Pat Martin

[Petitions, May 9th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by hundreds of Canadians from all over Canada who point out that asbestos is the greatest industrial killer that the world has ever known. Yet, Canada remains one of the largest producers and exporters of asbestos in the world and Canada allows asbestos to be used in building materials, textiles and even in children's toys.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to ban asbestos in all of its forms, end all government subsidies of asbestos, both in Canada and abroad, and stop blocking international health and safety conventions designed to protect workers from asbestos, such as the Rotterdam convention.

[Criminal Code, May 8th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I, too, rise in support of Bill C-299. I will speak very briefly on the matter because I think it is a subject that all Canadians should be concerned with, and it is fitting that the House of Commons is seized of the issue today.

I am not sure that all Canadians realize the magnitude and the scope of this problem. Today in testimony at the access to information, privacy and ethics committee we heard that it is estimated there are roughly 30 million incidents of identity theft or breaches of personal information in the United States per year, which could lead to identity theft. In fact, there were 104 million incidents in the last three years.

Coupled with the initiative by my colleague from Edmonton, Bill C-299, our committee has undertaken a comprehensive study and analysis. We will be doing a full review and study of identity theft in all its forms.

One of the things that comes to mind, and people who are following this subject might be interested in this, is the justice committee has also been dealing with the issue. I believe my colleague, the justice critic for the NDP, was aware of this. Back in February, it submitted a report to the House of Commons, urging the Minister of Justice to amend the Criminal Code to include identity theft as a separate item under the Criminal Code, thus recognizing the severity of the problem in society.

We heard evidence from the Privacy Commissioner today. She tried to give some definition to a problem that is abstract in nature and poorly understood by so many. I do not think people realize the number of ways identity theft is being planned and implemented as we speak. There are people out there with great technical skills who are busily engaging themselves in identity theft now, not always resulting in injury to a Canadian but it should still be considered a crime in the context of the RCMP looking into it.

One of the assistants to the Privacy Commissioner currently is a former deputy commissioner of the RCMP specializing in identity theft. We take some comfort that we are well served with expertise, watching out for our best interests in this regard. However, they are wrestling with how we might better protect Canadians from this problem.

One of the more egregious examples that came forward in testimony today is the situation, which happens from time to time in our country and in the United States, where houses are sold right out from underneath people, without them realizing it. Unwittingly and unknowingly to them, someone has usurped their identity, gone through the motions and actually sold their homes. The titles have been transferred and they are sitting in homes that they thought were theirs, but they have been stolen from them. That is perhaps one of more glaring or shocking examples, but people should be taking that seriously.

We note the commissioner of privacy in the United Kingdom has just issued a report on this issue of identity theft and uses the word “shocking” at some of the revelations of the criminal activity going on in that country. One of the more shocking things they have uncovered and revealed to us, and that we have taken note of, is the fact there are moles willing to sell information to undercover police or undercover journalists, as was exposed in that country, in virtually every aspect of the financial sector. They are willing to sell personal information for the purposes of illegal activity and identity theft.

It can be through phishing attacks or fake bank e-mails, which is another one Canadians should be cautious of. It has been brought to our attention that people are getting phony e-mails, using the banner and the template of a local bank, asking them to please verify their bank account numbers and their pin numbers so the bank can double check to ensure everything is on the up and up. Those are fraudulent messages but they are so professionally executed that even people who are cautious of identity theft in their personal information are falling for this and are sending their most highly protected personal information to these individuals with sometimes tragic results.

There are robots, Bots, circulating throughout the IT sector, Trojans and worms that creep into the electronic systems. On a cautionary note, people must become aware of and be cautious of the Facebook and MySpace domains, especially young people, because there are people trolling through that database of information for the purposes of identity theft.

If there are 30 million people per year whose personal information is being compromised by people who would and could use this identity theft to inflict financial injury on us, just by sheer ratio and proportion, we could safely say that there are roughly three millions Canadians per year who are suffering this.

The reason I raise this and the reason I wanted to intervene today is that it is wrong that companies are not required to notify individuals if their personal information has been compromised. Companies have no obligation or duty to notify people in the case of a breach.

Even if I did not suffer any financial loss, if my personal information and my privacy were compromised, I would want to know because I may choose to change where I am doing business if its security network is so lax that once, twice or ten times my personal information has been compromised.

One of the recommendations of the committee which just did a statutory review of the PIPEDA legislation, the personal information protection legislation, was that there must be a duty and an obligation on the company to notify people, whether it is the credit card company or the bank that has lost the records or whatever, that their information has been compromised.

We are taking this very seriously. Bill C-299, or what is left of it, would only help us in one aspect of all that needs to be done. It does in fact call for the Criminal Code to be amended so that identification information obtained by fraud or false pretence would be a stand-alone offence.

It has always struck me as odd that it is a stand-alone offence to steal a cow but it is not a stand-alone offence to steal an automobile for instance, and it is not a stand-alone offence to engage in this criminal activity which is very much a sign of the times and one that was never contemplated when the Martin's Criminal Code was put together. However, it is a much more pervasive problem today than a lot of Canadians realize.

We are not trying to upset people or to cause a panic. We believe that, by and large, our financial institutions do provide adequate security but if there are creative and highly skilled technical people who are looking for every opportunity possible to penetrate whatever security walls might have been put up in order to gain access to our personal information for nefarious reasons, we must to take this seriously. If we do nothing else in this particular area, in this particular Parliament, we should be able to tell Canadians that we are seized with this issue and that we will do all we can to protect their financial and personal information.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, May 7th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if the parliamentary secretary and the Conservative government have an open mind about the possibility of some kind of proportional representation coming into effect some day when it comes to the selection of senators. Why did they choose to initiate this process without any kind of broad consultation?

Why would the Conservatives choose a research firm like the Frontier Centre which has a stated bias against proportional representation? It is on the record years ago saying that proportional representation is a bad idea. This indicates to me that perhaps there is a preconceived bias on the part of the Tories that they would seek out and find the one polling firm that is so jaded and biased toward proportional representation that they are willing to risk their objectivity by saying so and giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to have these tiny little focus groups and then base a conclusion on that. Does that not speak to a prejudice against meaningful reform and proportional representation?

[Business of Supply, May 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, in all fairness we have to recognize that it was a breakthrough, that the logjam finally broke when this agreement and this settlement was reached.

Many people worked for years imploring the Liberal government of the day to achieve some kind of just resolution package. Whatever groundwork was done under the previous regime, the logjam broke under the present regime. I will give credit where credit is due.

However, we are missing one key element that is just as important as the monetary package and that is the apology. If the Prime Minister cannot do it, then I think the Speaker of the House of Commons should do it on behalf of all members of Parliament.

[Business of Supply, May 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I will not modify my remarks one iota. The term “cultural genocide” is entirely appropriate. In fact, cultural genocide is a systematic pulverization of a people's culture. It is a methodology frankly.

Those who study these things can point out that there are deliberate steps to be taken. They can tell people what to do if they are trying to stamp out a people's culture. Missionaries are sent in first and their religion is undermined. Their language is outlawed. Their cultural celebrations and their dances et cetera are banned. Systematic and deliberate things can be done when the motive is cultural genocide. Everything to do with the Indian residential schools matches that prerequisite list word for word.

I have heard some people say, even in the course of this debate, that many people did get a decent education at these residential schools, that not everyone was physically and sexually abused. I am the first to admit that. But let me also say that being torn from the bosom of one's family against one's will year after year does constitute abuse in and of itself. That is where the loss of language and culture should be compensated.

I cannot forget a story told to me by Matthew Coon Come, the former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations. On his first day at a residential school, he and his little brother, who was six years old, were sent into the showers. They had never seen a shower before and when the water was turned on they though it was marvellous. It was fantastic. His little brother asked if he should wash between his toes. A priest swooped into the room and beat him with a stick for speaking in his own language.

They were not allowed to speak Cree at that school. On their first day they were beaten while standing naked in a shower, something they had never seen before. Imagine their fear. If that was not a deliberate attempt at stamping out language and culture, it was a graphic illustration, and it is important that we recognize it today.

[Business of Supply, May 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to enter into this debate. Let me say at the outset that the social conditions of Canada's first nation, Métis and Inuit people is perhaps Canada's greatest failure and in fact perhaps Canada's greatest shame.

At the core and at the very foundation of these appalling social conditions we can easily trace these conditions back to the impact of this terrible tragedy in social engineering, the Indian residential school legacy.

I agree with the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations when he says that reaching a just and fair resolution and closing the book on this chapter in our history is a necessary prerequisite before we can move on with the other necessary changes and accommodations we will have to introduce if we are to elevate the social conditions and the living conditions of Canada's first nations people.

I spent a great deal of time working on this file on the aboriginal affairs committee as we dealt with witnesses after witnesses, trying to implore the Liberal government to do the honourable thing and come to a just resolution. A number of things will haunt me forever from my experience on that committee. There are things that I will never forget. I think I have gained some insight as to what a profound effect this period of history has had on the people on whose behalf we speak today.

Let me give one example and I will not dwell on some of the horrific stories or the graphic illustrations that we heard. A woman named Flora Merrick from the province of Manitoba was a witness at our committee. She was 88 years old. She was making an application for compensation because of the abuse she suffered at a residential school.

She was nine years old when she ran away from the school to attend her mother's funeral. I am still affected by this today. She was caught, brought back to the school, beaten black and blue, and forced to stay in a closet day after day for as long as two weeks. This was her punishment for running away from the residential school to attend her mother's funeral as a scared nine-year old girl.

When she applied for $3,500 in compensation the Government of Canada spent $40,000 opposing her claim, saying that those were normal social conditions of the day, or those were cultural norms to use that level of discipline on a child.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will be splitting my time with the member for Vancouver Island North. I hope it is not too late to do that.

The Government of Canada was willing to spend $40,000 when dealing with Flora Merrick's case to deny a claim of $3,500 from a woman who suffered abuse because it was the cultural norm of the time. That led National Chief Phil Fontaine of the Assembly of First Nations to ask: In whose culture is it normal to beat a nine-year old girl black and blue because she ran away from school to attend her mother's funeral?

We were dumbfounded. Our jaws dropped around the table at the Indian affairs committee. I will never forget this decent, humble woman, 88 years old, presenting before our committee and telling us this story.

Finally, some of us started to grasp the true impact of what went on in many cases in that school. I ask as well this question. In whose culture could it possibly be considered normal to treat children in that way? It is not any culture or society that I want to belong to.

Before I go too far, I want to recognize and pay tribute to some of the people who are diligently working to bring a conclusion to this sad chapter in our history. Mr. Bob Watts has now been assigned as the head of the truth and reconciliation commission which will be up and running in the near future, in short months. Charlene Belleau diligently worked for years organizing conferences and trying to get the public's attention to alert Canadians that this was not some failed attempt to provide education.

The history of the Indian residential schools in this country was cultural genocide, plain and simple. Let us not use the words “an attempt to assimilate”. Let us call it what it was. It was to beat the Indian out of these kids. It went on for year after year. The Government of Canada knew, the Government of Canada directed it, and it contracted this work out. The sooner we all look at the truth of what happened there, the sooner both sides can begin to heal.

It is a necessary prerequisite not only for first nations people but I believe for white society to come to grips with our relationship with first nations. That is necessary.

I would also like to recognize an organization on Vancouver Island at Nanoose Bay called Tsow-Tun Le Lum Society. It is a residential school survivors treatment centre. I attended and spent time with some of the elders there, all of whom were survivors of the Port Alberni School, one of the residential schools with the most appalling history of pedophilia and sexual abuse. These survivors deserve our collective apology and that will never be enough.

A second thing that haunts me from my experience, and I still have a hard time thinking about it, is an image left with us by another elder, a woman, who told us that in her village they had decided they would not send their children to these schools any more. The children came back with stories of being beaten and abused. The said that they were not going to let them have their children any more.

When the RCMP came and literally ripped the children from their homes and seized them, the most memorable thing about that was the silence in the community, the eerie silence left behind when the children were no longer in the community, when no children were playing. There was no laughter, no children playing any more, just the sounds of the parents weeping as their children disappeared again because some of them knew the reality of what was happening in those places. They were chambers of horror.

Some were educational institutions; some were chambers of horror. Generation after generation, where the older brother would come home and tell the little brother how he was beaten and abused and the little brother would then get sent to this place. Imagine the fear of being sent to these places.

Father to son, generation after generation, year after year and people could not say no. They could not keep their children from going because the RCMP would come and rip them from their home and then there would be the eerie silence in the community with no children left in it.

The witnesses told us the third thing that I will share with you, Mr. Speaker, that will stay with me forever. They themselves bore intergenerational guilt for not knowing how to love their children, for not knowing how to hug their children or nurture their children because the intergenerational communication of those parenting skills had been interrupted by being ripped out of their homes and sent away for 10 years in a row.

Let us not forget, this was not summer camp for two or three months. This is all year, every year, for 10 years in a row for many of these children. They now do not know how to show affection or to nurture or to parent their own children. Their own children are emotionally starved, even though they have never seen a residential school. Their parents were damaged and that is the intergenerational damage that I see ever day on the streets of the inner city of Winnipeg.

I represent the largest off-reserve population in Canada. I see it every day where dysfunctional people trace many of their social problems to the intergenerational damage caused by the residential schools.

It costs nothing to apologize, but let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, what professionals and researchers say. The co-author of a recent report to the World Health Organization says that acknowledging the wrongs done to aboriginal people would significantly improve their health. The world realizes that an apology is healing and that the truth must be revealed, that there must be truth and reconciliation.

Lisa Jackson, from the university's indigenous health unit who co-authored this report, says that the social factors stemming from colonization are very significant, including the federal government's refusal to apologize for the past.

Cash is one thing and giving people compensation to help them get on with their lives and deal with the damage they have incurred and suffered is one thing, but it is no substitute for an apology. I would be proud if we could be a part of that, resulting from the motion that we have before us today.

[Criminal Code, April 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. In recent weeks, various types of unparliamentary language have been called out of order. One example is that when I used the word “fascist” it was ruled to be out of order and unparliamentary. My colleague is now calling us “Bolsheviks”. Both words are types of governments that we frown upon in this Parliament. We do not approve of calling each other names.

If one legitimate form of government that has fallen out favour, i.e. “fascism”, is unparliamentary, would it not also be unparliamentary to call someone another form of government that has fallen out of favour, and that is “Bolshevism”?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, April 23rd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, when we look at the reality and divide the total allocation of the department, whether it is $9 billion or $10 billion--people differ on it--it is roughly $9,000 or $10,000 per person to pay for everything from housing to infrastructure to education to health care to welfare.

We spend $9,000 per person for high school alone in the province of Manitoba. The whole system is chronically underfunded. I see a former minister of Indian affairs nodding his head. Some problems cannot be solved by throwing money at them. For other problems, that is exactly what is required.

We can find $14 billion a year to keep 50,000 soldiers going. We have $10 billion a year to meet our legal obligations to a million first nations people. We are falling short by a factor of 10.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, April 23rd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the total commitment to first nations, Métis and Inuit issues in this budget is $14 per head. That does not even scratch the surface in the appalling need that is illustrated out there. It is not lost on aboriginal leadership that we seem to be able to find billions of dollars at any time at the drop of a hat to buy more tanks or to buy submarines that do not even float, or sink, or whatever they are supposed to do.

However, if we try to raise the point of the appalling social conditions of first nations people and the incidence of poverty and neglect and the wasted opportunity of another generation of children not taking part fully in all that our society has to offer, people scream bloody murder that we are giving money away to the Indians again. This is an appalling contradiction.

I should remind my colleague, the parliamentary secretary, that the $300 million in the 2006 budget is money that the NDP negotiated and it was wrestled out of the Liberals in Bill C-48 to be spent on aboriginal housing. It was like pulling teeth.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, April 23rd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to enter into the debate at the final stages of the implementation of the budget put forward by the Conservative government.

I represent the riding of Winnipeg Centre which has the highest aboriginal population of any riding in Canada. There are roughly 16,000 people who self-identified themselves in the last census as being either first nation, Métis or Inuit. I point out that this would be by far the largest aboriginal reserve, were my riding considered a reserve. On the face of it, the city of Winnipeg, and more often than not the inner city of Winnipeg, the city centre I represent, is becoming increasingly the area where first nations people leave the desperation of their reserves to seek opportunity.

Let me say by way of introduction that the social condition of Canada's first nations, Métis and Inuit people is Canada's greatest failure and perhaps Canada's greatest shame. Fully 46% of all the families in the riding of Winnipeg Centre live below the poverty line. I say that with no pride, believe me, and 52% of all the children in the riding of Winnipeg Centre live below the poverty line. These are staggering statistics.

It ties in with my first point that overwhelmingly the face of poverty in my riding is Indian, if I can use that term. People are not finding opportunity as they flock to the inner city. They are living on the margins. They are living on the edge. I point this out only to make the point that when we do not deal with social conditions, we run the risk of social unrest.

I want to recognize and pay tribute again, by way of introduction, to the aboriginal leadership within my riding and on first nations reserves, among the elders, the chief and council, for keeping a lid on social unrest that is just at the verge of boiling over at any point in time.

Let us not kid ourselves. We are living in some kind of a vacuum in the House of Commons if we do not recognize and acknowledge that there is an underclass in Canada, and it is native. That underclass will not remain peaceful when it loses hope.

We lived through the Oka crisis. This is a cautionary tale I am speaking of here, but we lived through the Oka crisis and we were virtually on the edge of civil unrest at that time. The Oka crisis was not isolated to that area of the outskirts of Montreal. In fact, there were rumblings of discontent right across the land. The leadership in other areas kept a lid on that social unrest and discontent, watching what would be the outcome of Oka.

Fortunately, we got through that with a minimum of violence, a minimum of social unrest on the condition that we gave some promise and some hope. That was the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, a five year, $500 million comprehensive royal commission on the state of the social conditions of first nations, Métis and aboriginal people. That was hope. There was hope generated. There was optimism in the land that finally Canada would decide once and for all that society does not move forward unless we all move forward together. There is an enlightened self-interest associated with not having a permanent underclass.

That was the optimism around the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. That hope, that optimism, has been dwindling ever since the tabling of the royal commission, which I believe was in 1995. Since then it has been gathering dust. There was a summary report on the implementation of the recommendations of the royal commission. It was called “Gathering Strength” and the joke in Indian country was that it was gathering dust because not a single one of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples had been implemented, not one.

To this day, the hope and the goodwill that was generated by the recognition of the social conditions that first nations people face has been dissipating and dwindling to the point where we are back at this crisis point, where I do not know if the leadership of first nations, Métis and Inuit communities can hold their dissidents back. I do not know when that is going to boil over into social unrest.

We have seen the riots in L.A. We have seen in the civil rights movement, the major American cities boiling over and then blowing up. It was burn, baby, burn as people were lashing out in their frustration and the inequity of living in the richest and most powerful civilization in the history of the world, and we cannot even provide for the basic needs of a family to survive if they are Indian and living in the inner city of Winnipeg.

There might be 1,000 reasons for it, and I am not making excuses here, but believe me the reason is not that people are not pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, as some critics would have us believe to be the case. There are inequities that have not been addressed. There are legal obligations that have not been addressed and not budgeted for in this budget, to stay on point and to stay relevant.

My colleague, the Minister of Indian Affairs, says that we are spending more money than ever on the aboriginal peoples, up to $10 billion, but he is being disingenuous in a sense because some of that $10 billion is in fact just meeting legal obligations in court cases that we have lost over land issues or land claims. That is not part of the social spending that we believe is necessary to elevate the standards of living conditions of aboriginal people to the mean average that Canadians enjoy.

I say this with the greatest respect. We have failed in our mission by ignoring the greatest social crisis in our midst. I have spoken to first nations leadership and I will be speaking to them this Wednesday at a rally in Winnipeg specifically about this budget. They feel that their legitimate claims and concerns have been ignored by a government that would rather see them simply get on with it, solve their own problems and move on.

There is nothing more unfair than treating unequal people equally. There is an equality issue we have to deal with here. A lot of people say that aboriginal people have the same opportunities as any other person in Canada. I read an appalling paper written by a Professor Tom Flanagan, who was an adviser to this government, I understand, called Why Don’t Indians Drive Taxis? Why do they not just get on with it? Other immigrants come to this country and they drive taxis, and their children go to university, and within a generation they are middle class. He just does not get it. If that is the type of logic that is informing the policies of this government, then we are on the road to conflict.

I do not know how much longer the aboriginal leadership can hold their people back because they deserve a medal for patience so far and for the restraint that they have shown in seeking an essentially Gandhi-like commitment to peaceful negotiation and demonstrations. That will not last forever.

I caution this government and all members of Parliament that we cannot have our heads in the sand about the inequities that are inherent in our current paternalistic relationship with first nations. Unless we address a meaningful transfer of control of land and resources, no amount of social welfare is going to change the status of aboriginal people.

We are embarrassed internationally by the third world conditions. Some of the only successes aboriginal leaders have seem to be when they block a railroad or a highway, or when they go to the United Nations and show the rest of the world this glaring social crisis that we have in this country, where a significant number of Canadians are being left behind.

Living in the richest and most prosperous civilization the world has ever known, there is no excuse to have a permanent underclass. We are not trying hard enough if we are not bringing aboriginal people along with us in the prosperity of this great nation.

I felt it was my duty to use these few minutes to remind the House of Commons of our obligation to live up to the legal obligations, our commitments to aboriginal people, whether it is in the implementation of treaties or the implementation of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.