Leon Benoit

[First Nations, Métis and Inuit War Veterans, April 5th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. parliamentary secretary completely ignored the question that I asked and the subject we are dealing with. He spent most of his time referring to a program which does allow for discretionary decisions to be made by the minister or agents of the minister. That is not what I was asking about. I was asking specifically about the allegations that have been laid against the minister by people from within the department, by people who worked on her campaign and by some of those who are allegedly involved with the special favours.

These allegations raise serious questions as to whether the former immigration minister, the member for York West, attracted to her campaign individuals who were seeking special preference from the minister and whether special preference was in fact extended in one form or another. That is the question. I would appreciate it if the parliamentary secretary would answer it.

[First Nations, Métis and Inuit War Veterans, April 5th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to follow up on a question that was asked by me on December 13. It was responded to by the Minister for Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.

The question was regarding the former minister of citizenship and immigration, who has since removed herself from that position. It had to do with a long list of allegations regarding her behaviour and involving a list of issues that I will outline briefly. I cannot get to all of them because I have a very limited amount of time, but I will explain a little about the problem and I would appreciate a response from the government on this issue.

The issue is one of whether the minister has breached the conflict of interest and post-employment code for public office holders which was put in place by the Prime Minister. It should be adhered to by all ministers. Some very serious allegations have been made. By the way, the situation has shed a very negative shadow on Canada's immigration and refugee system, because if the favouritism in which it is alleged the minister took part is fact, then the impartiality of the department is not only in question, we know that it is not there and the political favours are in fact put into the system where they should not be.

Statements have been made by officials from the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, by former staffers of the minister's office, by some who participated in her re-election campaign, all of which have been reported in the media. Therefore, this is not information that should have been hard for the government to get when I asked for it. Based on that input, we have some really serious concerns regarding the abuse of power by the former minister, the member for York West.

It was alleged that the former minister, just three days before the federal election, granted a temporary residence and work permit to Alina Balaican, enabling her to avoid the normal process upon the expiry of her original temporary work permit to apply for landed immigrant status from outside the country. Ms. Balaican was a volunteer in the minister's re-election campaign.

We have a long list of other allegations that were made, including the widely reported one about Harjit Singh, who has since been deported. He made allegations about providing pizza for the minister's staff.

I would like the government to respond to these and other allegations regarding the minister's behaviour. The member for Calgary—Nose Hill has sent a letter to the Ethics Commissions asking him to deal with this, but we should not have to wait for that. The government should explain to the people of Canada why this happened and what the government intends to do about it. That is what I am looking for from the government.

[Petitions, March 24th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to present this very important petition today from constituents who say that on fundamental matters of social policy the decision should be made by Parliament, not by the courts, on those issues, and that whereas a majority of Canadians support the definition of marriage as the voluntary union of a single unmarried male and female, it is the duty of Parliament to ensure that marriage is defined by Canadians as Canadians wish it to be defined. Therefore, they petition Parliament to use all legislative and administrative measures, including invoking section 33 of the charter, to ensure that marriage does remain the union of one man and one woman.

[Petitions, March 23rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to present petitions on behalf of constituents.

The petitioners state that on important fundamental social policy issues Parliament should make the decisions, not the courts. They further state that the current legal definition of marriage as the voluntary union of a single male and a single female should be left in place. They petition Parliament to use all possible legislative and administrative measures, including invoking section 33 of the charter, to preserve the current definition of marriage.

[Committees of the House, March 23rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to present the sixth report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates regarding the very limited time that was allowed for consideration of the supplementary estimates B earlier this year.

If the House gives its consent, I intend to move concurrence in the sixth report later this day.

[Liberal Party of Canada, March 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I attended two very different events which took place in Montreal over the past four days.

The first was the Gomery inquiry into Liberal corruption and the other was the exciting Conservative Party of Canada founding policy convention; same city, two entirely different visions of how this great country should be governed.

The Gomery inquiry demonstrates the Liberal government's view that it is okay to use hard earned taxpayer money to pay off friends who will then funnel some of that money back to the Liberal Party who then will use it during election campaigns to make promises to Canadians which it will break.

The Conservative Party convention on the other hand was all about lowering taxes and treating every dollar like it is money held in trust to be carefully spent only if it will make life better for all Canadians, not just Liberals and their political friends.

The obvious choice for Canadians is the Leader of the Opposition's exciting new Conservative vision, not Mr. Dithers and his corrupt Liberal regime.

[Government of Canada, March 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, we really have to wonder how the Liberals decide what issues to focus on and why they refuse to deal with truly important issues like the serious problems facing farmers today. I just cannot figure it out.

What is their agenda? First they want to spend $5 billion on a national day care system because apparently they believe that government can look after kids better than parents. Second, they want to legalize marijuana. They want to legalize prostitution. They want to bring in same sex marriage. That is their agenda. Who asked for any of these things? Where does this agenda come from? Their priorities are all screwed up.

The government just cannot seem to wrap its mind around the fact that it should be dealing with the extremely important issues facing this country like lowering taxes, making Canada more secure, and dealing with serious agricultural problems that are literally forcing farmers to lose their farms day after day, week after week in this country.

Where are their heads? They simply have to get on the people's agenda.

[Supply, March 10th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Langley.

I am pleased to be speaking to this motion today. I congratulate my Bloc colleague for bringing it forth. It is an important motion, probably well beyond what most people recognize. It is an important part of trying to deal with this serious and growing problem of organized crime.

The motion today is about the government putting forth a bill by May 31, 2005, to amend the Criminal Code by reversing the burden of proof with regard to the proceeds of crime, which is important. This change would require that the accused, once found guilty, not someone who has been charged with being involved in organized crime, would need to demonstrate, on the balance of probabilities, that the his assets were not obtained through involvement in organized crime. I think this is a very reasonable approach to take in this circumstance. It is also an extremely important part of the puzzle to deal with the growing problem of organized crime.

Another important tool that is absolutely needed is much stronger money laundering legislation. Most countries around the world have dealt with this issue much more effectively than we have in this country. The government passed some legislation back in about 2000 but it was a very small first step. It promised to revisit the issue and come up with much stronger legislation on money laundering but it has not done that. Until that is done there is no way to effectively deal with organized crime, although removing the proceeds of crime certainly would help.

The third thing we need to do is to put in place more serious penalties for those who are found guilty of involvement in organized crime. Unfortunately, because of the way the courts interpret our law, which is presented in such a weak fashion, they do not provide the appropriate punishment.

Those are the three main areas that have to be dealt with before we can ever seriously hope to deal with organized crime.

If anyone thinks that organized crime is not a serious and growing problem they are not looking at this in an honest way. I am a member of the NATO parliamentarians. I meet with colleagues from other NATO countries, from Europe and the United States, about three times a year, as well as with about 30 to 40 observer countries, some of which wish to become members of NATO, which is probably the strongest security organization in the history of mankind.

I am on the economic committee with parliamentarians from other NATO countries and one of the topics we often discuss in-depth is the problem of organized crime. We discuss it by looking at the two main problems that organized crime causes. The first is that organized crime is the primary funding source for terrorism in the world today. Until we can deal with organized crime we simply cannot deal with terrorism.

The second problem is that organized crime destabilizes societies more than anything else. When we look at former Soviet bloc countries, many people wonder why they have been so slow to develop a market economy, a democracy and a stable society. The answer is that organized crime controls those countries. Until we can effectively deal with organized crime we will have destabilized countries, such as Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and the list goes on.

Organized crime is a very serious and growing problem in the world today. If anyone thinks that Canada has been spared from organized crime, they too are kidding themselves.

When I was the immigration critic for our party between 1997 and 1999, I had a private meeting with an individual who was very high up in an organization trying to deal with the problem of organized crime in Canada. He told me something that shocked me at that time and still shocks me today. He told me that organized crime was so well-entrenched in our country and growing at a such a remarkable rate, with all the major banks, key positions in the civil service and major police forces having been infiltrated by members of organized crime, that it was extremely difficult to deal with the problem.

The problem we are talking about today and the approach we are taking today is an important step but we also have to deal with this infiltration of our major institutions by members of organized crime.

This person went beyond that statement and made other statements confidentially, which I do not really want to repeat here. However Canadians should be very concerned about the growing problem of organized crime in this country and we must deal with it.

I truly commend the Bloc Québécois for bringing forth this important motion. I am also happy that there seems to be support from all parties in the House.

However I was somewhat concerned by at least two things presented by the parliamentary secretary, the first one being his weak commitment to this and the excuses for why it will not happen very fast.

My second concern is that the agenda on important issues like this has been driven more often by the opposition than by government, which is not the way things are supposed to work, but this government is so weak on these things. For some reason it seems to oppose and resist dealing with these tough and important issues. I cannot impugn motives in the House because that would not be proper, but one has to wonder why the Liberals are so resistant to dealing with the whole issue of organized crime. Their attitude concerns me. The final excuse they use is that the charter prevents it, which I do not believe for a minute.

I think everyone understands that we have to respect the Constitution of this country but I think the charter is used as an excuse all too often. It has nothing to do with respecting the charter when it comes to dealing with an issue like this. I understand we have to draft legislation that respects the charter and our Constitution but that can be done.

It would be an important move forward if we were to actually pass something on this. This may sound a little cynical and little negative, but what I believe will happen, unfortunately, is that the government will balk on this, it will miss the May 31 deadline, an election will be called sometime within the next year and this will never pass through the House of Commons. In reality, that is probably what will happen with this.

I encourage all Canadians who are paying attention to this issue to put a lot of pressure on the Liberal government to actually do something about this.

I look forward to the rest of the debate in the House today. I again commend the member and his party for this important motion, the importance of which is not to be understated. Let us move forward to deal with the other important issues, including the infiltration of organized crime into those institutions that are so critical to providing a stable society in Canada today.

[Committees of the House, March 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the fifth report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.

The committee has studied the supplementary estimates B for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2005, and has agreed to report them without amendments.

The committee does intend to present a separate report to make some recommendations on the timeframe that was allowed for the study of the supplementary estimates and to express some concerns about the timeframe allowed. That will be forthcoming.

[Question No. 73, March 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I was not here at the allotted time to present committee reports. I would like to ask for the unanimous consent of the House to revert to committee reports so I may present my report from the government operations and estimates committee.