Pat Martin

[Criminal Code, February 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to enter the debate on Bill C-215 put forward by my colleague from the Conservative Party, an act to amend the Criminal Code, consecutive sentence for use of firearm in commission of offence.

I notice the title has the exact same wording as the bill that was put forward by the former member of Saskatoon—Humboldt, Mr. Jim Pankiw, when he was a member of Parliament in the House of Commons. The issue does have merit and it is worthy of our contemplation in the House of Commons today.

Let me begin by saying how frequently issues of this nature come to my desk. As a member of Parliament I represent the inner city riding of Winnipeg Centre, an urban riding and the third poorest riding in Canada. As a result, many of the predictable consequences of chronic, long term poverty, such as crime and safety issues, are very much top of mind for the people I represent in my riding.

I did a survey in my riding about a year ago on the number one issues on which people in my riding wish me to represent them in the House of Commons. Crime and safety outstripped every other issue by a factor of three to one. The second issue is health care. I am pulling numbers out of my head, but I believe 68% of the people listed crime and safety as the number one top of mind issue that they talk about with their partners and their families around their kitchen table. Health care featured prominently but it was down around 25%. I remember that tax cuts, anecdotally, were around 6% of those people I polled. Again, this is not a scientific survey. This is simply asking the people in my riding what issues they go to bed worrying about at night.

However I can safely say without any fear of contradiction that the number one top of mind issue for the people I represent in my riding is their own personal safety, the crimes that are going on around them and the crime and punishment issues of our justice system.

Having said that, gunplay and gunfire is an omnipresent issue in my riding now. Some people in my riding will not sleep next to an exterior wall in their houses for fear a stray bullet will hit them or their children. They sleep in a den or a living room so they are not exposed to an exterior wall, because there is gunfire every night. Someone is not hurt every night but almost every night, I will say young kids because they often are and are often associated with street gangs, guns are being fired in the back lanes and in the parks in certain areas of my riding. Therefore it has become a top of mind issue.

I point out that last week a third young gunshot victim in one week was reported in the Winnipeg Free Press. A 19 year old was shot in the throat but did not die. The reason this is noteworthy is not just the fact that a youth was shot in the inner city of Winnipeg, but that it is the third time in one week.

Just a few days earlier a police officer shot and killed an 18 year old, an issue that is tearing apart the inner city along racial lines unfortunately. I will not comment on that here because it is too sensitive an issue to even raise in more detail than to simply flag it as an issue.

A few days after that, on Friday of last week, a 15 year old boy was fatally shot in a Sherbrooke Street apartment. It looks like the person who shot him was a 13 year old boy who has been charged with manslaughter. This was all in one week in my inner city riding of Winnipeg Centre. There is clearly an epidemic of weapons on the streets of Winnipeg and I do not think my inner city community in Winnipeg is any different than some of the other larger cities across the country.

The NDP government in Manitoba, under the youth crime prevention strategy, has made crime and safety issues its priority since 1999. I know it is not enough because I see the evidence on the street that it is not enough. I see kids dying because of firearms so we know not enough is being done at the federal or the provincial level. However those of us who are concerned with the issue can identify a number of social factors that are more complex and more indepth than simply the punishment associated with wrongdoing associated with firearms.

As instinctively tempting as it is to say that we must throw the book at these guys and lock them up, the empirical evidence shows that in those jurisdictions where there are tougher penalties for this type of offence there has been no corresponding reduction in the number of offences.

In the United States, where the whole social fabric is being threatened by the easy access to firearms, there are far more strict penalties associated with the abuse and misuse of firearms than there are in Canada but that in no way has deterred the number of firearm related offences or crimes, usually material crimes, where the use of a firearm is an aspect of the crime.

I am sympathetic with my colleague from the Conservative Party who has used his one opportunity to have a private member's bill debated, a bill that is compelling and pressing issue. I appreciate the fact that he is tough on crime. I can state quite publicly that I am no bleeding heart when it comes to crime and punishment issues either. In fact, I consider myself tough on crime as well but, as has been pointed out by other colleagues in the House of Commons today, as tough as we are on crime, we have to be equally tough on the root causes of crime. I know the neo-conservative movement has targeted that as a catchphrase. It thinks that anyone who talks about the root causes of crime is pandering to criminals. I beg to differ.

In the investigation of all three of those recent firearm related crimes in my riding in the last week, I guarantee members there will be compelling social forces at play, be it broken homes, be it poverty, be it children without supervision, be it children without opportunity, be it social pressures such as the music they listen to and the movies they watch that glorify the use and abuse of firearms and handguns that desensitize children to that level of violence to where they begin by being fascinated with guns at 13 and 14 years old and getting their hands on guns. They begin to play with those guns in terms of pointing them at each other. It is a short stretch from there to where someone pulls the trigger and, as is the case in my riding, we have gunplay every night and three times in one week a youth is being shot.

This issue does not divide itself neatly on racial lines but it certainly divides itself on socio-economic lines. The empirical evidence is that these incidents occur more frequently in low income neighbourhoods like mine in the inner city of Winnipeg. I try to keep it in perspective. I remind my constituents that this is frequently kids who are involved with street gangs shooting other kids who are involved with street gangs and that the average citizen is not in any particular danger. However that does not change the fact that people are so concerned about this that they are not sleeping in the bedrooms of their house that have exterior walls. Clearly, there is something fundamentally wrong with that.

Speaking specifically to the hon. member's bill, I too, as my colleague from the Liberal Party pointed out, believe that having supplementary sentences or a mandatory sentence tacked on to the sentence when the crime is committed with the use of a firearm is probably unconstitutional, illegal and not possible.

As much as I know my colleague is looking for ways to vent the frustration that we all feel by increasing the penalties, I do not think we can add a supplementary sentence onto the penalty that is being given for the actual crime committed.

[Housing, February 11th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, hundreds of thousands of homes have been made dangerous and even devalued by virtue of Zonolite contamination.This happened because of a federal government program that promoted and even subsidized the installation of this Zonolite.

Within months of learning that UFFI foam was irritating, a program existed to remove that hazard from people's homes. Canadians are looking to their government for help in removing Zonolite.

What will the government do to help homeowners get this carcinogen out of their walls when the government helped put it in?

[Agriculture, February 11th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, we need a response to the devastating plight of the world's most vulnerable farmers, the 1.4 billion people who depend on farm safe seed. A leaked document reveals that Canada is going to the UN to protect terminator seed technology, genetically modified seeds designed to grow crops which cannot reproduce. These suicide seeds are designed solely to protect the patents and profits of multinational corporations and are currently forbidden from being planted outside the lab.

The Canadian government is doing the dirty work for these multinational gene giants and the U.S. government. Terminator technology takes a massive risk with our food supply and puts poor farmers into near servitude relationships with seed salesmen, and benefits only the multinational corporations like Monsanto who promotes it.

We want to know this. Is this official Canadian government policy? Who is really behind this Canadian move to protect terminator gene technology, which is so devastating to the world's farm community?

[Aboriginal Affairs, February 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, on Indian reserves homes with Zonolite insulation are called death houses because exposure to Zonolite kills. The government is spending millions of dollars on military bases to ensure that armed forces personnel are not exposed to Zonolite, but yet on Indian reserves it only sends a letter to the band councils saying that they have homes which are toxic.

How can this glaring contradiction be allowed to exist? Will the minister tell us today that he will help Indian reserve communities test for and pay for the removal of Zonolite wherever it is found?

[Public Works and Government Services, February 4th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, there can be no doubt that forced labour in Chinese factories really brings down the production costs of commercial items, but some of us believe that our emblems of our cultural heritage should be manufactured by Canadian workers in Canadian factories.

I would like to know if the minister for roadside hucksterism has had a chance to review the NDP's position. Will he tell us today that in the future, lapel pins or any other flag products for the House of Commons will be made here in Canada by Canadian workers in--

[Commercial Bankruptcies, December 14th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, hundreds of pulp mill workers in Nackawic, New Brunswick are losing their pensions because Canada's bankruptcy laws are stacked against them.

There are 10,000 commercial bankruptcies in Canada every year and employees lose wages, benefits, and pension contributions because they rank at the bottom of the list of creditors.

When will the Minister of Industry fix Canada's bankruptcy laws so that working people are given first priority in the event of a bankruptcy? How do priorities get so screwed up, so that everybody is taken care of except Canadian voters who support this nation?

[Petitions, December 13th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to table a petition signed by literally thousands of Canadians from across the country. The petitioners are very critical that the government, as of January 1, will begin to tax any kind of education moneys given to aboriginal people as an income. We believe this is a shot across the bow in terms of aboriginal treaty rights.

The petitioners urge the government to not go ahead with this move because it will clearly result in fewer first nations aboriginal students going to university, if all their income maintenance and moneys to do with their funding is viewed as income, and therefore taxed.

[First Nations Fiscal and Statistical Management Act, December 10th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it must be simple being the aboriginal affairs critic for that party because members of that party do not seem burdened by any contradictions or contradictions do not seem to bother them.

On the one hand, the member has been waxing poetic about the importance of self-determination and self-governance, and on the other hand, just this week we saw members of the Conservative Party en masse vote against the most historic self-governance and self-determination land claims issue in recent history, only the second such modern land claim in the country since the Nisga'a bill which they also voted against.

For all the member's quite valid language about the importance of the abolition of the Indian Act and that successful economic development models are directly correlated to the degree of self-governance, during the clause by clause consideration of Bill C-20 in committee he and his party voted against eight separate amendments which would have given some input into the placement of the board of directors of these new fiscal institutions.

I would ask him to dwell on, if he could, why he could not see fit to support changes to the appointment process in Bill C-20, of appointing the board of directors which would have given first nations more direction and control over who will get these key commissioner, co-commissioner and director positions in these new fiscal institutions.

[First Nations Fiscal and Statistical Management Act, December 10th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, throughout the debate on this bill much has been made of the optional nature of the bill. Even in earlier incarnations this was less clear, but in this incarnation of the bill, as it went from Bill C-19 to Bill C-23, to now Bill C-20 in this Parliament, the claim is made by the government that this is truly optional and people's fears are groundless.

However, it remains unclear to me and perhaps the parliamentary secretary can help me with this. In relation to the statistical institute, which is one of the four new fiscal institutions created by Bill C-20, I do not understand how the claim can be made that Bill C-20 is optional. In fact, the statistical institute is not optional at all. All first nations in Canada come under this whether they wish to or not.

Unless I am missing something completely, there is no optional nature to the statistical institute. Perhaps this should have been dealt with as a separate bill. Perhaps the government should have introduced the three other fiscal institutions as one bill. If there was a need for the statistical institute, it could have been dealt with separately. I would like the parliamentary secretary to explain to me how the statistical institute could be seen as optional.

[Main Estimates, 2004-05, December 9th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, my observation and the point I want to make is that it is clear to me at this end of the House that the democratic deficit is alive and well in Parliament.

Contrary to all the romantic ideals that were referred to in the Speech from the Throne under the new Prime Minister, the will of the MPs in the government operations committee have been disregarded, reversed and, I believe, treated very shabbily in the fact that the President of the Treasury Board is now seeking to reverse the very clear will of the committee as expressed in a democratic process where members of four political parties accurately reflected the will of Canadians to have the Governor General's budget reduced.

The only argument I have heard so far from the Liberals has been that to reduce the Governor General's budget, to ask her to tighten her belt and sharpen her pencil, would be inconvenient. It would inconvenience the Governor General for us to impose these conditions at this time.

This comes from a government that had no qualms whatsoever cutting, hacking and slashing virtually every social program in the country that we value and inconveniencing millions of people by reducing the benefits they may enjoy from those programs. Yet, by some class issue, it will not apply the same logic to Rideau Hall.

We believe the government operations committee was listening and had its finger on the pulse of Canadians when Canadians were expressing outrage about the fact that when every other budget in the country was being reduced, the Governor General's budget was spiralling out of control, growing exponentially year after year after year.

For the President of the Treasury Board to stand up now and give us an 18 minute civics lesson on the budget and estimates process and then a 2 minute defence of the Governor General's budget does not wash with me.

He also did not even mention that he was trying to put the money back into the PCO budget as well, when this was clearly a partisan use of public funds to buy a polling company to give advice on damage control coming out of the sponsorship program. That was an abuse of taxpayer money for Liberal Party partisan purposes and he is seeking to reverse that reduction today too.

Would he explain why he did not comment on that?