Keith Martin

[Balanced Refugee Reform Act, April 26th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, this is one of the unknowns and that is why we are actually supporting this bill to go to committee, to ask those tough and cogent questions, to be able to have those answers to ensure the process that is going to be elucidated from this will be both fair and expeditious.

There are a couple of things that can be done.

For those who are claiming refugee status, if they have family already here, then those individuals could be fast-tracked forward. If there is a history of that family coming into Canada under an existing refugee claim, other members of the family, under the same circumstances, can be expedited.

The other one is for children who do not come with the parents and who are not medically examined. If they are not medically examined and do not come with their parents, they have a terrible time trying to get into the country, so this actually fractures the family apart and obviously is extremely unfair and horrible for the family involved. They are fleeing a country but they had to leave a child behind.

One solution for this that the minister may want to take back is to allow those children to be medically examined and to come in through family reunification. That would prevent the dislocation within the families of children being left behind in countries that are in turmoil and ensure that those children are able to be reunited with their parents.

[Balanced Refugee Reform Act, April 26th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to speak to Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Federal Courts Act. This bill came out of a lot of work that was done when the Liberals were in government in 2004 to 2006. We are pleased to see the minister has listened to members from all political parties and has tried to craft the bill in a way that will deal with something that has been a very vexing challenge for any government that has served our nation.

All of us know and hear about the tragic stories and have met refugees who have come to our country. They have endured lengths of time of great uncertainty in their lives, fleeing countries and environments that have been, at best, disconcerting to them and, at worst, life-threatening to them and their families.

The stories of terror and horror that they, their families and loved ones have been subjected to are often difficult for those of us who have lived in our beautiful country to understand or truly empathize with. It is a reality in far too many countries where the milk of human kindness does not run through some of their leaders and they and the people who follow them have inflicted crimes against individuals that are beyond our worst nightmares. Yet the people who members see in their offices have come to our country to find a better life, security, enjoy freedom and, above all else, to be protected and free of the kind of viciousness and brutality that infects too many countries in the world.

The genesis of the bill is to ensure that individuals who come to our country, or are selected to be refugees or apply to be refugees are true refugees in our country and are able to go through a process that enables them to enter into Canada in an expeditious fashion with uncertainties removed. More important, it ensures that individuals who try to take advantage of the system, queue jump and enter our country from other countries with no just cause are not allowed into the country, that they are removed from the system and sent back to their countries of origin expeditiously and that the moneys that come from our citizens are used wisely and responsibly.

The Liberal Party will support the bill going to committee. We do this not because we think it is a perfect bill, it is far from it, but we believe it is important and responsible for us to ensure the bill gets to committee where witnesses can appear and members of the committee from all parties can ask the tough questions, which will allow us to ensure the bill is crafted in the most responsible and effective way possible.

We are, however, concerned that the government took four years to put together a bill such as this, given the fact that Conservatives and their offices, like ours, have heard about the challenges and problems within the immigration and refugee system. It is very important that at the end of the day the bill be rooted in fairness and efficiency.

The reform package incorporates recommendations that have come from the Liberal Party, including the establishment of a refugee appeal process. The government, however, has given no guarantees that the backlog of refugee claims will be addressed any time soon. We are concerned that it will not preserve the fundamental rights of all claimants. We have called for assurances from the government to ensure that the new refugee reform measures will actually reduce the backlog and ensure that we have a balanced refugee system that will ensure individual rights.

Why does the backlog exists? It is important to go back to look at history. The government, for reasons known only to it, has spent an extraordinary amount of time dragging its heels, not filling chronic vacancies that exist within the Immigration and Refugee Board.

In the first place, we feel the appointment process, as has happened in many other areas, has been heavily politicized. By not having a full board has resulted in an explosion of refugee claimants. Right now there is a backlog of 63,000 applicants waiting in line. This has not always been the case. Prior to the Conservatives forming government, 20,000 people were waiting in line. That number has exploded to 63,000 because the government has failed to make appointments in an effective and efficient manner.

This malaise that affects the government's inability or unwillingness to appoint people to boards and to structures that are important to the function of our nation has infected other areas. The Veterans Review and Appeal Board is a good example. This is an important appeal board that resolves challenges facing our veterans. The government has heavily politicized this board, too, by appointing individuals who do not have the competence to handle these complex cases. As a result, we are seeing a backlog in the Veterans Review and Appeal Board and we are seeing that in the immigration and refugee appeal board system.

The government has failed to deal with this big challenge. In the process it has really done a huge disservice to our country and our citizens. The function of these government appointed boards relies on them having a full complement or an effective critical mass of people who can do the job. If these boards do not have that, we see an inefficient execution of the duties of those boards and people suffer as a result.

I want to go back to the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, which has to do with our veterans, veterans who have given to our country, veterans who have served our nation, veterans who need good health to maintain their standard of living. Our veterans have served our country throughout their lives, but when they need assistance and go to the VRAB they find a mess, which results in a lot of them suffering. I appeal to the government to grasp what I have said and fix the system because it cannot continue in its current form.

We need to have a fair and just process that will take the concerns relating to safe country of origin seriously. My colleagues and others in the House have mentioned that. We want to ensure that we have the tools to deter refugee fraud, while at the same time protect bona fide refugees.

One of the major concerns of the Liberal Party with respect to this is ensuring that true refugees come in to Canada, but we deter fraud and weed out those individuals who abuse the system. We need to protect those bona fide refugees who want to come to Canada, sometimes need to come to our country to protect their own lives.

Elements of the bill also seem to be somewhat improvised. The government has committed more than $540 million over five years toward reforms that it wants to implement, and that is a good thing. However, this number was simply not in this month's budget. It comes just after the government announced a freeze on departmental spending.

If the government is committing $540 million to implement these reforms, but is planning to freeze spending, then where is it going to get the money? Is the government going to cut something else? If it is going to cut something else, then what is it going to cut? We only have silence from the government. The responsible thing for the government to do would be to let the Canadian public and the House know where it will get the money to do this.

Canadians also cannot afford the gross mismanagement that occurred last year when the government took a really ham-fisted approach toward Mexico and the Czech Republic by putting visa restrictions on the two countries. It seemed like a band-aid solution and a knee-jerk response to a spike in refugee claims from these two countries. We know what the government's intent was, and do not dispute it for a second, but the way in which it did this was extremely damaging to our country.

By announcing out of the blue visa restrictions on Mexico, with no consultation, for example, the government cost many companies hundreds of millions of dollars. Language training groups, tourism companies and others relied on being able to attract people from Mexico. They had contracts signed for them to come to Canada so they could learn English, which has happened for a long time. That was stopped cold. There was a great deal of uncertainty. Many people's lives and businesses were ruined by this glib, offhand implementation of visa restrictions last year.

You and I know, Madam Speaker, from living on Vancouver Island, that this affected quite number of businesses in our communities and cost them millions of dollars. In fact, some of them went out of business. It was completely unnecessary. As I said before, I fully understand where this was coming from with respect to the spike in claimants. We know some of the rationale behind that and some of the legitimate concerns the government had with respect to that spike.

However, our contention is there was a better way of doing this. I would posit for the government that if it considers doing something like that in the future, it should consult with the businesses involved that could be hurt by this. It should listen to a number of the companies that benefit from bilateral relations with these countries. Their concerns from an industrial perspective and an economic perspective need to be listened to.

I would submit that listening to them would enable the government to come out with a better series of solutions to deal with the very real challenge they were faced with at that point in time. We are certainly willing to work with the government to provide it with information and ideas on this. I know it has its sources to utilize, too.

This is a little background. In 2004 the former Liberal government implemented changes to the appointment process to the Immigration and Refugee Board. These changes included an advisory panel made up of a number of individuals involved in the refugee process, which screened all applicants for the IRB.

When the current government came to power, it delayed appointments to the board, while it reviewed the process, which was its right to do. However, then it structured the system so the government could simply appoint half the people as members of the panel. It held off on appointments to do that. Rather than pursue a course based on merit, it has pursued a course based much more on politics. As I said before, this delay caused a massive spike in the backlog, from 20,000 to 63,000 now.

We know our folks at Citizenship and Immigration Canada work very hard. The minister knows this very well. They are tireless and all of us try to work very hard in our constituencies. My staff, Jeff and Vikki, in my Victoria office work very hard to try to resolve these issues in a timely fashion. It takes up a lot of their time.

The members and staff at Citizenship and Immigration Canada work very hard, but I would submit for the minister that he would be well-served to listen to the on the ground members of his ministry, those who work in the trenches and who do the person-to-person work. He would be well advised to ask them directly how he could change the system in a more effective way. In doing so, he would be getting information from those staff members who work on the ground and have to deal with the challenges every day.

He would also be wise to ask the tireless individuals who work for us as members of Parliament in our constituency offices about what they face. They have some very good ideas and solutions that the minister could utilize to ensure we have a better immigration system.

By listening to his staff, the staff who work in our offices and those who have gone through the immigration and refugee process, I think he would have three populations that could provide him with a lot of constructive solutions to make a better bill, one that would serve Canadians, immigrants and refugees very well.

Because of the changes the government introduced in terms of the appointment process, the chair of the board resigned and alluded to the fact that the politicization of the board was a factor in the chair's departure.

In the March 2009 status report of the Auditor General of Canada, chapter 2, Ms. Fraser noted her concerns regarding the timely and efficient appointments and reappointments of decision makers to the IRB. Ms. Fraser said very clearly that this process and how this is being done is something that is of great concern to her.

In addition to the growing backlog of applications, the recent spike in claims from certain countries has resulted in an ad hoc method of visa restrictions to constrict application volume. As I said before, we saw this in Mexico and the Czech Republic. We certainly hope that the government does not have a repeat performance on this because what would happen is that we would see simply another choke point in the system that would not serve things well at all.

The bill certainly provides a lot of further flexibility to the minister to deal with unusual spikes in refugee claims from democratic source countries and streamlining the removal process for unsuccessful applicants. We certainly support the streamlining of the removal of unsuccessful applicants. Right now the situation is actually quite grim in the sense that it takes an excessive amount of time for individuals to be processed.

I think the bill should be commended that it proposes changes to every stage in the in-Canada process. Currently people with successful claims are waiting an average of 19 months for a decision, and it takes an average of 4.5 years to process and remove an unsuccessful claimant. Obviously this is unacceptable, and we want to make sure that when the bill goes to committee the process that comes out of this is going to ensure that the wait time for individuals is going to be less than 19 months. That is a very cruel length of time, and the time it takes to actually process and remove an unsuccessful claimant at 4.5 years is also completely unfair to Canadians.

Some of the things the government wants to do at this point in time include having an information-gathering period, which currently is 28 days. It wants to shorten this to eight days. That seems like wishful thinking on its part, and I submit that is really not where the big backlog is that is causing a problem. There are other areas that can be much lengthier.

For example, the first-level decision phase is done by a government-appointed counsel appointee and is done within 18 months. Under the new process the first-level decisions would be made within the IRB within 60 days. That is a welcome objective, because if we could shorten that period of time from 18 months to 60 days, we would certainly have a much more efficient and effective system. However, we want to ensure that the individual, who is making these claims and will be the subject of these investigations, will be treated fairly under the system.

What is important also is the appeal process. Primary concern for us is that the introduction of a refugee appeal division must ensure that the first-level decisions that are going to be conducted will be done in a way that protects procedural fairness and fundamental justice sufficiently to avoid the RAD's becoming another bottleneck in the process.

If we look at the U.K.'s example, and that would be a worthy one to do, the U.K. has had a number of significant challenges in implementing this. In fact, in its process it has had a huge backlog of up to half a million asylum cases as of 2008 and it can take, get this, it is quite remarkable, 10 to 18 years to resolve. That is quite remarkable.

I know my time is ending, but I want to offer one other suggestion concerning refugees. Their children have a great deal of difficulty and there is a remarkable project called the Sage Youth project run by a remarkable immigrant called Tamba Dhar. She did this in Toronto. Essentially she provided children with mentors from their own community who would empower these children who may not have had good family situations. They provided solid adult anchors for those children within their own communities. I strongly encourage the government to work with the provinces to take a look at what Tamba Dhar has done with the Sage Youth program because the outcome is that these children were able to stay in school. None of them has run afoul of the law. They were not taking drugs. They had better outcomes. They had better employment outcomes and better educational outcomes.

I look forward to any questions.

[World Malaria Day, April 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, April 25 is World Malaria Day, a time to remember that more than two million people a year, many of them children, die of this disease.

Tackling this scourge must involve strengthening developing countries' primary health care systems and the selective spraying of DDT. When the latter was done in South Africa, it showed a 90% reduction in malaria cases, with no effect on the environment.

This June, as host to the G8 and G20 summits, Canada must play a role in leading the world's richest countries to invest in the primary health care systems of developing countries. This will enable us to treat most of the world's major killers, pneumonia, gastroenteritis, tuberculosis, malaria, HIV-AIDS and malnutrition, and it will reduce maternal and childhood deaths.

Our government cannot and must not lose this opportunity to have the most profound impact on the lives of the world's poorest. Let us use April 25 as a time to double our efforts to tackle malaria and the world's major killers.

[Sébastien's Law (Protecting the Public from Violent Young Offenders), April 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has been the leader in the House on FASD and on alcohol-related problems in pregnancy. He deserves many kudos for his hard work.

Some 40% to 50% of the people in jail suffer from FASD and there is nothing in the bill relating to FASD. The government has no plans to deal with half the prison population on one of the most important antecedent contributors to why they engaged in criminal activity. The average IQ of somebody with FASD is 67 to 70. Why is the government not dealing with this? It seems inconceivable it would miss half the prison population. The Conservatives have been silent on this issue all through their tenure. This cannot continue to be ignored.

While FASD cannot be treated, there are things that can be done to modify the behaviour. David Gerry and his team in Victoria have the only adult-based FASD program in British Colombia. It enables those people to manage their lives in a way that they will be productive, effective and engage in society. Those kinds of programs need to be embraced and adopted.

Again, prevention is priority number one. My colleague is absolutely right. It is inconceivable to me why the government refuses to deal with that which will work to prevent children from being born with FASD.

[Sébastien's Law (Protecting the Public from Violent Young Offenders), April 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, that was an excellent question from my colleague.

Many of our citizens are not aware that the government is actually closing prison farms. People who are incarcerated had a chance to work on this farms to develop skills sets, to develop discipline and structure that they may not have had before. By closing these farms the government is preventing people who are incarcerated from building the skills they need. When these people get out, and they will get out as we know, it prevents them from reintegrating into society.

It is unfathomable and incomprehensible that the government would close down these farms and take away the opportunity for those who are in jail to build new skills. The government has never given any justification whatsoever as to why it is closing the farms. It needs to explain to the Canadian public and the House why it is doing this.

I want to refer to the evidence regarding what the Perry pre-school study 40-year retrospective analysis showed. The crime statistics show real differences. Compared with the control group, fewer pre-schoolers, the ones who were involved in the Perry pre-school program, have gone on to be arrested. Fewer of them have gone on to be arrested for violent crimes, drug-related crimes or property crimes. About half as many have been sentenced to prison or jail. Pre-school also seems to have affected their decisions about family life. More of the males are married. Many of them raise their own children. These men report fewer complaints about their health and are less likely to use drugs.

These are all objectives congruent with what the government wants to do. Why on earth is it standing in the way of these programs that have proven to accomplish that which the government claims it is interested in, and certainly our society and our citizens are interested in?

[Sébastien's Law (Protecting the Public from Violent Young Offenders), April 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my Bloc Québécois colleague's question.

We are eternally hopeful that members of the government can walk and chew gum at the same time because on this issue they need to be able to do both.

We all agree that appropriate sentencing should occur. My colleague brought up an important point, that the government is not looking at crime prevention and rehabilitation.

I focused on crime prevention in my remarks. This is not esoteric. There are fact-based, scientifically-based interventions that are effective at reducing crime and save taxpayers' money. The government should work with the provinces to adopt these interventions, but it is not.

Conversely, the failure to do that would not have much effect on reducing crime, protecting our citizens, helping victims of crime, or preventing people from being victimized by criminal activities. Therein lies the tragic Achilles heel of the government. The Conservative government is simply not willing and not prepared to do that which has been proven to accomplish the goals that society wants us to achieve. The government has missed that opportunity so far.

We are hopeful that government members will work with us in committee to implement solutions that will work.

[Sébastien's Law (Protecting the Public from Violent Young Offenders), April 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak to Bill C-4. We have gone down this road multiple times in the past.

It has been quite frustrating for some of us who have been around a long time in that the House tends to persist on taking a certain course of action. We need to be intelligent and use the existing data and information that we have in our country and around the world to do what our obligation is, which is to ensure that: first, we support legislation that protects innocent civilians; second, we do what is necessary to prevent criminal activity from occurring; third, we support victims and their families; and fourth, we ensure that those who commit crimes will go to jail or pay the price that the state determines and pay the price that society deems relevant to the crimes they have committed.

What I find frustrating is that we could be implementing many things if we were to deal with the facts. Unfortunately, the government tends to paint itself as a law and order party but doing it in such a way that it is not smart on crime. Rather, it takes a very narrow focus on trying to show that it is the toughest on crime.

However, the law of unintended consequences can occur down the road if solutions are implemented that do not truly address the criminal activity and we will not be able to achieve those four objectives that I mentioned at the beginning.

I think it would be wise in our stance in the beginning to support the bill at second reading so it can go to committee where we can bring in the people who have a lot of knowledge. Many people in the House have a lot of experience. Members on the government side and on our side have long been involved in the issue of youth crime.

My colleague from British Columbia talked about her deep and tragic personal circumstances, as did her husband. We hope to bring that kind of expertise to committee in order to address those solutions that will deal with this situation in a sensible and responsible fashion.

What we ought to do is look at the current statistics in terms of youth crime rates in Canada. In 2006, 6,885 youth crime rate Criminal Code offences per 100,000 people in Canada. That number declined to 6,783 in 2007 and to 6,454 in 2008. If we go back to 1991, that number was 9,126 children per 100,000, and that was the youth crime rate per 100,000 people in Canada at that time.

If we look at the homicide rates, the most extreme of offences, in Canada we have around 600 homicides per year. About 55 to 60 of those homicides are committed by youth every year, and that has been consistent. There has been an up-take recently, and much of that has been attributed to children involved in gangs, but for the most part, if we look back over the last 10 to 15 years, we see that the homicide rates by children have remained essentially static over the last 15 years.

What can we do? I had a chance to be in Vancouver a few weeks ago at the University of British Columbia faculty of medicine with Dr. Julio Montaner and others. A very interesting neuro scientist was describing the following. If we ask ourselves why people take up criminal activity, why they get involved in taking drugs or why they get involved in behaviours that are destructive to themselves and others, the scientists found the following. They looked at the brain, which has two major sections. One section involves our emotional response to activities that are thrill seeking. The other part of our brain, which is called the prefrontal cortex, keeps that part of the brain in check. It is the part of the brain that tells us that it is not a good idea to go out and shoot ourselves up with heroin, to drive a car really fast or to beat somebody up. That part of the brain is essentially the control mechanism on the other part of the brain that takes a more emotional response to issues.

With infant children, the connection between that part of the brain, the emotional response and the prefrontal cortex that checks it, is not well developed. This is why children behave in a more emotional response than a more rational response. As they get older through adolescence, connections happen, tracks develop, neurons connect between those two areas and in that process the prefrontal cortex has a more profound ability to check that emotional part of the brain.

What happens if that child is subjected to violence, sexual abuse, poor nutrition or bad parenting? It has been proven that those neurologic connections between the limbic system and parts of the brain controlling emotional response and the prefrontal cortext do not develop very well. They happen slowly and imperfectly. For children who are brought up in a loving, caring environment and subjected to good parenting, where they have proper nutrition, literacy, those connections develop very well. This means for children who are subjected early on to a bad environment of sexual abuse or violence, the connections do not develop very well, which makes those children much more liable to participate in taking of drugs, violence and criminal activity.

How can we prevent that from happening? How can we ensure that children have the proper neurologic development in those most formative years?

Let us take a look at the longest study in the world called the Perry Preschool program in Ypsilanti, Michigan. It studied a group of kids at risk and followed those children through 40 years of their life. The evidence found that by ensuring those children received good preschool programs, they were more able to complete school. There was less dependence on welfare. There were much higher rates of income. In turn, their children had better outcomes.

This is an important study because it proves that if we ensure children grow up in an environment that is loving, caring, free of being subjected to violence, sexual abuse and other horrific situations, those neurologic connections develop well. As a result of that, there is a profound impact in preventing and reducing crime and ensuring that children have the best outcomes in their lives.

These kids had better educations. They made more money. There was less dependence on welfare. Also, and this is interesting, for an investment of just $15,166, that is $17 for every $1 invested, there is a saving to taxpayers of $250,000; that is a 17:1 savings.

Why is the government not working with the provinces to do what has been proven? Why is the government not looking at the 40 year retrospective study, among a collection of other studies, a study that concludes that good early preschool programs and working with parents and children, which can be done very inexpensively, can have the most profound and positive impact on the future of those children and therefore on the future of society?

The cost to incarcerate a child is $100,000 a year. I used to work in an adult jail as a correctional officer, when I was putting myself through school and university. I also worked in both adult and juvenile jails as a physician. I have seen horrific stories. For example, as a physician, I attended to two girls who were in there early teens. They had been put on the street by their mother, who I happened to know through my alcohol and drug work in emergency. She was a known IV drug abuser. Her children were prostituting themselves so she could pay for her IV drug problem. They thought what they were doing was fun.

I read in the newspaper that one of them was found dead in a ditch. The other one I saw when I was doing my rounds in the pediatric ward. She had suffered a massive stroke caused by her drug abuse.

I remember these two little girls as lovely young children who probably had a whole hopeful life ahead of them. However, because of their environment they were stuck in, through no fault of their own, one ended up dead and the other had a massive stroke. That is the fate of too many children in our society.

These are entirely preventable problems. Therefore, why is the government not do something about it? Why does it not look at the Perry Preschool program? Why does it not work with the provinces and implement those solutions, which are proven to work to reduce crime, to save lives, to save money? The government should be doing that.

This brings me to drug policy. Why does the government not do what is necessary to deal with drug problems? Many of the youth criminal acts are attached to drug addictions. Many of the break and enters and the assaults are carried out by people addicted to drugs.

What I find disappointing is the government, instead of embracing things that work, takes these initiatives to court. For example, there is the Insite program in Vancouver, the needle injection program. It has been proven by Dr. Julio Montaner, Dr. Thomas Kerr, and others to save money, to save lives and to reduce diseases. Why does the government not support that?

Instead, the government has taken that proven medical initiative to court, to block people and to prevent them from having a program that will save their lives. What kind of a government does that? It is utterly immoral, unconscionable and unjustifiable.

Furthermore, why is not it look at the NAOMI project, the North American Opiate Management Initiative? St. Paul's Hospital looked at 350 of the toughest, most difficult to reach IV narcotic abusers and randomized them into three groups. One group was given heroin IV, one group Dilaudid, which is another narcotic, and the final group an oral narcotic, methadone. Because it gave those people the drugs under medical supervision, it severed the tie between the addicts and their criminal activities to get the money they needed to pay for their drugs.

Why does the government not support communities to have access to NAOMI projects across the country? That would be the worst news for the real parasites in this equation, the organized crime gangs, which are the only ones profiteering off the status quo. It would undermine the financial underpinnings of organized crime. It would enable these hard to reach individuals to get into our medical community, which would help them get off drugs, get back with their families, get back to work and get their lives back together. We would save money and reduce costs in any number of ways. That would be smart judicial initiatives by working the justice system, the health care system and the provinces.

Do we hear anything like that from the government? No. There is deafening silence. It is absolutely inconceivable to me why the government does not adopt those things that have been proven. NAOMI and Insite were not something pulled out of someone's ear. These are scientific-based, rigorously peer reviewed assessments of an initiative and an experiment by St. Paul's, in Vancouver, with some of the toughest, most difficult and hard to reach communities.

Then there is fetal alcohol syndrome. I have some news for the government. Posters will not do it. Fetal alcohol syndrome is the leading cause of preventable brain damage in babies. It is estimated that 40% to 50% of the people in jail have FASD. This is a silent scourge in our country.

Why does the government not work with people like David Gerry in Victoria, who has an adult FASD clinic, and others to support something that not only treats but, more important, prevents? We have to get women in their prenatal stage to ensure they will not be in an environment where they drink. They need to understand that this is catastrophic to a child.

The other thing the government should look at is communities at risk. Tamba Dhar, who is a friend of mine, runs a program called Sage Youth. Tamba is a wonderful woman. She is an immigrant to our country who did well and decided that she wanted to give back to Canada, so she developed a program called Sage Youth in Toronto. She has worked, on a shoestring budget, with higher-risk refugees in Canada to ensure that those children have a mentor and that they have essentially an early program. The kids are subjected to a proper, caring environment where their basic needs are met. She has done this through the prism of literacy.

We know that literacy and enabling kids to read or be read to is one of the most profound and positive impacts children will have in their lives. The federal government could work with the provinces to encourage parents to bring their kids to the library once a week and let them roam for an hour or two. It costs nothing and it is a remarkable, simple and easy way to get kids engaged in reading. On average, kids spend 40 hours a week in in front of computers, playing computer games or watching television.

That has a profound impact not only on the development of children's brains in a negative way, but it also contributes to the epidemic of childhood obesity, which will have a massive effect on cardiovascular problems in our country. In fact, quite shockingly, the youngest generation of children today, for the first time in the history of Canada, will be the first generation that is expected to have a shorter life span than their parents. Imagine that?

Those problems will be, for the most part, cardiovascular problems, which are preventable early on. We need to get the kids up, out and active, playing games, free play and also engaged in literacy by bringing the parents and teachers together, particularly in schools. Imagine if the feds were to work with the provinces to encourage parents to come to the schools for one hour a week, so the teacher could work with both of the parents and their children. They could have one hour courses on literacy, the importance of play, appropriate nutrition. These things will have a profound impact if we bring parents and children together. The common unit for that is in the schools. Yet we hear nothing from the government on this.

The government likes to talk about being supportive of the police. Why then does it not do what the police has asked? The gun registry is a case in point. We all know that law-abiding long gun owners are not the problem. They are law-abiding citizens through and through. However, what we have heard very clearly from police officers is that they need the gun registry for their protection. How on earth does the government justify to itself and to our society that it will remove something police officers feel they need for their protection? Above all, that is an overriding responsibility of ours. Our police officers do the bidding of governments and the state to protect us. It is our moral duty to do what can to ensure their protection.

Bill C-4 is an opportunity for the government to build on what the Liberal government did in 2003. It made some profound and positive changes to the Youth Criminal Justice Act. However, we need to move forward on that. We need to adopt those solutions that will ensure that criminals spend their time behind bars and away from our citizenry. They will also have the chance to rehabilitate and deal with their problems.

The government has an opportunity to adopt those solutions that can truly prevent crime and save money. If the government fails to do this, it is abrogating its responsibility to society, it is not using its intelligence and is simply trying to use its legislation as a way to paint a very shallow political picture to the public, instead of doing that what is important for the public good.

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, April 12th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I am not an expert on tax havens. I would personally advocate for the government to simplify our tax system. We desperately need that.

Briefly, on the environmental side, the public ought to know that in the budget the federal government has given powers to the environment minister to basically circumvent the type of environmental assessments that we need on large energy projects. Environmental assessments that were needed before do not have to happen and the assessments of these energy projects have been taken away from the environmental assessment board. It is absolutely extraordinary that this has happened. It has led to a lot of uncertainty and concern that projects do not have to go through the proper environmental assessments, and that change was made directly by the government in the budget.

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, April 12th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, we are asking the government, but if members would like to trade places with us we would be more than happy to take their place any day and do a better job.

On the health care side there are a couple of easy things the government could do. First, set up a centre for best practices. Second, where are those models? Let us look at Germany, France, Sweden or Norway. All four of those, and there are 17 in total, have better outcomes at a lower price. All of them have mixed systems. All of them use IT tools in a way that we do not even imagine here.

Rather than the federal government sticking its head in the sand and hiding behind the fact that constitutionally the management of health care falls under the realm of the provinces, why do the Conservatives not act like leaders, convene the provincial health ministers, work as partners, and come up with a working group on health care with senior ADMs and deputy ministers to actually roll up their sleeves and meet on an ongoing basis to implement the solutions that the provinces need?

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, April 12th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, there are few bills that are more important to Canadians than the budget bill. The government has the responsibility to put forth a budget bill that meets the needs of our country for today and the future.

Unfortunately, the budget bill the government put forward was one that simply ebbs and flows with the political change of tides that takes place in our country. Rather than trying to think of the needs of our citizens and the future of our country, the government has merely put forth a bill that shoots very low in an effort to try to curry 42% of the voters it needs to secure a majority. This, in my view, is a highly irresponsible act on the part of the government and violates one of its most fundamental duties to our nation.

Throughout history, we have seen that in good times the government actually spent right down to the cusp of what the budget allowed. In fact, it burned through the cushion that was put forth by former Prime Minister Paul Martin and in doing so, put our country on the cusp of a deficit situation. We all knew we were going into hard economic times and we warned the Prime Minister not to do this, but, of course, he demonstrated once again his tin ear and did not listen.

As a result of the situation, today we have a $56 billion deficit. It is true this is not all on the shoulders of the government, but certainly that deficit would be much less if the government had acted responsibly in good times. In fact, it did not and in this we all lose.

Compounding the situation with the recession was the fact that we have lost over 500,000 full-time jobs. Today there are 1.5 million Canadians unemployed. As I said earlier, the nature of work has changed so that many people are being re-employed into the workforce but in part-time jobs or as self-employed workers, which means they have lost much of the security they had before and, indeed, many of the benefits. In fact, over 1.5 million more Canadians do not share the benefits that other Canadians have now or had in the past.

On top of this, there are a couple of factors. One is that we have a strong dollar, which is a good thing for those who shop in the United States but in other ways it is going to hurt exports.

The other thing is that we have an aging population. An aging population and the increasing costs of our medical system is the gorilla at the dinner table. We simply will not be able to prepare for our future in an adequate way, to have the economy we need or have the social programs we desire unless we get our health care costs under control, costs that will be incurred as our population ages.

Today there are four workers for every retiree. In a short 15 years that is going to change and there will be 2.5 workers for every retired person. That is a staggering change that our country has never seen before and will not see again. The fact that the government is not debating or discussing this in any sensible fashion means that it is going to cause incredible pain and hardship.

There is an increased demand for moneys to pay for social programs. That gap will simply widen and widen so that those who are least privileged in our society are the ones who will be hurt the most. This will be a direct failure on the part of the government because it knows full well that this is on the horizon. It is entirely on its shoulders to act in a leadership role, to work with the rest of us and the provinces to ensure this is dealt with. It is those who are least privileged and most vulnerable who are going to be hurt in our society. Ignoring this is absolutely criminal. Health care costs, as I said before, are extraordinary.

What did the government do in the budget? It touted its deficit reduction platform. What was that? In effect, it was $17 billion in cuts over five years, along with a fantasy growth rate of about 6%. The government says we are going to grow out of this. The fact of the matter is that we are not.

Once again, the government is actually blowing smoke in the eyes of the Canadian public, giving them a line that is simply not credible at all.

The other thing it did was make cuts. What kind of cuts? It eliminated 245 positions. What it is not telling the Canadian public is that most of those positions have not been filled, were not filled, and are not going to be filled. Again, these are mystery cuts that are taking place.

The government, in other words, does not have a credible plan to get the books balanced once again. It should take a leaf out of what happened in the mid-90s, when then-Prime Minister Chrétien and his finance minister, Paul Martin, did get our country's books back in order. I think the Prime Minister and his finance minister should take a leaf out of that book and get our financial house back in order.

I could point to a couple of things that we absolutely must do. The government must work on health care. It must bring costs under control. In order to do that, it should take a leaf out of what is being done in the province of Quebec and indeed will be done in Ontario, and probably in British Columbia, our province. The government must allow the provinces to modernize.

Seventeen of the top 20 health care systems in the world are in Europe. They pay less and get better health outcomes. We should be asking why that is so. We should be adopting those best practices here in Canada. The feds control the overarching guidelines in terms of allowing or disallowing the provinces to modernize. The federal government must sit down with the ministers. It must use its convening power to sit down with the provincial ministers of health and say, “Look, this is our problem, this is a problem of our nation. We simply cannot allow our health care system, the difference between the demand for our health care and the supply of resources to continue to widen”.

It is already widening and it continues to worsen every single year. The government must sit down with the provincial health ministers to allow the provinces to modernize and to implement solutions, including IT solutions that are necessary to streamline our system.

The other thing that we need to do is on the productivity side. Although constitutionally education falls into the realm of the provinces, there is nothing that prevents the government from convening the provincial ministers of education to work on national standards, national outcomes, so that students, regardless of where they are, will be able to receive the quality education that they deserve.

This is crucially important because other countries are doing this as well, even ones with a similar political structure, like Australia. Without our students being trained in the economic needs of the future, we will have people without jobs and jobs without people. That is what is going to happen. The only way to fix that is if the feds work with the provinces to meet the needs of our economy with the training capabilities of our provinces.

Also, it is crucially important that we are able to project in the future to know what those niches are that we can capitalize on. One we could do is shipbuilding because there is a very interesting opportunity in our province of British Columbia to develop an integrated shipbuilding strategy that would enable us to capitalize on high-paying, high-tech jobs in the future.

The feds also need to work with the coalition of the willing in terms of the provinces. Just because one or a couple of provinces may not be willing to choose to work together, it does not mean that the feds cannot work with those who are willing to actually sit down at a table and implement the solutions we need, including the elimination of interprovincial trade barriers and the labour mobility issues, which restrict our economy. Without this, we will simply be falling further and further behind with respect to other economies.

One of the banks, and I think it was the TD Bank, did a very interesting study. It looked at 20 years from now and where would Canada's economy be in the world. Right now we have the ninth largest economy. Twenty years from now we will be back around 26th in the world. We do not need to accept that. We do not need to have that. That is not, by any stretch, a fait accompli.

In closing there are a couple of other things. On the pension issue, we will have fewer and fewer people who will be working, as I said, compared to the retired folk. We can be intelligent about incentivizing people to continue to work after the age of 65, perhaps by giving them a percentage of their CPP tax free. It is important that people who choose to work can work, and we should not put barriers in their way.

There are many things we could talk about here. There are many opportunities the government can actually embrace for our economy, social programs, and for the future of our nation. We want to work with the government. We compel the government and we plead with it to take this very seriously, and not to come up with budgetary measures such as this which do not serve the public well at all.