Libby Davies

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I was happy to allow the House leader for the Bloc to go ahead of me in the usual order.

I will be sharing my time with the member for Windsor—Tecumseh.

I want to spend a few minutes laying out what is going on here.

First, we are all aware, as members of the House, that we receive a calendar every year. The calendar is very clear in that the House is intended to sit until June 22. We all agreed to this, all parties, through the whips. It is something with which we are all familiar.

We also are aware that on this day the government can, as it has done, move a motion for the extension of hours. We are debating a motion now as to whether the hours should be extended from June 13 to June 21 to 10 p.m. every night. The question that is really before us is this. Is this a warranted measure? After hearing the government House leader, this is a crisis that the government has manufactured.

Let us be very clear about what has taken place. This is happening because of the incompetence of the government in the management of its legislative agenda, its lack of consultation with opposition parties and its lack of calling its own bills. For example, we heard the government House leader talk about the budget bill, Bill C-52. He has said that he wants to get it through. There were 11 days when the Conservatives could have called the bill for second reading and they failed to do so. Instead they brought in all kinds of other bills that were quite inconsequential. If the budget were so important, they had ample opportunity to bring the bill forward for second reading.

I point out on the record that once it went through second reading, when the Conservatives finally brought it forward into the House and it went to the finance committee, the finance committee met for four sessions only to hear witnesses. It in effect fast-tracked that bill. It heard witnesses very quickly on a budget bill, which is core to our whole reason for being here. Then it was brought back to the House. We had one day of debate on the report stage. Now we are now debating third reading.

When we look at what has happened, it is clearly a manipulation by the government itself on its own agenda. I think what is happening is the Conservatives have brought forward this motion today for extension, even though they are saying the extended hours would go to June 21, so they can cut a deal to get out of here early. If we get out of here early and they get their budget bill, which we know they want, there will be no committees, no question period and no debate on other bills. That clearly needs to be put on the record.

In terms of management of other business, we have heard the government House leader say today that all these justice bills have to come forward. If we look at the agenda of the justice committee, the government made it a priority to deal with private members' business. It has taken up the valuable time of the committee to deal with private members' bills. Now we are being told it has all these other bills that it wants to get through. It really does not cut it. It does not make sense.

I really appreciate the position you took on Friday, Mr. Speaker. At the very last moment on Friday, the government tried to bring in a very rare Standing Order, used for emergency debates, to deal with Bill C-52 and extend the hours to rush the bill through. To your credit, you listened to what members in the House had to say and you made the correct decision in the end. I want to thank you for that. These things are really important. We have to play in a way that is open and transparent, and I do not believe the government is doing that at this point. Therefore, we are very suspicious and skeptical about the agenda.

Again, another irony is the Conservatives are saying that they want to extend the hours of debate. Yet we have never seen the light of day for Bill C-30, the clean air and climate change bill that came out of committee. The bill was amended by the opposition. It is a bill that would work, and it has the support of the majority of members in the House. However, the government itself is refusing to call it forward. We will stay here for as long as it takes to debate that bill. We consider it is an urgent matter that Canadians want us to address.

We will stay here for as long as it takes to debate that bill. We consider it is an urgent matter, which Canadians want us to address. It is a priority that goes beyond all partisanship, but I did not hear the government House leader mention that bill.

The Conservatives would rather get out of here, not having to bear the public scrutiny in question period and committees and not debate all the other bills. They just want to get the budget through. I fear they have made a deal with the official opposition. I do not know that, but I can almost guarantee, even though these extended hours will be approved, in a couple of days, maybe Wednesday, they will find a way to adjourn the House. That is really their agenda.

As the Bloc House leader has mentioned, one bill that we believe must be brought forward is the ways and means motion. It used to be called Bill C-55, which was the wage earner protection bill protecting workers from bankruptcy. This has been an outstanding matter.

The government, again, has not engaged in adequate consultation with the opposition parties, which want to get this bill through. It was passed in a previous Parliament, but was never given royal assent. It is an absolute injustice that today workers still do not have protection from bankruptcy. Millions of dollars have been lost, legitimately earned and deserved wages of workers because they have not had the protection of that bill.

I want to put on the record today that this attempt by the government to bring in extended hours is really about adjourning the House. It wants to get a very bad budget bill through. It looks like the official opposition is now complicit in getting through a budget bill, which, as we have seen, is a disaster in Atlantic Canada in that it has broken the accord. It is a disaster in terms of so many other areas, whether it is housing and homelessness, student summer programs or the environment.

We know the government wants to get the budget passed and that is all it cares about. I am very concerned we are facilitating its agenda under the guise of extending hours when really what it will do is rush to adjourn the House. We know it does not want to be accountable or go through question period.

Let us not forget that the Conservatives were filibustering in the committees. The Conservative members were making the committees dysfunctional. Why? Because they did not want business to go ahead in committees.

We found out about their 200 page playbook, a handbook for all the tactics that its members and chairs could use in the committees. This is further evidence that the Conservatives real game plan is not to deal with all the legislation about which the government House leader spoke. They want to rush through a bad budget bill that has barely been debated.

Nobody is holding up the budget bill, by the way. There are no tactics being employed by the opposition to hold it up. We want to have an adequate debate. We want to ensure that people can say, on the record, what they think about the budget because we have a lot of criticisms about it.

Let us be very clear. The motion today is under the guise that government members are ready to work and extend the hours of the House until 10 p.m. every night. Really it is about getting out of here, for the Conservatives to get beyond public scrutiny, to shut down the House, committees and question period once the budget bill is passed. That is what we will see happen.

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the government does have the prerogative, on this particular day, to move Standing Order 27(1) for extended hours, but we need to question the government's sincerity and genuineness in what it is doing here today. We just heard a 15 or 20 minutes speech from the government House leader, I think the longest I have heard him give, outlining a whole list of government bills, but when we really look at the legislative agenda here, we see that if there is an urgency, if there is a crisis, it is something that is actually being manufactured by the government in terms of the lack of management of its own agenda. I will certainly go into that when it is my turn to speak.

If the government House leader is truly committed to dealing with all of the business that he has listed, why would he not commit to having the House sit until when the calendar tells us, which is June 22, the regular hours, dealing with business, allowing the committees to function and to have question period? It seems just a tad curious that he is using this Standing Order today allegedly to force through all of this business when the calendar already tells us that we have adequate time to do not only that, but all of the other business that is very legitimate in this place.

Why would the member not make a commitment to not use Standing Order 56(1), which is a procedure whereby he would try to overrule members if the government wanted the House to adjourn early? We have been expecting that too because I think the real game plan here is that the government would actually like to get away from Parliament and away from public scrutiny and, therefore, this becomes a bit of a ruse.

Why will the member not make a commitment to have us sit, do the regular business, all of the business, not just what he chooses to do, rather than what is really a tactic to get out of Ottawa and out of Parliament as quickly as they can?

[Business of the House, June 8th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I need to raise a serious objection to the manipulation and the blatant misuse of the rules of this House that is taking place. Frankly, I am astounded that you, as the Speaker, have already made a ruling ignoring the rules and the procedures that are in place.

We come into this House to debate and to have proper functioning of the House. I have not even seen the motion. I just heard it described to me by the House leader of the opposition, and I am glad he took the time to read it into the record.

However, we need to know what urgent situation exists here. We just began debate on third reading of the budget bill on Wednesday. Nothing is being held up here. The House is not meant to adjourn until June 22. If the government had wanted to bring forward the bill at some earlier time, it had ample opportunity to get it through the House, and what happens in the other place happens in the other place. In terms of our business in this place, this manoeuvre that is being pulled by the government is incredibly manipulative.

Mr. Speaker, I implore you to uphold the traditions and the procedures of this House and not allow this blatant political manipulation to go on of using the rules in a very subverted way for something that we know is not urgent. It rests with you, Mr. Speaker, to follow the traditions of this House, to ensure that all members are fairly heard, to ensure that debate properly takes place and to ensure this kind of political manipulation does not occur. That is the role of the Speaker and we expect you to uphold that on behalf of all members.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, June 8th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Nanaimo—Cowichan for actually laying out the reality of where the budget has failed so many people on very basic issues, whether it is on housing, the cost of prescription drugs, the environment or aboriginal people. The list goes on and on.

We heard the member for Cambridge chattering and saying, “The budget is almost perfect and why would you vote against it?” Come on, I think the member for Nanaimo--Cowichan has laid out the significant gaps and omissions in the budget that are failing people on very basic issues.

I would like to ask the member this, because I know she is our aboriginal affairs critic and this is an area that is very near and dear to her heart and her community. In the budget one of the massive failures is that it does not meet the commitments that have been made to aboriginal people in terms of very basic issues like housing, health care, clean water, education and quality of life. Is that reason alone enough to vote against the budget?

[Passports, June 8th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, this passport fiasco is creating major havoc for Canadians and border communities. The government is too busy helping George Bush water down G-8 commitments to do anything about it.

I want to ask the Minister of Foreign Affairs, will he phone the U.S. ambassador and tell him that if the backlog for passports in the U.S. is a good enough reason to exempt U.S. citizens for six months, then the backlog here in Canada is a good enough reason to exempt Canadian citizens for six months as well?

When is he going to clean up this mess? When is he going to ensure that there are not long lineups and look at extending the length of validation for a passport?

[Passports, June 8th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the U.S. government will suspend its rules requiring its citizens to carry a passport when flying in and out of Canada because of the massive backlog it has, but this decision to waive the rule is not being extended to Canadians. The decision proves that the program is dysfunctional and unfairly hurts Canadians. We know that officials here are swamped with passport applications and are not keeping up.

Will the government ask for the same exemptions for Canadians? Will it stand up for Canada on this issue?

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, June 5th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, let me thank the member for Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont for bringing forward Bill C-423 because he has obviously put a lot of thought into the bill and there are some interesting provisions in it. I have been listening to the debate and I heard his remarks. He has been thoughtful and reflective about why this bill is coming forward and what he intends to do.

From the NDP's point of view, we will be supporting the bill in principle. We think it should go to committee and certainly, the principle of diversion and ensuring that young people have other options than just going through the judicial system is something that is important and actually needs to be emphasized.

Looking at this bill, which would amend the Youth Criminal Justice Act, it would require a police officer, before starting judicial proceedings or taking any other measure, to consider whether it would be sufficient to refer that young person to an addiction specialist and treatment. This is something that we think is useful to do.

I want to put on the record that we do have some reservations. I am the drug policy spokesperson for the NDP. I probably am in that position because it is an issue that I deal with very frequently in my riding where we have a crisis of HIV-AIDS among injection drug users. We have a very high rate of conversion to HIV-AIDS. We have a crisis among injection drug users.

One of the things that really bothers me, and I want to point this out to the member because there is a bit of a philosophical difference, is that we always use the lens or the tool of the judicial system to deal with these interventions.

For example, in Vancouver we have had the drug court and that has been widely accepted by a lot of people. I actually do not support the drug court because why do we actually wait until someone is at the point of making the decision that they are going to go to jail or to treatment. Why would we make the intervention so late? Why would we wait until they have been charged and at the point of maybe being convicted to provide that as an alternative. It becomes almost a coercive kind of thing.

I do have to say to the member that while in principle this can work, I do have some reservations about it because it is using the criminal justice model to make the intervention. We need to be aware that primarily, when we are dealing with substance use, particularly for young people, we are dealing with a health issue. We should be focusing our intervention, our public policies, the treatment, the community development and the prevention from that point of view.

My question would be this. Why would we wait until that point that an officer then has to make that decision and say is it better that this young person go to a treatment program, which obviously it would? At that point I would say yes, that is the preferable course of action, but why would we wait until that point?

When I look at the Conservatives' drug policy or what we expect it to be and I have looked at the 2007 budget, it appears to us that basically they dropped harm reduction. I know there is a lot of concern out in the community about where the Conservatives' drug strategy is going to go.

The member needs to understand that the deep concern that people have is this reliance on the justice system as opposed to recognizing that we need an intervention that is a health based intervention. We need prevention programs.

It seems to me in terms of where the dollars go, and again there are concerns about the fact that prevention and treatment have been completely inadequately funded in this country, why again would we wait until we get to that point of it becoming a criminal justice issue and making that intervention?

I heard the member speak about the DARE program. I have the same problem with the DARE program. Why would we have police officers going into schools attempting to educate young people about drug use? Would we have officers going to schools for sex education? I do not think so. The only reason we do it is because drugs are illegal. They are deemed to be harmful and illegal in our society.

I have to tell the member, I deal with this issue so much. I have honestly come to the conclusion that some of these prohibitionist policies themselves have become more harmful than anything else in terms of criminalizing young people, criminalizing adults, criminalizing users, and sort of waiting until we get to this point where it becomes a justice issue.

So, while on the one hand I do appreciate what the member is doing, and we will support it in principle, I do want to put on the table this other viewpoint. It worries me, frankly, where it is that the Conservatives are going overall, not with just this bill but when we package them all up.

We understand that there are going to be a number of new bills coming forward regarding the Conservative drug strategy and I can tell members I am really worried about where it is heading because it becomes this sort of political agenda.

To me it is the oldest game in the book to play this sort of politics of fear because people are concerned about drug use. Parents are terribly concerned about what happens to young people. However, I think if we talk to most parents, they do not want their kids becoming criminals. They want to see an early intervention in the schools in a way that is realistic, in a way that is honest.

I can tell members that when we make it kind of a law and order message, even in the schools, where the kids are told, and I have heard cops say this, “If you smoke marijuana, you're going to become a cocaine addict”, they know it is not true. That is like saying that everybody who drives a car is going to kill somebody.

There are some different approaches and I actually hope the member would be open to some dialogue and some responses around this because it is genuinely given here tonight in this debate.

This bill in and of itself at that point where a young person is faced with a criminal charge or treatment, I would agree, it is a better choice to get them to treatment. But let us back up. Let us really back it up to where we need to do the work. That is why I have a lot of concerns about things like the DARE program and drug courts. We need early intervention. We need it on the street.

I see the drug users in the downtown east side of my riding. They actually need what we call low threshold interventions where the bar is not so high that they are not going to fail because unfortunately a lot of the programs that we have are based on that.

The same is true for young people. Even the treatment regimes that we have in this country, if we talk to drug users, they will tell us that they are often not very accessible. Again, the rules can become so stringent that people are almost sort of designed for failure before they even can get in the program or get through the program.

I really do want to get this point across, that we need to have a different perspective. We need to have a health perspective and we need to recognize that the use of the judicial system, the use of the police in terms of education and the use of enforcement has been shown to be quite a failure.

We only have to look south of the border to see what has happened in the United States, the massive incarceration of young people, particularly African Americans. I think something like 50% of all incarcerations or more are now related to drug use. This so-called war on drugs is a completely failed model. I know that the member is not precisely advocating that, but because it is still focusing on the justice system, it becomes part of that sort of perspective and view.

I hope that my comments have been helpful. They are presented in that way in order to offer some feedback and some different perspectives to this bill. Nevertheless, we will support it in principle to send it to committee. Then I hope at committee, if it ever does come up for debate, we can hear from some witnesses and actually look at some ways to improve this bill. Certainly, I would be very interested to do that from the point of view of the NDP.

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, June 5th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if the member has read the report from our Standing Committee on the Status of Women, an all party committee of Parliament. A couple of the recommendations were just referenced by the member for London—Fanshawe. In that report, as well as in the subcommittee report dealing with prostitution, these issues had been canvassed, had been seriously debated and recommendations were made to the government. I was incredibly disappointed with the government's response to our subcommittee report. I do not know what the government's response was to the Status of Women's report, but I think it was probably pretty minimal.

What we are saying is, yes, a lot needs to be done, but those recommendations have already been made to the government and we have not seen the government respond to the work coming out of committees, which is kind of the backbone of Parliament.

I agree that this is one element, but it is getting a lot of attention from the Conservatives. They are holding this up and saying that this is what they are doing, that this is how they are solving this problem. I do not think so. They should pay attention to the legitimate work that has already been done and respond to it. If they did, maybe we would get somewhere then.

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, June 5th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the member for London—Fanshawe has really focused the attention on what the debate needs to be about. There is no question about the irony here. This is the government that has done more than any other to turn the clock back on women's equality. The cuts we have seen to programs and the elimination of advocacy from the mandate have been quite stunning.

I am familiar with the report of which the member speaks. It seems to me that to focus on immigration and settlement and to allow women to come to Canada independently is again where we get into the debate of how the immigration system needs to be reviewed and changed. Right now that is not happening. If we did have a system that was more open and allowed immigration to happen, because we do have worker shortages in the country, then maybe programs like this would not exist at all. I do not know.

However, the priorities the member for London—Fanshawe has identified are the real ones we should be debating in terms of legislation and changes, rather than Bill C-57.

On the question about poverty, this is a fundamental truth in realizing that the more women fall into poverty, the more we see inequality grow, then the more abuse and exploitation we see takes place in our society. If we were addressing the underlying issue of poverty and promoting women's economic and social independence, whether they are in Canada or through the immigration system, then we would really be addressing the priorities in the country.

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, June 5th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would love to get a copy of those speaking notes. Obviously they have been lined up for each party. It would be fascinating to have them and see the arguments that are presented: this is what we say to the NDP, this is what we say to the Bloc, and this is what we say to the Liberals.

That aside, I believe that in my comments I made it very clear that Bill C-49, passed in 2005, which was a bill that amended the Criminal Code dealing with trafficking, was a very significant bill. It was passed in the House. It had significant hearings. It was based on the concerns about exploitation and trafficking. Does that bill need to be amended?

In the subcommittee that I mentioned, of which I was a member, in our study of Canada's criminal prostitution laws we had a recommendation on trafficking that stated:

The Subcommittee recommends that the Government of Canada ensure that the problem of trafficking in persons remains a priority so that victims are provided with adequate assistance and services, while traffickers are brought to justice.

It was a unanimous recommendation from all parties.

As I also pointed out to the member, the response we got from the government, his government, was as I actually read it into the record. It talked about the interdepartmental working group and it referred to the legislation in 2005, and apparently things were in order.

What I am saying to the member and to the minister is that if there are continuing problems in terms of dealing with trafficking and abuse, then the government should bring forward that amendment to the Criminal Code. Certainly the status of women committee has been looking at it. The subcommittee that I was on was looking at it. We said to keep it as a high priority.

However, the bill that we are debating today, Bill C-57, does not deal with that. The bill is about the Conservatives' moral agenda to basically ban exotic dancers, that is what it is, or to give the minister incredibly broad powers to do I do not know what. It does not really spell it out. That is not good legislation.