Pat Martin

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to expand a little on the rationale behind why we may have to sit until midnight and I would like to know if my colleague shares my views.

Bill C-2 being about accountability, transparency and, I suppose, making manifest some ethical standards which in and of themselves may not be legislative issues, the principles can be realized within legislation. I know that my colleague shares my view that this is a noble pursuit and an admirable thing to be doing, but will she agree with me that the enemies of open government and accountability are in fact legion?

They are sprinkled throughout the senior bureaucracy. They are sprinkled throughout the permanent government in the Ottawa system. They transcend opposition from political parties. The opposition is ingrained in that very few senior bureaucrats, really, are big fans of open government and transparency. In fact, I challenge members to find one who really believes.

I remember watching the TV show Yes, Minister. It is a British comedy. Sir Humphrey says to the prime minister, “Mr. Prime Minister, you can have good government and you can have open government, but, sir, you cannot have both”. This is the worrisome sentiment that I sense percolating throughout much of Ottawa.

What worries me, and what I would like my colleague's views on, is that I do not think all the political parties understand how fragile an initiative like this really is, how easily it can be knocked off the rails, and how certain actions from certain parties, no matter how well intentioned, can in fact jeopardize and undermine the success of such an ambitious project.

I hear my colleague saying that naturally we are all willing to roll up our sleeves and work hard because we believe in the principles of accountability and transparency. I am sure my colleague wants to be able to tell the people of Quebec that the federal government is now in fact honest. I know my colleague believes that it is important to assure Quebeckers that federalism is in fact the face of honesty, transparency and accountability, not the face of corruption, maladministration and the misuse of funds. This particular bill gives her the opportunity to go home and be a champion of the federal state of Canada as an honest state with integrity.

She made her speech today about extra hours and how we are all willing to make sure this is the best bill it can possibly be, but perhaps the secondary benefit to Bill C-2, secondary to the restoration of the confidence of the main body politic of Canada, is the unity of Canada. The bill should have been subtitled “the unity bill”, because the biggest threat to Canadian unity is the legacy of corruption that the Liberal Party left us. I was losing confidence in federalism under the Liberal Party, so I can imagine how the people in Quebec felt, being the victims of the sponsorship scandal.

Will she agree with me that if we can convince Quebeckers that the new federal government will in fact be honest and will be stipulated to a set of ethical standards, standards we can be proud of instead of ashamed of, we will all be better off and the nation-state of Canada will move into the next century confident that we are on the right track?

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, in the interests of fairness, I thought I was asking a question of the House leader of the Conservative Party. I am not quite as interested in the opinions of the member from Regina, but I have a feeling that the member from Regina has the answer to the question I put to the House leader for the Conservative Party. What on earth is the barrier and the obstacle to progress on this bill? Why does the government feel it is necessary to take these extraordinary measures? Could it be that the obstacle and the barrier is sitting across from him?

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am not averse to this idea. I think the NDP has made it very clear that we are willing to roll up our sleeves and do whatever it takes to work for something that we are committed to. I want to be seen to be on the side of the people who are willing to work hard to get an important job done rather than run away and get to the barbecue circuit. I am perfectly happy to be associated with those who are willing to work.

I wonder, though, in the ordinary calendar of things and in the ordinary agenda scheduling, why the government feels it is necessary to go to these extraordinary lengths of working to midnight. What barriers or obstacles seem to be in the way of us simply conducting ourselves in the normal calendar?

[Liberal Party of Canada, June 9th, 2006]

The fact is, Mr. Speaker, I do not really care if the Liberal Party cannot tell the difference between right and wrong. What I care about is this whole thing undermines people's confidence in the democratic process. An already jaded electorate will see this and be even less likely to take part in the democratic system.

Bill C-2 has some specific amendments to deal with those Liberal leadership loans that are really more like corporate donations. We want to know, will the Conservative Party support those amendments to curb that outrageous practice as well?

[Liberal Party of Canada, June 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, where I come from, the only thing worse than egg-sucking dogs is when they start running in packs. It would seem there are feathers flying and chicken coops being plundered right across the country as the Liberal leadership candidates are using their parliamentary staff to promote their own Liberal Party members.

I do not want my taxpayer dollars being paid to underwrite the Liberal leadership campaign. I want to know what provisions in the accountability act we could put in place to plug this outrageous abuse of Elections Canada financing rules.

[Criminal Code, June 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud on behalf of the NDP to enter the debate on Bill C-10, an act to amend the Criminal Code dealing with minimum penalties. Mr. Speaker, as you well know coming from Manitoba, I represent the inner city riding of Winnipeg Centre. It is a very low income riding, and I am not proud to say, a riding that is very prone to some of the predictable consequences of chronic long term poverty, which has a greater likelihood to be associated with or a victim of crimes, particularly crimes of a violent nature.

I am pleased to have this opportunity. I asked for the opportunity to join the debate today. On behalf of the people of my riding of Winnipeg Centre, I feel duty bound to represent them on an issue dealing with criminal justice and the criminal justice system.

When I survey the residents of my riding, the inner city, the core area of Winnipeg Centre, and ask them what the most important issue facing them is, overwhelmingly the number one top of mind issue they cite is crime, safety, safe streets and criminal justice issues, by a factor of four to one. I was shocked the last time I polled people in my riding in a survey of this nature. My colleague from Yellowknife may find the same when he surveys the people in his riding. Those issues are what come to mind first because they are the issues closest to people's day to day lives.

In surveys in Canada generally, the number one issue that comes to mind is almost always health care. I can say that by a factor of four to one the issues of crime and safety are greater in my riding than the issue of health care. Tax cuts is a factor of five or six to one. Of all the other issues that seem to be prioritized in any election campaign or the federal government's top priorities, almost to a person in my riding, crime and safety are the number one priority.

Having said that, I wanted to enter this debate because I think the people in my riding would want to know that Parliament is seized of the issue, that Parliament is listening to Canadians and their very reasonable plea. Canadians just want to be able to feel safe on their streets. They want to be able to walk down the streets free of interference and mischief, like in the good old days.

When I talk to people in my riding some say, “It was not like this not long ago. When I was growing up, kids were sent to the corner store with 25¢ to buy a quart of milk and did not think twice about it. Now nobody does that”. Right after supper every kid in the neighbourhood would go out to play and they would go as far as they could get in a certain period of time. They had a turnaround time; they had to get back in time for last call, but they were free to roam the streets, play, develop and socialize.

Now there is not a kid in my neighbourhood who goes anywhere without a play date. Kids are driven everywhere. They pre-arrange appointments to play with other eight year olds. Their moms drive them in minivans to play dates and drive them home again. Parents do not feel safe letting their kids go out to play even street hockey. This is a real tragedy of our time. Whether it is real or perceived, it is real enough in the minds of the people whom I represent. They tell me as their member of Parliament that is what they want action on more than anything else.

I am glad that in the final days of this spring session of the 39th Parliament we are talking about criminal justice, that we are talking about safety, and talking about crime in the streets. The incidence of poverty in Winnipeg Centre is high, unfortunately. I am not proud of this, but I have the poorest riding in Canada by whatever measurement one uses. Whether it is family income or incidence of poverty, Winnipeg Centre is the poorest riding in Canada. As such, perhaps disproportionately it is faced with the predictable consequences of chronic long term poverty.

During the election campaign, I believe it was in early January of 2006, there was a tragic incident that brought the whole subject of mandatory minimum sentences to the forefront. There was a shooting death in the city of Toronto. I hate to share this over top of the heckling from my colleague from Ontario who does not like this bill apparently, but I had a similar incident in my riding not three blocks from my office where a 17-year-old, perfectly innocent nice young man was caught in the crossfire between two gangs. Gangsters were popping off rounds playing with their guns essentially, picking each other off and they picked off an innocent bystander.

I hope members will join me in mourning the loss of that young innocent person and the grieving the family goes through and the feeling of senselessness about it.

How did we ever descend to this point? This was an ordinary Winnipeg neighbourhood and now people will not sleep in the rooms that share the outer walls of their houses. They do not want to be next to the outside wall for fear a stray bullet will hit one of their kids. They sleep in the inner rooms of their houses. How did it come to that in 2006, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Canada? They want to know. We do not profess to have all the answers but they deserve to know at least that we are paying attention to it and that we are doing our best to address their concerns.

Mandatory minimum sentencing is something we frequently hear is a knee-jerk reaction, that it is not tested and not proven. I will say quite openly that I will only support things that I believe will have the results I am after and that we are seeking to achieve.

There are many reasons that we structure our sentencing within the criminal justice system, only one of which is actually punitive. Punishing people may be one of the lesser motivations in terms of our sentencing. One is that we want to be safe.

I see I am running short of time. Let me say simply that the NDP justice critic, the member for Windsor—Tecumseh, has advised us that we are interested in this bill to the point where we would like to see it go to committee for assessment. At committee we can propose what we think are improvements to the bill to make sure it actually achieves what it seeks to achieve. That is a reasonable position that we are taking.

Members who stand up and condemn this bill in a blanket fashion are showing a wilful blindness to the wishes of Canadians who want this subject addressed. They are not listening to their constituents. If they asked them, their constituents would tell them, “We want you to make our streets safe. Whatever it takes is what we want you seized with”.

The NDP wants this bill to go to committee. I am happy to have had this opportunity to speak to it.

[Business of Supply, June 8th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I notice that my colleague has chosen from the vast cafeteria of issues in the Liberal opposition day to speak mostly on post-secondary education. I am glad that he seized on this, because I do have something that I would like his views of and his comment on.

It seems to me that just before I got into politics in 1997, it was the Liberals who changed the method of transfers to the provinces for health, post-secondary education and social welfare. They changed it from the former mechanism or vehicle to the CHST. At that time, that funding transfer went down from $19 billion to $11 billion. It was the most ruthless cutting, hacking and slashing in history of the Canada health and social transfer. It was a 40% cut.

At that time, the post-secondary institutions took a hit. They took such a blow that they are only now crawling out from under it. Only now are they back up to the level they used to be at in being able to provide reasonable post-secondary education.

In my own home province of Manitoba, the universities had no choice but to off-load that burden onto tuition fees and create an untenable situation for students. It created an unmanageable situation in that if we wanted to be ready for the next century, and if communities wanted to be ready for the next knowledge generation, all the kids could do was pay higher tuition fees.

Manitoba froze tuition in 1999. As soon as the NDP formed the government, it froze tuition fees. They are frozen to this day, seven years later, which is really tough. Frankly, it is not working well, because the infrastructure of our universities is crumbling. But we have decided to hang on and keep fighting the federal ruling parties of the day to make them give us our fair share of the Canada health and social transfer so that we do not have to watch the bricks and mortar of our of our universities crumble and we do not have to burden our kids with graduating with something the size of a mortgage.

It is the member's party that started this whole fiasco we have, this crisis in post-secondary education. I want to know how he justifies that in his own mind, because he was sitting around the cabinet table during that terrible time.

[Energy Price Commission Act, June 6th, 2006]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-319, An Act to establish the Energy Price Commission.

Mr. Speaker, I am sure you would be the first to agree that Canadians are horrified at the burgeoning or the blossoming prices of energy. Many Canadians have an instinctive feeling that they are being gouged at the pumps over energy pricing.

The bill seeks to create a national energy price commission whereby the energy companies would have to come to that commission to justify why these increases in energy costs are justified.

The price commission would also be able to set the price of oil and gas for a period of not more than six months so that users, small businesses and trucking companies, could have some stability in the energy pricing and are not rattled by these erratic, seemingly arbitrary, fluctuations in prices.

The national energy price commission would be struck by government to monitor, oversee and, in fact, yes, regulate the energy costs for oil, gas, diesel, et cetera.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Proportional Representation Review Act, June 6th, 2006]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-318, An Act to provide for a House of Commons committee to study proportional representation in federal elections.

Mr. Speaker, the purpose of the bill is to move forward the idea of electoral reform by designating a standing committee to deal with the subject of whether Canada wants to change its electoral system to a system of proportional representation.

The bill is to advance an idea in which many Canadians are interested and it would be a legislative framework through which we could realistically study the idea of do we or do we not want to change our electoral system.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Canada Business Corporations Act, June 6th, 2006]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-317, An Act to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act (qualification of auditor).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce the bill regarding the Canada Business Corporations Act dealing with the independence of the auditors.

White collar crime is very much a blue collar issue and we must be able to trust the financial statements of the companies where our pension plans are invested.

The bill would state that if one is the auditor for a company one should not be selling any other financial services to that same company. In other words, one should not be auditing one's own work. In this way people would have more confidence in the financial statements of the companies where our union plans and so on invest.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)