Matthew Kellway

[Protection of Canada from Terrorists Act, December 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-44, an act to amend the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and other acts.

In a sense, this bill has been a long time coming. It has been 30 years since this place turned its mind to the CSIS act. Much has changed. It makes sense to update or modernize this legislation.

We, on this side of the House, supported this bill at second reading, not because it was perfect, far from it, but out of recognition that there are many issues swirling around this and through the courts on matters of national security and intelligence services.

The bill has been returned to us, however, from committee unamended, in spite of the age of the current legislation and the issues confronting us on matters related to intelligence and national security. The bill had but four hours of scrutiny at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. True to form, amendments put forward by the opposition, recommendations put forward by expert witnesses, and cautions issued by experts were all turned aside, dismissed, and defeated.

We have before us a flawed bill, one not worthy of support. What this bill betrays is a government unprepared, unable, or incapable of doing the difficult but necessary work of ensuring that Canadians have both security and their civil liberties. Indeed, in this bill, and in the government's world view it would seem, civil liberties must wait for security.

It is arguable that in this bill and all that the government does, it tends to see civil liberty itself as a security risk. This would explain why the government so unflinchingly tramples over the rule of law, our own as well as that of others, and has such little concern about and does so little to provide civilian oversight of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Here is my case for this. First, the bill provides blanket protection of identity for all CSIS human sources in legal proceedings, including criminal and immigration cases. There is no opportunity provided for the accused or respondent to confront the accuser and test the evidence. Such an opportunity is considered a fundamental part of our justice system.

How courts respond to such a denial in practice is left to be determined. It is unclear from here. Will the courts respond so that this becomes an obstacle to successful prosecution, will they allow this to enhance their probability of successful prosecution, or will the courts challenge the constitutionality of this provision? All of this is to be determined.

Second, the practical implications and, indeed, the threat of this amendment, become clear when one notes that this bill amends the Canadian Citizenship Act by accelerating the timeline for the revocation of citizenship for dual citizens found to be engaged in terrorist activities and other serious crimes.

It is out of our deep concern for the expedited revocation of citizenship in the broader context of this bill that we have proposed amendments before the House at this stage relating to these provisions.

Third, this bill tries to escape the views expressed by the courts starting in 2007 with respect to CSIS actions and surveillance abroad. Those views were eventually set out in a decision by the Federal Court in 2013 that declared illegal the practices of CSIS for obtaining warrants for conducting surveillance of Canadians abroad.

The response by this government through this bill comes in the form of essentially continuing its practices under the cover of the following language in the bill: “Without regard to any other law, including that of any foreign state...”.

Fourth, and perhaps most tellingly, while the bill gives CSIS new powers, it does nothing to enhance civilian oversight of the organization. More than that, it does nothing even to repair existing age-old shortcomings in civilian oversight of CSIS. The Arar commission concluded in 2006 that improved civilian oversight of CSIS was needed, but was ignored.

Privacy and information commissioners of Canada have asked the government to ensure that effective oversight be included in any legislation establishing additional powers for intelligence and law enforcement agencies, such as this one. That too has been ignored.

We echo their call. Civilian oversight is our means of ensuring that security and intelligence services can do their part to provide for the security and safety of Canadians without diminishing our civil liberties.

Under the bill, the government gives civilian oversight not even secondary consideration. It gets no consideration. Under Bill C-44, civilian oversight, such as it is, staggers forward. The current review agency, the Security Intelligence Review Committee, is a part-time committee of the Prime Minister's appointees. We have been through Chuck Strahl and Arthur Porter as chairs. Now we have former Reform MP Deborah Grey as interim chair. Two of the five vacancies on the committee have in fact been vacant for months.

In the 2012 budget, the Conservatives eliminated the position of inspector general of CSIS. The inspector general was the internal monitoring unit within the service, responsible for checking all CSIS activities for compliance with the law. The inspector general's responsibilities were passed along to the Security Intelligence Review Committee with its rotating chair and vacant seats.

NDP members of the public safety and national security committee proposed three very reasonable amendments to enhance civilian oversight of CSIS. The first of these flowed from the recent SIRC report. It called simply for a requirement that CSIS provide complete and accurate information to SIRC in a timely manner in order to facilitate proper oversight of the service.

The second proposed amendment would have ensured that those appointed to SIRC had the expertise necessary for the role, such as in the administration of justice and national security and so on.

The third proposed amendment called for appointments to SIRC to have the support of the Leader of the Opposition so as to extract ourselves from this process of partisan appointments to such critically important oversight roles.

These are all simple, reasonable amendments to a very important component of the security intelligence services, all rejected by the Conservatives, leaving civil liberties at risk, easily and unnecessarily sacrificed under a government that seems not to believe that civil liberties and national security ought, indeed, co-exist if we are to live in the kind of Canada that we desire.

Our democratic values must not be compromised in the pursuit of enhanced public safety. They need not be compromised. Protecting civil liberties and public safety are both core Canadian values, and improvements to one must never, and should not and need not, come at the expense of the other.

As Privacy Commissioner Daniel Carrion put it, it is understandable that the government would want to consider boosting the powers of law enforcement and national security agencies to address potential gaps, but any new tools should be accompanied by a beefed up role for the watchdogs who keep an eye on spies and police.

The fact is that despite all its shortcomings, this bill could have been improved when it went through committee, a process by which we can arrive at well-informed policy. Instead of giving the bill the careful study it deserved, it was rammed through committee, which only heard four hours of testimony from independent experts.

The Conservatives have once again rushed legislation through the House with total disregard for any recommendations for improvement. This, unfortunately, has become a defining characteristic of the government.

[Protection of Canada from Terrorists Act, December 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am a bit confused about the hon. member's position. It sounded like a fine and thorough analysis of the bill, yet he ends up saying that we really need certain types of oversight. When one uses that type of language, about needing certain oversight of CSIS and yet the bill does not provide that oversight, I am left wondering how it is that he ends up reconciling that requirement for oversight with his support of a bill that does not have it.

[Petitions, December 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition today with respect to the interim federal health program. The petitioners wish to draw the attention of the House to the fact that refugees fleeing war-torn areas such as Afghanistan have been denied medical care upon arrival in Canada and that pregnant women and children have been unable to access care because of a lack of health insurance.

The petitioners believe that all people in Canada deserve access to health care services. Therefore, they call upon the House of Commons to rescind the federal government's cuts to the interim federal health program and end this barrier to care for refugees.

[Social Development, December 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, in Beaches—East York, legions of volunteers are gearing up to pack and deliver holiday hampers to thousands of neighbours, thanks to the Neighbourhood Centre north of the Danforth and Community Centre 55 to the south. We all have gifts to give, and I thank all of my constituents for giving of themselves so generously at this time of year.

However, we in this place have the opportunity give much more than anyone else. We can create a more generous and compassionate Canada. Instead, successive governments have left gaps and traps for Canadians to fall into everywhere, fully aware that many will fall into them, fully aware that many will not be able to get out of them.

We do this to ourselves and we do it to each other, in areas from from child care to seniors' health care to veterans' care to supporting women and children caught up in abusive and violent relationships. We will never replace the need for family, good neighbours, and a supportive community, but we in this place ought not to be standing by while so many Canadians struggle and are in need of our help.

[National Health and Fitness Day Act, December 8th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the member's speech. I am a bit concerned about the claims he has made for the fitness tax credits. In this day and age, certainly in my riding, a lot of constituents simply cannot afford to put their kids in sports programs. The leagues, while run very efficiently by volunteers, are expensive. The government has proposed to put pennies in the pockets of people who actually need dollars in order to put their kids in sports programs and reap all the benefits.

I worry about a bill of this nature. The member has talked of extravaganza and tax credits that, frankly, are not meaningful to a large proportion of Canadians. If we are serious about getting kids engaged in sports for all the great health and social reasons that flow from that, why is the government not doing something more meaningful to put real dollars back into the pockets of people these days who do not have them so their kids can participate?

[Poverty, November 25th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, not every Canadian family benefits. Income inequality has become a hallmark of Canadian cities.

The new report from TD Bank says that it is stunting our economic growth and threatening our long-term prosperity. The report identifies the damage done by the Liberal-Conservative tag team, together making the poor poorer and the rich richer. There are too many young people struggling for a foothold and too many families struggling to provide.

When economists around the world are advising governments to “lean against income inequality”, why are these guys always leaning the wrong way?

[Petitions, November 21st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition today with respect to local food, which is signed by constituents in and around my riding of Beaches—East York.

The petitioners point out that buying local food cuts down on transportation and greenhouse gas emissions, that buying local foods gives Canadians access to fresh and nutritious food, and that federal departments and agencies should lead by example and support Canadian farmers by buying local food.

The petitioners therefore call upon the Government of Canada to require the Department of Public Works to develop a policy to purchase locally grown food for all federal institutions.

[Tougher Penalties for Child Predators Act, November 21st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, that is a great question. While I support this bill moving forward to committee for review and study, I am happy that I managed to convey in my speech that this bill is clearly missing an entire response to the issue of child sexual abuse. Clearly, prevention is the critical piece in all of this. It is what one would hope for and think of as any response to criminal activity. First and foremost, this fundamentally has to be be about preventing these things from happening and harming and hurting people.

The story I told is a story about irrecoverable loss, not just for the boy and young man who ended up committing suicide, but for all of the victims, and there were many in this set of circumstances. These are things that people have to live with for the rest of their lives. They have to live with the pain and hurt. To the extent that we, as members of Parliament, can focus our attention on ensuring that young people in this country never have to experience these things and that kind of pain and hurt, and not have to live with that for the rest of the lives, surely we must put our minds to doing just that.

[Tougher Penalties for Child Predators Act, November 21st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise today to speak to Bill C-26 and its very long title. It is a bill that touches on a number of different pieces of legislation, including the Criminal Code and Canada Evidence Act. It would enact a high-risk child sex offender database act as well, and there would be consequential amendments to other acts. We are at second reading here and it seems that we might as well support this bill's passage to committee so that we can hear from some experts on this subject.

As suggested by its title, this act seeks to do a number of things. It would increase the maximum penalties for violations of prohibition orders, probation orders, and peace bonds. It would increase existing mandatory minimum penalties and maximum penalties for certain sexual offences against children. It would clarify and codify rules regarding the imposition of consecutive and concurrent sentences. It would require courts to impose, in certain cases, consecutive sentences on offenders who commit sexual offences against children. It would ensure that spouses of the accused are considered competent and compellable witnesses for the prosecution in child pornography cases. As well, it would increase reporting obligations on sex offenders who travel outside Canada and would establish a high-risk child sex offender database act and other things. It is a far-reaching bill.

What we note about this long list of acts and amendments to existing legislation is that it is more of what the current government has done in the past, more of a turning of the screws in the same direction. We note that the Conservative government in this and previous Parliaments has already implemented new mandatory minimums for assaults where victims are under 16 years of age; it has identified grooming activities as a criminal offence; it has made the use of computers and other telecommunications devices for the purpose of making arrangements to commit a sexual offence against a child an offence; it has amended the sex offender registry already; it has increased the age at which a person can consent to sexual activity from 14 to 16; it has required Internet service providers to report child pornography; and it has increased sentencing and monitoring of dangerous offenders.

Apart from the wisdom of any of this, the problem presented by this bill is that the Minister of Justice has provided information that sexual offences have increased by 6% over the last two years. That statistic is offered by the minister in support of further action in support of this bill. However, at least equally if not more so, that statistic calls into question the approach taken by the current government to date. It seems to suggest that mandatory minimums, longer maximums, increased scrutiny and surveillance via a sex registry and so on may not be effective responses to this issue. This is worrying because of the particular nature of this issue of child sexual assault or child sexual abuse. It is so incredibly harmful and hurtful, leaving lasting emotional and psychological scars on its victims, things that victims have to live with and cope with for the rest of their lives if they can or do in fact live out their lives with the hurt caused.

I am the son of two teachers. When I grew up, chat around the dinner table was always about education and teaching and what was going on in the classroom. However, I married a criminal lawyer who did criminal defence work for 14 years before moving over to the crown side, where she has been for six years. There have been lots of stories brought home about crimes that she has had to be engaged with, either on the defence or prosecution side. They are not happy stories, and for the most part not stories to be talked about around the dinner table.

However, there is a story that I would like to tell that is not related to the many stories I have heard through my wife, but through my own experience as a kid. I had the great fortune of growing up in a lovely, picturesque, and historic Canadian town with a particularly a beautiful downtown in which to live. It is an older and largely more affluent part of the city, filled with old limestone houses, occupied mainly by professionals, doctors, lawyers, professors. As it turns out, it was also the hunting ground of a child sex predator, the choirmaster at one of the local cathedrals. He was a much trusted, highly respected person in the community. He taught music not only through the cathedral but to other kids in town as well. I happened to be a member of one of his non-secular choirs for a very brief time, because I do not have much of a voice.

Things started to come undone for the choirmaster in 1990 when two families in the congregation alleged publicly, in stories in the local paper, that the choirmaster had sexually molested their sons and that the abuse was directly linked to their sons' suicides. Both boys had hanged themselves, one as a teenager and the other as a young man working on his doctorate at an ivy league university. I played tennis with one of those boys as a kid, and I went to nursery school with the other one. It is a small town.

Ultimately the choirmaster plead guilty to charges involving 13 boys over a 12-year period. Over time more victims came forward, making this story much longer and an ever more complicated one. In retelling the story there may be wounds that get reopened, but I want to use the story to the complicated social facts that surround such matters.

The fact that it is a long and complicated story ought to give us all cause to pause and think through carefully our response to this issue. How does someone like this win the trust of both kids and parents? How does a predator like this find support, even from some of his victims? How does he retain the loyalty and support of a significant portion of the congregation? How did he get pardoned, at one point in time? How does he win the support of a new community and congregation?

These are all questions that in the abstract need to be addressed if we are to protect kids from this kind of predatory behaviour. We need to understand better how these things work, because most of this story is about the pain and harm caused to the kids, harm that includes the suicides of two young men full of great promise.

It would seem useful to take this bill to committee so that we can have that discussion and call before the committee witnesses who, based on their expertise and experience, can speak to some of the issues raised in a case like one I referred to today.

Perhaps some parts of this bill will be considered useful by those who testify at committee, but the statistic offered by the minister in support of Bill C-26, that there has been of a 6% increase in sexual offences against children, suggests to me that we ought to be discussing at committee other types of resources to counter the sexual abuse of children, other methods of prevention, other precautions to take, other forms or opportunities for education for both parents and kids.

In the 2011 budget, the Conservatives announced $250,000 in funding over two years as part of the federal victims strategy for programs to protect children. Budget 2012 included $7 million over five years to fund child advocacy centres, as well as limited funding for victims services organizations. This seems paltry in light of the scope and seriousness of the problem.

Can the government tell us whether any of this was effective? We know by way of Steve Sullivan, the former federal ombudsman for the victims of crime, that the circles of support and accountability program was very effective. That is being cut through cuts to Corrections Canada and national crime prevention centres.

In a hopeful moment, a moment in anticipation of a good faith response by the Conservative government, it seems to me that it would be useful to put this bill and other thoughts and ideas before committee for the purpose of looking not only at the bill specifically, but also at the issue more broadly with a view to thinking through what we can do as members of Parliament to prevent further stories like that of the sexual predator I told today, and to prevent the harm that predators like him do to kids, to prevent the kind of pain that would cause two young men to take their own lives.

[Tougher Penalties for Child Predators Act, November 21st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, parents know that at some point, actually at many points, they have to give their kids over to the care of other people, whether it is for sports, education, just plain care, whatever the case may be. It becomes obvious that prevention is an important part of all of this. I appreciated that in my colleague's speech, she referenced concern with the issue of prevention. I also appreciated what she talked about as the specific social circumstances in which sexual abuse crimes occur against children, and it is often by people they trust, being friends, neighbours, et cetera.

Is there anything in this bill that addresses those circumstances? The minister cited the 6% increase in sexual crimes against children, and yet I did not read anything in the bill that addresses the specific social circumstances in which these crimes often take place.