Libby Davies

[Post-Secondary Education, February 4th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I can tell the House that students do not think much of those promises. If only students counted as much as the Prime Minister's corporate friends. It is yes to corporate tax cuts, but no to tuition cuts.

I would like to ask the Prime Minister, does he have the guts to stand up and answer for his values? Will he please tell the students of this country why his corporate friends received a tax cut while students get more debt? Why is that?

[Post-Secondary Education, February 4th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, today, thousands of students are marching across Canada and they are not hailing the throne speech. They are hopping mad that the guy who helped tuition rise five times the rate of inflation when he was finance minister wants them now to carry even more debt load and graduate into poverty.

I would like to ask the Prime Minister, does he really expect students to believe that increasing their loan limits will help them when it is abundantly clear that debt is a problem because of exorbitant tuition fees caused by the government and the loss of $4 billion in transfer payments?

[International Aid, November 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, let us get the commitment right here and now from the government that it will amend this bill and deal with those serious flaws. It could go to committee on Monday. There is nothing preventing the committee from meeting on Monday. The bill can come back to the House after the week.

Let us get the political agenda out of the way. Will the government commit to getting the bill to committee and bringing it back to the House so it can be approved and we can deal with the flaws that it has created in this bill?

[International Aid, November 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, unlike the johnny-come-latelies in the Canadian Alliance, from day one the NDP has been pressing for drug legislation that will provide relief to millions in Africa suffering from AIDS. We now have a bill before us that is seriously flawed and in fact is a big giveaway to big pharma.

Could the minister explain why it has taken so long to develop this bill, how these serious flaws were missed and the incompetence that has taken place? How does he explain this to people in the developing countries who are waiting for these drugs to save their lives?

[Criminal Code, November 6th, 2003]

moved:

That Bill C-20 be amended by deleting Clause 7.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-20 and the amendment before us.

I would like to make it very clear that members of the NDP support the measures in the bill that are clearly presented and defined. We believe they will help protect children, a goal that is certainly shared by all of us in the NDP and I think by all members of the House.

We believe we have an obligation to do whatever we can to protect children in our society and to stop the abuse and exploitation of children in every form, whether through child pornography or any other way. That is something that we support very strongly. It is a very important value.

In presenting the amendment today to delete clause 7, we do so because we believe the present wording of clause 7 is very vague. Clause 7 talks about the public good defence. We believe that it may, as a result of being very vague, be very difficult to catch child pornographers, while at the same time there are concerns that we will be endangering the rights of artists from pursuing legitimate artistic expression or researchers and health workers from dealing with the effects of child abuse and sexual trauma.

We believe that the defence of the public good, as has been put forward in the bill, would transfer too much power and discretion to the courts. For example, it may take years of litigation and jurisprudence for the courts to decide exactly how to apply this defence of the public good in relation to child porn laws. I do not think that is something anyone wants to see.

The scope of the public good is ironically both, on the one hand, too broad and, on the other hand, too narrow. In fact, what we need to be doing in the bill is clarifying it to ensure that the most essential point is that the police will be able to make sound decisions in their investigations of a suspected child pornographer to protect children. Second, that artists who are legitimately engaging in artistic expression will not be prosecuted because of that legitimate activity.

We realize that these are difficult issues but surely our role here as parliamentarians in examining the bill is to make sure the clarification on these issues is very clear and that it does not become a subject of ongoing and endless debate in the court system.

In speaking to the amendment today and urging the deletion of clause 7, we believe that clarifying the definition of the public good is something that has not yet been resolved or taken place. It needs to happen here in Parliament.

We do need to be sending a clear message to the courts on how we want the legislation to be implemented and approached. The way it stands now is that I think there is still ambiguity.

We have presented this amendment because we believe the bill is just not good enough. We want to see a good job done on the bill. A tremendous amount of effort went into the bill and its goal is to protect children from sexual exploitation. We want to do it in a way that we are clearly delineating artistic merit. We believe that the provision in the bill as it stands now is simply not adequate to do that.

[Petitions, November 4th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is signed by residents of Vancouver who are very concerned about the star wars missile defence program. They call upon Canada to not participate in this program and to strongly condemn George W. Bush's destabilizing plans. They call upon Parliament to work with our partners in peace for more arms control to peacefully bring an end to the production and sale of weapons of mass destruction and any material used to build them.

[Petitions, November 4th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House today to present two petitions.

The first petition is signed by residents of East Vancouver and Vancouver who supported the NDP motion in the House to call for a referendum to see if Canadians want to change the electoral system. The petitioners call upon the government to hold a referendum within one year to establish if Canadians wish to replace the current system with a system of proportional representation.

[Petitions, November 3rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise in the House to present a petition signed by a number of residents from Vancouver who point out that the protection of true family values requires that all families be respected equally and that denying same sex couples the equal right to marry reinforces attitudes of intolerance and discrimination. It is inconsistent with Canadian values of equality, dignity and respect. The petition calls upon the House to pass Bill C-264 from the first session or otherwise enact legislation providing same sex couples with the equal right to marry.

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, November 3rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is just a matter of political will and commitment. Those targets exist. I think the governing Liberal Party has shown its support for immigration policies, but as I have said, there has been this backdoor way of keeping a limit on the numbers because of staff resources.

There is a way to do this. There may even be a way to forward this bill without additional staff resources, but generally that is a huge question. I know the member is very aware of that because of his work on the committee. It is something the government has to address. If we believe in immigration and if we support immigration and we want to come anywhere close to what these targets are, then we actually have to provide the training, the staff supports and the settlement programs to actually facilitate it. It comes down to a question of what the government priority is on that question.

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, November 3rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question, as I know that he as well has worked very hard on the citizenship and immigration committee. I am glad to hear that he thinks this is a good idea.

Of course a number of details would need to be worked out, but I would point out that at one point we did have over 110,000 new Canadians who came under the family class provision. We are now down to about 60,000, so if there is some increase in the family class provision through a measure like this, I absolutely cannot not see any evidence that somehow it will have a huge impact in a negative way. In fact, I would advocate that it will have an impact in a positive way in actually helping to strengthen families in local communities. Surely this is something we should be supporting.

In terms of what number we might arrive at, again I would point out to the hon. member, and I think he knows this, that we are far short of the target actually set by the government.

In any report from the citizenship and immigration committee or any government report, members will read information and evidence about the evaluations and studies done over the years which show that immigration is of huge benefit to this country in terms of the workforce, the labour market and cultural, social and economic contributions.

I think we have to look at this bill in that context and say that it would strengthen our immigration system. It would not detract from or undermine it.