Mark Warawa

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the member made some comments regarding this side of the House, the Conservative Party. He was baffled as to why we would not be supporting Bill C-48. The message is, and I thought that he would have heard this loud and clear, Liberals cannot buy a Conservative.

He also asked about the Bloc. That government did try to buy Quebec, but it got caught with the sponsorship scandal. It could not buy Quebec. However, the government was able to buy one party, and that is the unholy alliance about which he talked.

I believe he also said that the House would fail if it did not have a plan that was responsible. He is exactly right, the House will fail if there is a plan that is not responsible. This plan is not responsible.

He has also heard loud and clear that we were not just talking about Bill C-48. We also are talking about Bill C-38.

We have heard loud and clear from the Prime Minister that this is a package plan. He does not want to wait until the fall. He wants a package deal. He wants Bill C-48 and Bill C-38 to pass together. He knows he will be able to get Bill C-38 through. The plan of the Prime Minister is social re-engineering. He wants to destroy traditional marriage. He wants to bring in legalized marijuana. He wants to legalize prostitution. He wants to make Canada the country that is more to the left than any other country in this world. The only way he can do that is with this package deal.

How can the member defend a plan, Bill C-48, that is no plan? He knows there is no plan for the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister on how they are to spend the money. He is going to give the Prime Minister complete discretion to spend the money any way he wants.

We know from experts in criminology and psychology the way to predict behaviour is to look at past behaviour. That is how we know.

An article in today's Ottawa Citizen states:

A Liberal-dominated Senate committee says the [Prime Minister's] government has failed to keep its promises to clean up the environment and regulate polluting industries.

The environment is part of Bill C-48.

It goes on to criticize the government “for dragging its feet“, and we have heard that before, “on fixing polluted water, air and soil, disappearing species” and it goes on.

Again, we can predict what will happen with the government by its past record, and its past record has been dismal. It has been broken promises.

How in all conscience can he go to his constituents and say that he is propping up and supporting a government riddled with corruption and under investigation? How can he say to them that he knows it will be destroying marriage as they know it but he will support the government?

I would like that member to tell this House and his constituents how in good conscience he can support a government like that.

[Criminal Code, June 22nd, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I want to give a little history of Bill C-293 and why it is before the House today.

Five years ago I started working on this bill but from a different perspective. I was a city councillor for 14 years and dealt with the problems of auto theft in the community. I was also a loss prevention officer for the insurance corporation of British Columbia. My job was to find out where the crashes and auto crimes were happening, why they were happening, and how to make our communities safer. I found out very quickly, through working with the police and different stakeholders in the community, that the typical auto thief was not somebody joyriding but somebody with a very serious drug problem.

There was a study called “Reality versus perception” done by Simon Fraser University released in February 2004. It was released at an auto crime forum in Surrey, British Columbia. We found out that the typical auto thief was somebody addicted to crystal meth and was stealing the car to commit another crime. A 27 year old male with 10 prior criminal convictions will steal a car again. He is driven by the drugs.

We heard from Superior Court Justice Wally Oppal at the time. He spoke at this auto crime forum and said that the courts had received very clear direction from Parliament that they were not to lock up these high risk offenders. That is the direction that came from the House. The evidence from Superior Court Justice Wally Oppal was that Parliament said not to lock them up as there were no facilities to send these high risk people.

He asked what to do with them as his direction from the House was to release them back onto the street. What we found in the study was that the courts would give probation. People would steal other cars and receive probation for breaching their probation. They were not keeping the peace. Time and time again these high risk offenders stole cars again and got probation for breaching their probation. There was zero consequence.

My consultation over the last five years was to find out from communities, stakeholders and police a way of dealing with this. Do we lock them up and throw away the key? No, that is not the solution. What is an appropriate sentence?

One of my colleagues asked earlier, what do we do when offenders do not have criminal records? Do we send them to jail? Bill C-293 would give the courts the discretion of giving a fine or time in jail or both. I see a judge in that case providing a fine and not sending this first time offender on a joyride. There would be a $1,000 consequence.

I would like to see more than $1,000 fines, but in consultation it was agreed that a $1,000 fine would probably be an appropriate sentence. The average cost across Canada to repair a vehicle that has been stolen is $4,500, so a $1,000 fine does not even come close to covering that, but it is a minimum. A fair fine would be the cost of fixing the vehicle. This is only a start.

I am asking the House to send this bill to the justice committee where it can be debated. I am open to amendments. I am asking this of the House after five years of consultation. I worked on the immobilizer bill with Transport Canada. Five years ago I sent it to FCM and we now have that part of the protection. We have the engineering, but we need the enforcement part of it.

I ask the House to please send this bill to the justice committee where it can be debated and legislation can be established that will give direction to the courts to provide protection. It is our job as a Parliament to provide security and protection to our citizens. They are not getting it with probation. This bill will provide it and still give the courts discretion for appropriate sentencing.

[Committees of the House, June 21st, 2005]

Madam Speaker, my colleague's question is right on the mark. Canadians do want to know why we are wasting their tax dollars. They want their tax dollars to be used wisely and that does not mean on programs like the $2 billion gun registry boondoggle.

People involved in organized crime do not register their firearms. People who smuggle drugs back and forth across the border and who have marijuana grow ops with booby traps that endanger our fire departments and our police officers do not register their firearms.

[Committees of the House, June 21st, 2005]

Madam Speaker, the member's question is a good one because that is exactly what we heard at the committee. The rationale was to improve efficiency. We heard that it was more efficient to remove the RCMP from the border.

It did not compute and I do not think it computed with any member of the committee other than the Liberal members of the committee. They said that it was safer for those communities and more efficient to take the RCMP out of those communities and off the borders. We would rely on the Americans to protect our Canadian border.

Canadians do not believe that and not one member of that committee believed that rationale. There is some plan going on here that defies logic.

It is hogwash when we hear the government say that it is more efficient to remove the RCMP members. What is more efficient is to have them where the issues are, where the marijuana grow ops are happening and where crime is happening. These things need a police presence and to remove them makes no sense.

In talking about the lines of authority, the message is very clear. The committee members have no confidence with the decision made by the government. I hope it understood that message. We have zero confidence in the decision that the government has made in regard to removing RCMP officers.

[Committees of the House, June 21st, 2005]

It is our duty and we do need members at the border.

Customs and immigration officers are responsible for our border crossings but between the border crossings it is the responsibility of the RCMP. We do not have enough resources at our border crossings when we see people are blowing across the borders. Statistics from the United States border services show that thousands of people are sneaking in between these crossings. Whose responsibility is that? As I said, it is the RCMP's responsibility to ensure that is being dealt with.

When we remove these officers, close these detachments and send them all to the city to work on their laptops, that is not good management of a valuable resource.

We then have the sixth report, which states:

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), your Committee has considered the matter of the closure of nine (9) Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachments in Quebec.

Your Committee draws to the attention of the House the fact that the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and the Senior Management of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have not taken into account the opinion expressed by the Committee in its Fourth Report but rather have continued the process of closing nine RCMP detachments in Quebec.

Your Committee recommends that the Minister and the RCMP put a stop to this personnel redeployment plan and reopen the detachments concerned.

This justice committee report about these detachment closures had total unanimity among committee members. We are very concerned about this and it is unanimous, other than in the government. The government for some reason has a plan to close the RCMP detachments and to remove RCMP members from our borders and our freeways. It is remove, remove.

We need an RCMP presence and whatever the hidden plan of the government is, it needs to be exposed. I think Canadians want this dealt with right now. The plan that the government has needs to be exposed and it needs to be stopped.

[Committees of the House, June 21st, 2005]

We are telling criminals that these are the communities where there is no more police presence and these are good areas where they can open up these grow ops. If we do not have a police presence, we are telling criminals they can have their legal weapons, that they can do whatever they want to do.

The nine mayors came to committee and asked us to please stop the closure before it was too late, saying that if the police were removed their communities were going to be in trouble.

In December 2004 the committee presented its fourth report. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee adopted the following motion on December 9, 2004:

That the Committee recommend to the government that the RCMP keep open the nine detachments in Quebec whose closing was an issue in our hearings and that it maintain a return to them, a critical mass of officers per detachment.

Some of the detachments had only one officer. That is not adequate. We want to have the minimum number of officers that would provide the critical mass.

After the fourth report, we again had Commissioner Zaccardelli speak to the committee. The committee was told that it had already happened and that how dare the committee question it. We also heard the government say that how dare the committee question the RCMP.

Every member of the House is proud of and has great respect for the RCMP. It does an incredible job. The question we had concerned the logic in closing down these detachments. These detachments are not on the border but they are part of the patrol that guards the Canadian border.

We have heard a concern that we are not adequately protecting the Canadian borders. We are a sovereign country and the government has a responsibility to protect Canadians and our border. We have heard that thousands of people every year blow across the border without stopping. These people are not bringing milk across the border or crossing the border to buy cheese. These people are smuggling people, guns and drugs and the government is not doing anything.

Who is patrolling our borders? The RCMP is being pulled out of Ontario and Quebec and now it is going after Manitoba. It has to stop. It should have stopped before.

We have an epidemic within our country where police resources are being removed. We have a growing population and a growing crime problem. To remove RCMP members and police forces, who have limited numbers and limited resources, from the streets and put them in an office somewhere does not work. We need to protect Canadians and our borders.

[Committees of the House, June 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I move that the sixth report of the Standing Committee on Justice, Human Rights, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, presented to the House on Wednesday, April 13, be concurred in.

It is an honour to rise in this House to speak to this motion. I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

This is a very important motion. I want to share a little of its history. Nine mayors came to the justice committee and shared with us a very important concern of theirs: that nine RCMP detachments were going to be closing in Quebec. Commissioner Zaccardelli also came and spoke to us. We heard from him that there was a plan and we heard the rationale. The rationale was to close these detachments and redeploy these RCMP members to work in a central location to attack organized crime.

The nine mayors who came to the committee were very concerned that the presence of the RCMP was being removed from their communities, with the officers going to a central location. What does this do to these communities? When we remove the police presence, we are giving a message to organized crime members that they can do whatever they want. The nine mayors were very concerned about this.

I have a bit of a background in dealing with the RCMP. Before becoming a member of this House, I was a loss prevention officer. One of the things we dealt with in regard to the RCMP was the importance of the presence of the RCMP. If people do not see a police presence, the message is very clear that they can do whatever they want.

A vast majority of citizens are law-abiding, tax-paying, hard-working Canadian citizens, but there is a small percentage of people in Canada, in our world, who are not law-abiding. That is why we need a police presence. Just the presence of the police acts as a deterrent.

An example of that can be found in traffic issues. People who never see a police officer tend to drive a lot faster. When police officers are present, people slow down. We have all seen that on the freeway. We have seen how people slow down a police officer is there.

All kinds of studies have been done in which a police decoy is put out there. Even if it is a fake car, even an old decommissioned RCMP vehicle or municipal police vehicle, traffic slows down. The presence of the police is very important.

It was important enough for the mayors of these nine communities in Quebec to come to Ottawa and ask us to please stop this because the decision to close these detachments, coming right from the top at the RCMP, was going to be disastrous for these communities. Why? What were some of the reasons?

Not only was the lack of a police presence seen as a problem, marijuana grow ops are a problem right across this country. If RCMP detachments are removed, who is going to be dealing with them? If this happens, we are saying that organized crime can do whatever it wants.

[Relay for Life, June 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, Langley just had its first ever Relay for Life and it was a huge success. Seventy Langley teams raised more than $200,000 for cancer research and services.

People signed up with their co-workers, neighbours, family and friends. The young and the old participated. An incredible feeling of community pride developed on that beautiful sunny Langley day.

The top fundraising team was Team Trimac Trucking, which raised $12,000. The top individual fundraiser was Barb Shannon, who personally raised $3,000.

Most of us have been touched by cancer. I am so proud of my community and the way we stepped up to meet the challenge. This was an amazing event that brought Langley citizens closer together, united in raising funds to fight cancer.

Congratulations to all the participants and to all the incredibly hard-working organizers of that event.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-48 does not have a plan, which is why the Conservative Party is objecting to it. It was a plan that was created over a weekend. This is it. It is one page, oops, on a napkin. Where did that come from? Canadians demand better than one page on a napkin.

All we are saying is that $4.5 billion, without a plan, makes it very clear that Canadians are being overtaxed. Canadians do not trust the government because of its 12 years of mismanagement, and it has to change.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, no, I do not oppose any of the things he listed. I support housing for the poor. I support a strong educational program for students. I have five grown children and I know the costs of tuition. It is expensive for them to go to school. I also support international aid. Our party supports all these things but the government has had 12 years to do these things.

The member talked about empty political rhetoric. Twelve years of government is empty political rhetoric when we still have Canadians waiting for over four years for a hip replacement. They are suffering, and it is unconscionable.

The Liberals started a program called compassionate care and gave Canadians hope. However they are still not permitting Canadians to spend the last six weeks with their dying loved ones. It is a program they trumpet but it is empty rhetoric.

I have numerous examples of the Liberals speaking but not acting. If a Conservative government is given a chance, we will meet those needs and we will do it with a plan and a timeline that will represent Canadians in a way that Canadians want to be represented.

Empty rhetoric has to stop and the only way that it will be stopped is if the present government is replaced.