Mathieu Ravignat

[Respect for Communities Act, June 17th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it appears that I will be the one asking a question. I cannot say for certain, but you seem disappointed. Nevertheless I have a very important question to ask my colleague who delivered a great speech on this issue.

He talked about doing things for political purposes. We need to be very careful about partisanship and money from political parties that play a part in the drafting of bills. As everyone well knows, demonizing one group of people may gain support from another group that will provide funding. That is unfortunate and this is not the way to be a responsible politician and representative of the people.

I wonder whether the member would comment on this trend that we are seeing on the part of the Conservative party.

[Petitions, June 13th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour and a privilege for me to table this petition on behalf of Development and Peace in Gatineau. This group is especially concerned about the actions of Canadian mining companies abroad. This petition calls on the government to create a legal ombudsman mechanism for responsible mining.

[Labour, June 13th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, we will see.

Cascade Aerospace, in B.C., does maintenance work for our military transport on search and rescue planes, but now Cascade is asking for huge concessions from its workers. Even worse, it is bringing scabs into a labour dispute.

Would the government sit down with Cascade Aerospace and ask it to take its demand for a two-tier contract off the table?

Does the minister not agree that the maintenance and upkeep of our Hercules aircraft, and other search and rescue aircraft, is too important to be put on the line by these bullying tactics?

[Public Works and Government Services, June 13th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday's report on the fighter jet replacements was clear: the decision, regardless of what it is, will be made by the ministers alone. Public officials did the work and now the final decision is in the hands of the Conservatives. This will be a political decision, period.

However, the only way to get the best jet at the best price and to guarantee industrial benefits is to proceed with an open and transparent bidding process.

Why are the Conservatives going to make a political decision instead of letting competition do its job?

[Supplementary Estimates (A), 2014-15, June 10th, 2014]

Mr. Chair, it is my suspicious pleasure, I might even say my persnickety pleasure, to ask the government whether the bill is presented in its usual form.

[Main Estimates, 2014-15, June 10th, 2014]

Mr. Chair, it is my exceedingly fastidious pleasure to ask whether or not the bill is in its usual form.

[Privacy, June 9th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the past six months have shown what little regard the Conservatives have for privacy. They lost thousands of dollars and then refused to properly manage the fallout of that situation.

For the position of privacy commissioner, the Conservatives chose someone who just weeks earlier was advising spy agencies. Seriously, Mr. Speaker.

Under the guise of addressing cyberbullying, the Conservatives wrote legislation to make it easier to collect and share personal information without a warrant. Their governmental agencies request and receive private information from telecommunications companies as they wish. What is more, we just found out that they lost 2,000 census forms.

The only information they truly protect is the information people are trying to get through the Access to Information Act. In those cases, the Conservatives prefer redactions to transparency.

Canadians realize that they cannot trust the Conservatives to protect their privacy. While the Liberals are asleep at the wheel, only the NDP is keeping an eye on the situation and ensuring that Canadians' privacy is protected.

[Government Appointments, June 5th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, there is a big difference between the Daniel Therrien who seems to have developed a sudden passion for human rights and the one who defended security certificates, deporting people to countries that practise torture and sharing information with the NSA.

This is another example of the Prime Minister's amateur approach. Why have the Conservatives, old Reformers, lost all respect for individual freedoms?

[Parks Canada, June 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, my riding, Pontiac, is very privileged to have the magnificent Gatineau River, an important part of our country's human and natural history. It certainly deserves to be designated a Canadian heritage river. However, Parks Canada, which oversees that network, has been crippled by the Conservatives' many cuts.

Do the Conservatives really believe that cutting Parks Canada's budget is a good way to develop regional tourism and protect our rivers?

[Respecting Families of Murdered and Brutalized Persons Act, May 30th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, this government is introducing yet another lousy bill. The government should have done a little more research and consulted experts in the matter to draft a better bill.

However, I do understand this government's intention. It must be said that the members across the way do have a genuine and deep desire to protect victims. All parties in the House can agree on that. There is certainly no disagreement between the government and the official opposition on that.

However, for all their zeal, they still have to do things properly. The government must take into consideration current legislation and even other bills that it has introduced.

It would have made more sense to put some of the provisions of this bill into their bill on the Canadian victims bill of rights. Why did the Conservatives not do that? I do not know.

My colleague from Gatineau, who does an excellent job as our party's justice critic, already mentioned that point. I want to commend her for the excellent job she does. I am honoured to have a colleague like her.

Bill C-48, which the member mentioned, was introduced during the previous Parliament. It amended the Criminal Code and the National Defence Act. Before the 2011 election, the bill had already been passed at third reading on division—not unanimously, as my colleague claimed. That is an important detail.

At the time, Steve Sullivan, who was the first ombudsman for victims of crime and who supports our position, said that the bill was nothing more than smoke and mirrors. If someone is charged with first degree murder, the crown is generally not concerned with less serious offences. When Mr. Olson was found guilty of murdering 11 children, the crown was not concerned with the charges of kidnapping or sexual assault, even though he clearly also committed those crimes. The crown would have had to prove each crime and could have used that to encourage a plea bargain, but it still depends on the judge's willingness to sentence someone to more than 25 years, which Mr. Sullivan thinks is unlikely.

He does not think that many judges would sentence a criminal to life in prison with no chance of parole for 40 years. He does not think that judges would do this. As a caveat, I want to point out that nearly all modern democratic countries offer the possibility of parole.

In the bill we are examining today, judges retain their discretion, so how is this a solution to the problem the member who introduced this bill is trying to solve?

Mr. Sullivan also went on to say that, when offenders are sentenced to life in prison without parole for 25 years, it is understood that they will not be granted parole if they represent a danger or a risk.

This affects a very small number of offenders, specifically those who abduct, sexually assault and murder someone. These sordid crimes are rather rare. Mr. Olsen and Mr. Bernardo are examples of offenders who fall into this category. This measure would be used, at the most, only a few times a year, but it would not change anything for the families of victims.

We should listen to the opinion of the former federal ombudsman for victims of crime. It is clear that Mr. Sullivan thinks that this bill does not do enough and would be useless. That is unfortunate.