this?

These provisional Standing Orders also allow us to debate concurrence motions. Another frustration I think we all have is that all of us have passed motions in committees. A lot of good work occurs in committee and, in many ways, a lot of the more constructive work on issues actually occurs in committees. The environment in committee tends to be a little more collegial and a little less confrontational than what we have in the House. It is perhaps because we are less than two sword lengths away from each other.

However, the reality is that motions passed in committee are oftentimes constructive motions, policy driven motions and motions in the public interest. Those motions, historically, have disappeared into the aether because we never had a mechanism upon which those motions could come to the House for a more fulsome debate and where the public could be made aware of those issues through the substantive debate that would take place on those issues.

In the foreign affairs committee, for example, we in the Liberal Party passed substantive motions and supported motions dealing with Afghanistan, HIV-AIDS, Zimbabwe, Darfur, the Congo and a number of other crises occurring in the world, and we passed those motions. Sometimes, with the use of these Standing Order changes, those motions and motions like them have been allowed to come to the House so the public can listen to the debates and hear the constructive solutions being offered by members from all sides.

Why on earth would government members not want these orders, which allow members from all sides, including their own, to represent their constituents and articulate their solutions, to continue?

Why on earth would the government desire to quell, quash and stop these democratic interventions that allow a more fulsome and constructive debate and a more solution oriented, policy and factually driven debate where we ultimately get action on the issues Canadians care about?

The Conservatives would block it because we have a government that is unlike any other that we have seen before. We have a government not by the people and for the people. We have a government by one person, for one party. The new Prime Minister is not one who is necessarily cut from the cloth of others. His viewpoint is one that is rooted in ideology, where ideology trumps science, fact and everything but the pursuit of power.

It stems from a type of thinking that comes from an obscure professor in the U.S. named Professor Strauss. This is the Straussian view of the world that is held by a few but important individuals. The intellectual bedmates of the Prime Minister are people like Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld. They are all acolytes of this professor who lived earlier on in the 20th century.

Professor Strauss' view of the world was not one rooted in democracy. He believed that effective government came from the top, from a small number of people driven by ideology, who would force their will through a government structure and implement those solutions for a country. However, the inherent danger in that is that it violates the very roots of democracy and of this institution. That is what we have now. We have a Prime Minister driven by ideology, not driven by science and not driven by facts.

I will give some examples, the most egregious example of which is the issue of drug policy. That was manifested this summer in the almost willingness of the government to not allow the safe injection sites to continue in Vancouver. The government maintained that it needed more studies. These studies were done by some of the top researchers in the world and they were published in The Lancet. The studies showed very clearly that the safe injection site in Vancouver saved lives, saved money and was humane. These studies, which were done by independent assessors, some of the top scientific minds and researchers in Canada, showed that the safe injection site in Vancouver worked.

When I spoke to the Minister of Health he said that more studies were needed and he only extended this safe injection site for one year, not the three and a half years that were required. Why? It is because the government thinks it can hold an election and get a majority and, I believe, stop that safe injection site. The Conservatives will also not allow any other similar sites to occur in any other part of the country. Why? It is because ideologically they believe that safe injection sites are immoral and not in the interests of the public, but that completely ignores the facts.

We have, it is sad to say, a government run by one Prime Minister who believes that he is an omnibus cabinet minister. That is why we are seeing cabinet ministers, some of whom are very bright people and have very good ideas, being asked to shut up and to not offer any constructive solutions on how they can build public policy. All public policy comes from one person, the Prime Minister and a small number of people around him. The cabinet members are simply asked to trot out these solutions that the Prime Minister offers. That is not democracy.

The public who voted for the Conservative Party, particularly those people who are rooted in the Reform angle and who strongly believe in democracy and democratizing this House, would find it anathema to them that their government would not support these Standing Orders that allow members from all sides, including their own, to offer solutions in a constructive way.

It is sad to say that when the Prime Minister calls on his cabinet ministers, it is really to ask them to play the fall person to deal with mistakes that he has made.

The most recent example is the so-called environment bill, which has nothing to do with environmental protection. It has nothing to do with greenhouse gas emissions, the reason being that the Prime Minister at heart has chosen to ignore the signs, to ignore the facts and to believe that global warming is not really occurring. He is trusting his ideological belief over the actual scientific evidence, which demonstrates very clearly that global warming is occurring and is due to greenhouse gas emissions and that we have to act to make the changes necessary to ensure that we will be able to reverse this trend. It is very important for us, given our location in the world and the implications for the heating of our glaciers and our arctic areas, which is having a profound impact not only upon our country, but upon the world.

The other area is the so-called accountability bill. The accountability bill has nothing to do with accountability. It is but another example of many of the Prime Minister couching something in a certain way to lead people to believe that it is something it is not. The accountability bill is going to destroy the ability of the public service to innovate and to do the job it has done so honourably for so many decades. It also is going to prevent good people from joining the public service. We are having now and will have in the future a major problem with respect to attrition taking place in the public service and our need to attract to the public service the smart, dynamic, hard-working individuals we have always had.

Why should people join the public service if Bill C-2, the accountability bill, comes to pass, when they will have to be continually watching over their backs and continually having a hammer over their heads, and when their ability to influence and innovate is dramatically affected in a negative way? There are already checks and balances over the behaviour of the public servants, like there are over the behaviour of the House. We do not need any more of those.

Furthermore, the accountability bill has nothing to do with accountability, because accountability is the obligation of us as elected officials and of senior government officials to tell the public what we are doing before we do it and to respond to what has been done in the public interest. That is not what the accountability bill is about at all. In fact, when asked in the House to define simple public accountability, not one of those members could do that.

Furthermore, there is not even a definition of accountability in the bill. I hope the public recognizes that it is not what it seems and that the government is engaging in a number of behaviours and interventions that are diametrically opposed to the public good.

Not supporting these Standing Orders, not making these Standing Orders a matter of the rules on which the House continues, will be a complete violation of what the Conservatives have always supported and what we have commonly come to know as our basic democratic rights as members of Parliament.

We can also see that the government has been engaging in another pattern of behaviour, one that I have not seen in 13 years. It is quelling and quashing the ability of the public service to deal with members of Parliament, particularly those in opposition. It is very difficult for us to get information about what is occurring in the public service and to have meetings with public servants, who have always been very forthcoming in providing us with briefings in areas of our responsibility.

Since the new government has come along, I think the message has come down from on high, from the Prime Minister's Office, that members of the public service and the bureaucracy are not allowed to speak to members of the opposition. Roadblocks have been put in place to prevent us from being able to attend meetings and from dealing with and addressing members of the public service in a forthright and transparent fashion. That is a complete violation of our ability to do our jobs as members of Parliament in the service of the public.

The government also clearly is engaging in the behaviour of putting forth policies and using issues in a way that can harm Canadians. I will give but one example.

In the extension of the mission to Afghanistan, the Prime Minister framed the argument as being that if we do not support the extension of the mission then we do not support our troops. What an absolute pile of nonsense. That is an absolute use of our troops for the Prime Minister's own political gain. All of us, I think, at least those of us in the opposition, were extremely angry that the Prime Minister would have used our troops, who are giving their lives abroad for us, in such a naked political way.

We asked the Prime Minister's government to have the briefings and the information so we could respond and vote on this particular issue in a way that is responsible. There is no other duty that we have in this House, no other issue that is more difficult and no other issue that deserves more attention than when we put the lives of our troops on the line for the interests of our country.

Yet the government and Prime Minister gave the people of our House, members of Parliament, a mere 48 hours in order to respond. There was not enough time to get the information on issues such as the following. What is the government going to do in terms of the development framework in Afghanistan? What are the government's plans for training the Afghan security forces? What are the government's plans for dealing with the insurgency coming from outside Afghanistan? What is the government's plan to deal with the poppy crop? As Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan, said very clearly, “If we do not destroy poppies in Afghanistan, then poppies will destroy us”.

Why, in those four areas, could we not simply get the answers that would enable us to ensure that the conditions for the success of the mission were going to be there? The reason the Prime Minister did not allow it is that the Prime Minister knew his government was not putting out the interest, the attention and the resources to deal with those four issues that are conditional to the success of the mission in Afghanistan. He would rather use the issue as a political ploy to try to divide the opposition and to be able to erroneously show the public that those who do not support an extension at this time are somehow against our troops, which is absolute rubbish.

Behind that is a more evil intention. That evil intention is the desire on the part of the Prime Minister to use our troops for political gain. They should never be used for political gain. I hope the public sees that. I hope public understands that what we are trying to do is make sure that the conditions for the success of our mission in Afghanistan are there.

We also have been very clear in trying to articulate and demonstrate to the public that the policies the government has pursued in some areas are not what they seem. The government has trotted out policies on taxes. What it has done is raise the taxes on the poor. How on earth could any government in good conscience raise taxes on those who are the most vulnerable in our society? That is what the government has done.

The government talks about a child care program. Is the child care program a child care program? No, it is not. It is $1,200 before taxes for Canadians for their children under the age of six. That amounts to less than the cost of the cup of latte a day. That is not child care.

I hope the public understands that what we are trying to do here in this House with respect to these particular Standing Orders is enable and codify these orders in the House, which would enable us to have debates the public can see, give all members the ability to put forth solutions that would enable us to be constructive in the interests of our constituents, and enable us to work in the interests of the public.

We do not have enough opportunities to do that. These Standing Orders will enable us to do that. I think it is quite remarkable that the Conservative government that is now in power is now trying to block the very tools that will enable all MPs to be able to do their job.

I particularly ask members of Parliament who are in the backbenches of the Conservative Party to reflect on why their Prime Minister has muzzled them, has tried to muzzle the press and has muzzled his cabinet. The Prime Minister believes that he is the omnibus prime minister and that he is the font of all good ideas, but there is a dramatic danger there, in that no one person can be the government. It requires the best efforts of all people.

I hope the Canadian public understands that. I hope the government comes to its senses and supports these Standing Orders becoming permanent.

[Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act, October 23rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak on Bill C-25, An Act to amend the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act and the Income Tax Act and to make a consequential amendment to another Act.

At the outset, I will illustrate for a moment why this is so important. Let us look at a place half a world away where our troops our dying. When President Karzai was here, he said “if the poppy crop is not eradicated, then the poppy crop will destroy Afghanistan”. I believe all members remember that. If we do not eradicate the poppy crop in Afghanistan, it will eradicate Afghanistan.

Why is this important and how does this connect to the bill. The poppy crop is a substrate upon which narcotics are made, in particular heroin. That heroin is processed and sold. It goes on to cause untold hardship, pain, suffering and sometimes death within our country and with many other countries in the world. That heroin also enables organized crime gangs to make enormous amounts of mount.

We could put an advertisement on television, “Use heroin and support the terrorists”. If people use heroin, they are providing the money that enables our troops to be killed in Afghanistan.

Drugs are one of a number of products that are used by organized crime and terrorist organizations. They provide the funds that enable them to buy weapons and infrastructure to carry out terrorist activities against us and our allies, which cause untold instability in various parts of the world.

In fact, if we do not get a hold on the poppy crop in Afghanistan, the mission there will never be successful. That is why it is critically important, and we have heard this recently, that the west not change its approach to drugs. However, if we go in and wipe out vast poppy crops, it leaves farmers with absolutely nothing. That is why some of those people are joining what we call the neo-Taliban. This is not the same group of Taliban that was there in 2001-02. It is a new group. Part of that group is made up of farmers who have had their livelihood removed. As a result, they have joined the Taliban and taken up arms against us.

The failure to deal with the poppy crop not only is a failure to deal with the economic wherewithal to engage in actions against our troops and against our allies, but it also is a poison and does not enable Afghanistan to get on its feet. My personal view is that we need to call a regional meeting to deal with the poppy crop. I personally hope the crop is bought, destroyed and other alternative crops are given to those farmers.

Unless we can provide those farmers with an alternative form of living, when we go in there and wipe out their livelihood, then we have left them with nothing for themselves, their families and their communities. If we do not, they go from being a subsistence farmer to abject poverty. With the Taliban holding out its arms and also some money for these farmers, they take up arms against us.

This is the on the ground reality of why the bill is important and why it is important for us to deal with the poppy crop and the drug trade.

Let us look at South America and Colombia where cocoa is produced. Colombia is the primary cocaine producer in the world. The United States spends $800 million a year in its so-called war against drugs. It is a war that will never be won.

Organized crime gangs and terrorist groups are the ones that feed off the products of cocaine, the FARC, the ELN, the paramilitary. Those groups are not ideological groups. They are organized crime groups, organized militias, that make money from the drug trade. Interestingly enough, those groups in South American are also attached to al-Qaeda. They are all connected again to what we are talking about here, which is trade in money laundering, the trade in various products.

Another point I want to talk about is gems. If we look at west Africa and countries such as Sierra Leone and Liberia, where people live in abject poverty, diamonds can be found on the ground.

One will find in these areas organized crime gangs working with various local warlords, so to speak, in order to take those diamonds, pay a small amount of money and earn huge profits from them. The reason why diamonds are used is that they are very easy to move around. They are very difficult to track. It is very easy to sell them for very high amounts of money, with huge profit margins.

That is what these organized crime gangs rely on. They rely on huge profit margins on products that can be bought and sold very easily to make the large amounts of money that are used in their nefarious activities.

According to the police, the most effective way to deal with these issues and with organized crime gangs, which I would put at the forefront for us domestically, is to cut the money supply out from underneath them. That is what this bill does.

My colleague articulated a number of our party's concerns with the bill. It is not that we oppose the bill. We would like to strengthen it.

What the United States did was very bright. The Americans adopted something called the RICO amendments, the racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations charges. What they recognized is that the best and easiest way to undermine organized crime gangs is to go after the money. If we go after the money, we weaken them.

When the Liberals were in government we actually put together RICO-like amendments for our country. We have proceeds of crime legislation. I think it needs to be strengthened and I would encourage the government to look at it to ensure that we have the ability to take away those resources.

I will give members one example. There is one thing that can be done. If people have made vast sums of money and have been charged and convicted of organized criminal activity, then the onus should be upon their shoulders to prove that their large wealth was actually generated from honest, law-abiding means. If we actually make the change that the police have requested, then we will be able to go a long way in removing the resources that tend to continue to circulate through organized criminal activities.

Getting back to trafficking in gemstones, one of the things the Liberals put together, and which the government should look at, is the Kimberley process. Through the Kimberley process, it was the first time we were able to deal with blood diamonds. Not only diamonds are addressed, but other semi-precious gemstones that can be easily trafficked are as well. We have to do a better job of strengthening the Kimberley process so we are able to ensure that legal gemstones are traded, bought and sold but that we stop the illegal trade in so-called blood diamonds and other gemstones.

It is critically important that this is dealt with, because countries like Liberia, Sierra Leone and Angola will never be able to get on their feet unless those natural resources are actually used and bought and sold legally, with the moneys poured back into the countries that produce them. In that way, these countries can build up their primary infrastructure, health care and education for the benefit of the people. If that does not happen, the people of these countries will continue to live in abject poverty and will never be able get out of their current poverty cycle.

The other issue relates to oil and what is called bunkering. What is happening now in west Africa from Angola to Nigeria is that oil is extracted, but ships come alongside where the oil is produced and a certain percentage of the oil is put onto these ships and disappears. Oil is bought and sold illegally and those moneys can then be used to fund terrorist activities. It is a very lucrative area that is not explored, but unless we deal with this, it is going to be a major problem.

A lot of those moneys wind up in Swiss bank accounts and in other areas where the tax regimes are not as transparent as they are in countries such as ours. These regimes are very opaque even though they are those of western countries. I would encourage the government to work with other countries that currently have opaque tax regimes, to put together and establish agreement on a rules based mechanism and standard in which we could have more transparent tracking of these moneys as they wind themselves inexorably through our current international financial mechanisms.

Again I want to emphasize that a failure to do this will ensure that we will never ever get a handle on organized crime gangs, organized criminal activity, and terrorism, because these three areas rely on these transactions, on taking a product that is sometimes illegal, like narcotics and other illegal drugs, selling it for a vast profit and then laundering those moneys through legal means.

That is why Bill C-25 is so important. That is why my party is supporting it to go to committee so that we will be able to make amendments to strengthen those areas that we feel need to be strengthened.

It is important in dealing with this issue that we also listen very closely to the police. In my province of British Columbia, more than 60% of the illegal activity comes from organized criminal activity, and a large chunk of that comes from the trade in illegal drugs. I know that the government likes the approach of the so-called war against drugs, but I would submit that it is a so-called war that cannot, has not and will not be won. It simply cannot be won.

There are now only two countries in the world that officially support the so-called war on drugs approach: Canada and the United States. If we look south of the border and at the objective parameters on where this war has taken the Americans, what we see is very stark and very frightening. For example, the U.S. has a higher use of both hard and soft drugs. The Americans have higher incarceration rates, higher disease rates, higher death rates, higher sickness rates, higher HIV rates, and higher rates of hepatitis B and hepatitis C, both connected with intravenous drug use.

Why is that so? If the war on drugs was so successful, why has this approach, by any objective parameter, been an abysmal failure? Because it does not work.

So where does it work and how can it work? I think we have to take an approach that marries two groups together. The first is the provisions in this bill that could be strengthened to enable us to track, undermine and undercut the trafficking and money laundering associated with these substances. The other is a rational medical approach toward substance abuse. Where can we find that? We can find that in northern Europe. We can find that in Germany. Frankfurt has an outstanding model. The Swiss have some very good models, as do the Swedes and the Finns.

All of those countries have procedures and integrated approaches to substance abuse that are rooted not in a judicial approach but a medical approach. They involve the following components. They involve harm reduction and, yes, safe injection sites. They involve detox and psychiatric counselling. They involve training programs. They involve housing issues. They involve work.

If we take a look at all those components, we will be able to have an effect because, interestingly enough, many of the people who have substance abuse problems, particularly those we find on our streets, have what we call dual diagnoses. A lot of them also have psychiatric problems, so we cannot disconnect the people who have substance abuse problems from those who have psychiatric problems. They are connected.

To take a judicial approach against those people, I would submit, is not only factually incorrect and will be ineffective, but also it is inhumane. These people do not need to be thrown in jail. They need a medical approach that is going to help them and deal with some of the underlying problems they have, problems that can be dealt with.

I would encourage the government, which in my view has taken a very blunt and very ineffective approach against this problem, to open its eyes, deal with the statistics, look at the facts and adopt those solutions that will have an effect. All of us in all of our communities know that this is an issue that affects all of us, and none of us want to see people get into this death spiral with the use of illegal substances that can ruin lives. All of us have seen on the streets in our communities people whose lives have been destroyed, for many reasons, and it does not have to be so.

It is incumbent upon us to work with the provinces, the managers of health care, in order to be able to use and take that integrated approach. I personally would like to see that in my community, in Victoria on Vancouver Island. I would like us to be able to take on this integrated harm reduction strategy and work on the housing issues, the medical issues, the psychiatric issues, the counselling issues, the skills training issues and the work issues that are at the forefront of solutions to address this problem.

In my city of Victoria, this is a very big problem. The police are looking for help. The police recognize that this is the route to go. The police want help on this. Their hands are open, as are those of the community. I would encourage the government to listen to us and work with us to implement those solutions that will work.

In closing, for the sake of our troops in Afghanistan, for heaven's sake let us start to deal with the issue of the poppy crops in Afghanistan, in a rational approach. The poppy crop can be removed, but we have to replace it with alternative livelihoods. Afghanistan and the southern area used to be a very--

[Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act, October 23rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, when my hon. colleague was in government, I know she did a lot of work in this area and provided a lot of constructive solutions to deal with an issue that the RCMP quite correctly said was a major plague within our country and an impediment to its ability to provide justice to Canadians.

I am very interested to know the conundrum that occurs when we try to pursue this, and that is the issue of privacy rights. We need to have a balance, and the member, quite correctly, brought this up in her speech and delved into it. However, I would be interested in knowing her further views on ensuring there is an adequate balance between the rights of privacy for the individual and the rights of our collective to pursue those individuals who are abusing this right in the interest of criminal activity.

[Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act, October 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my hon. colleague for his excellent speech and for all the hard work he did while he was minister of revenue.

I would ask him to articulate later in the House on some of the things he did while he was in cabinet because a lot of them were repeated by the parliamentary secretary. We notice that the government likes to trot out things that it claims it has done but they are really regurgitations of things that the previous government did. The Pacific Gateway strategy is just one of the more recent examples.

Getting to the root of the issues, one of the issues concerns trafficking. We know that more than 60% of the funds coming through organized crime gangs are funds driven by the illegal trafficking in drugs. We also know the current government does not have a plan to deal with drug policy other than to engage in what is called the war on drugs, which has proven to be an abysmal failure.

I have two questions for my colleague. First, could he again articulate the solution that he championed well in Parliament and on which he did a tremendous amount of work to gain control over the money laundering in our country? Second, could he give us some of his views on the importance of a rational drug policy that works to reduce harm, reduce use and to ultimately reduce the amount of money that is going through organized crime gangs?

[Small Arms and Light Weapons, October 19th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, there is no time on Canada supporting or not supporting the international establishment of an arms trade treaty. That is the point. The vote comes up next week at the United Nations.

I want to ask the Minister of Foreign Affairs this question. The vote is next week and 100 countries have supported the establishment of this treaty. Canada is not on that list.

Will he support this treaty, yes or no, or is his government going to cower under the gun manufacturers lobby and say no?