Paul Dewar

[Aeronautics Act, June 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague not only for his question but for the work he has done on this issue. I would submit that if my friend from B.C. had not been as tenacious and vigilant on Bill C-6, Canadians would not know about the problems that are in the bill. In fact, it reminds me of the softwood sellout.

To answer the member's question, I do not know why the government wants to put all of this important aeronautic safety information in a locked box for no one other than those who are involved in the industry to know about. It really begs the question as to whose side the government is on. Is it on the side of everyday Canadians or is it on the side of citizens who every day put their trust in government, in fact in all of us, to ensure air safety?

Yesterday we saw this whole idea of a no-fly list which has been given attention and prominence by the government, when in fact what it should be doing is sharpening its pencils, or in fact taking out erasers and doing this bill over again because it is not up to speed and not good enough for Canadians.

[Aeronautics Act, June 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it is with mixed feelings that I rise today to speak to this bill. I say that because we should not have to deal with this kind of inferior legislation, particularly when we are looking at the safety of our citizens, our constituents.

We are entrusted with the responsibility to make public policy and to make legislation that takes into account many different aspects and facets when we look at the bills that have been in front of us recently, be it on trade bills or on voting bills. One of the most important facets in the area of transportation is safety. Protecting the safety of Canadians is one of the key issues that we are here to deal with in this bill.

The reason the NDP has put forward so many amendments and the reason we are standing today to speak to the bill is that if the bill were to go ahead without any changes or amendments it would be a colossal disaster.

It is incumbent upon all of us to foresee, and perhaps it is the unintended consequences of the government, but we need to foresee the consequences of any legislation that passes in this place. On Bill C-6, we need to look at the consequences for air safety.

An issue that has been important in my riding is the integrity of being able to support those men and women who work in our public service to come forward and be protected when they see wrongdoing happening. We know it in the popular term as whistleblowing.

I was proud to work with my colleague from Winnipeg Centre and other colleagues in this place on the committee dealing with the accountability act, Bill C-2, to strengthen whistleblower legislation. We believed it should have gone further but we made some important and positive changes.

When I see this bill, one of the things that stands out that will shock and should appall many Canadians is what the bill does. It takes away that whistleblower protection. We are not talking about maintenance of bicycles, as important as that is. We are talking here about aviation safety. We are talking about very complex mechanisms that most of us would not have the slightest idea of how to get around, whereas with bicycle repair we might.

We need to ensure that those men and women who see wrongdoing are protected. That is a value and a principle that I thought the government believed in. If we listen to the rhetoric, it suggests that it does but then we look at this legislation and we see that it does not seem to be the case.

It was already mentioned by my friend from Hamilton that many people have spoken out. They are not lay people. They are experts in the field. They are telling us that Bill C-6 does not get the job done. They are saying that Bill C-6 opens up, not only the safety of Canadians but the reputation that our country has on the world stage.

My understanding of the bill is that not even our friends to the south, who perhaps have more of a laissez-faire view of things like air safety, would contemplate going this far. It really begs the question as to why we would believe that, in the area of air safety and this idea of changing things to this extent, we would be better off going with less control and oversight than our friends to the south and in other jurisdictions. It really does beg the question of what we believe we know better than others.

I certainly would not submit to the House that we should do things our own way. Our party suggests that the Canadian way is often the better way of going about things. However, when we are talking about aeronautics and aeronautic safety and we look at this industry, and the fact that it is global in proportion and needs to be carefully viewed, we have to look at this bill and ask, “What is it that the government believes it is helping Canadians with?”

Again, I go back to experts in the field and, if I may, cite an article that I believe has already been referenced but is one that I think bears repeating. The headline says it all: “Judge calls for review of 'sliding' air safety”. I think that says a lot about where we are going here.

We know that the 1989 report on the Dryden crash in which 24 people were killed led to many improvements in air safety. We had fears, and I remember that instance very well, that we were in fact backsliding, that we needed to strengthen air safety. We heard from one of the authors of the report who looked at air safety, and the quote is pretty straightforward:

I believe the government is moving away from more vigorous inspection and enforcement strictly as a cost-cutting measure, much as was done in the mid- and late-1980s preceding the Dryden crash.

If that is not a call for oversight and to review more thoroughly this file, I do not what is. What the good judge was saying, and he was given an Order of Canada for his work in this area, was to not repeat the mistakes of the past. When we allow things to be deregulated without the proper oversight, without protection, for instance, as already mentioned for whistleblowers, we are essentially saying that it is okay to allow for further crashes, for further mishaps.

I point to what we have seen in the rail industry as of late. Since we have given over rail maintenance, and it is not regulated to the extent it should have been, we have seen, and we just have to turn on the radio or read the paper, more crashes and derailments, be it passenger or cargo trains.

I want members to think about this because I think it is important. There is a connection between what has happened with rail safety and what is contemplated with aeronautic safety in Bill C-6. It is the following proposition. When we had the tools and the oversight, and we had the regulation involved in rail safety, we were able to be more nimble, to be stronger in our response when we had instances where rail safety was failing. We had citizens and people, be it in unions or in management, et cetera, who were able to cite problems in rail safety, be it at crossings or, and we see this presently, with cargo trains that have too many cars on their load.

We need to do something about it. It used to be that we had the public sector there to respond. Unfortunately, what we did is we gave that up. We gave away the tools to properly respond vis-à-vis rail safety.

What has been the consequence of that? As I said, just turn on the radio, read the paper, and look at the evening news, the consequence is cargo and passenger derailments. There is a lack of confidence. At the very time we need to be more reliant on our rail system, we now have problems with rail safety.

In fact, many of my friends who would like to see our government go further in building the capacity for more rail as a form of transportation see that we have problems because of lack of oversight. So, let us take that lesson from the problems with rail safety and oversight, and the fact we gave that up and gave it away, and let us take a look at—

[Canada Elections Act, June 18th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Vancouver for the question and her work on this.

When this bill came in front of us, we had to look at it carefully. I would have to agree with her that this bill is not required. There are facets of concerns around potential voter fraud, which was the language used, but that has more to do with the voter cards I mentioned and the fact that we do not have proper enumeration.

In fact, in committee, when we asked the chief electoral officer, an officer of Parliament, if this was a concern of his, he said that it was not. He had to be put into a corner to comment on the bill as we went through its different facets.

However, on her question as to whether there was evidence for this bill, no, there was not.

[Canada Elections Act, June 18th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would love to talk at great length about Mulcair. He is an excellent candidate and will be an excellent member, I am sure, but that is not the subject today.

I will talk to him about this because I think he would believe, as a social democrat, that there is no connection between giving up one's birthdate to whatever election body, Élections Québec or Elections Canada, and voter participation. There is no logic there. If I give my birthdate and put it on the list, how does that affect voter turnout? If anyone listening or watching or reading this transcript can provide me with the logic, I would welcome it, because there is none.

Let me be clear. We will not be supporting this recommendation from the Senate because it does not go to the extent we wished it to. I agree with him on the concerns we have about the source of this and therefore we are not in favour of this motion from the Senate.

I say to my friend from Quebec that we have something called asymmetry as an idea here. They love to use asymmetry, or at least the proponents and principles of it, that when things are in the rest of Canada, they should not always be adopted by Quebec. May I ask for the same logic, extension and provision in this case?

The member has a case where this birthdate information on the voters' lists is shared with political parties in Quebec.

That is fine for Quebec.

Maybe it is different for the rest of Canada in this instance. Is that something to divide us over? I would think not.

It is called asymmetry and it is a principle the NDP believes in. I would like to see my friend see the logic and the light in that as well. I still have not heard from him the connection between birthdate information and voter participation and I wait patiently for his response.

[Canada Elections Act, June 18th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it is worthy of repeating that when this was brought forward originally, the birthdate information that the member suggests was only for the use of Elections Canada to verify voters. He is correct in reminding us that the Bloc had brought forward an amendment to have that date of birth information shared with political parties.

I was vehemently against it, as the member will recall. The Liberals backed the Bloc. His party voted against it in committee but, as I said in my comments, sadly, it turned away from that concern when the bill was at third reading and allowed that amendment to stand, even though I had provided an opportunity for the government to withdraw that amendment. It said that it was in the spirit of cooperation to ensure the bill was passed.

I would point out that when we are talking about issues of privacy, we can never turn the other way. Therefore, the member is right in reminding us that the provision of the birthdate was for Elections Canada employees to verify voters.

My preference would have been not to have the birthdate information at all. He will know that in the bill there is a voter verification number assigned to each voter. The birthdate information was not to replace the photo ID. To be clear, it was felt that it was needed in addition to. Therefore, we have the verification number, photo ID and birthdate information, which, for me, is away too much and is not necessary.

I ask all members of Parliament to look back at the reason for this bill in front of us. It was to deal with potential voter fraud. I underline for any of those who were not at committee to know that there were more cases of candidate fraud, people crossing the floor and saying that they were with one party and ending up in another party, than there were cases of citizens misusing their franchise. That is really evidenced based.

We need to ask ourselves why we have the bill at all. If it is the way it is now, there is no way we can support it because it does not allow for more voter participation. In fact, I have made the argument that it will do the opposite.

[Canada Elections Act, June 18th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to the bill.

I want to start by referring to the comments made by my friend from the Bloc. His answer in response to my question underlined the problem with the bill. Opening up people's privacy has nothing to do with voter participation. He established that with his non-answer to my question.

More people do not vote because their birth date is on the electoral list or shared with political parties. I made it very clear that many people who have contacted me about this big brother bill have said the reason they would not vote in the next election would be because of this bill. It is counterintuitive to have people's privacy put on the altar and say that it will somehow increase voter participation.

It is important to look at the origins and the trajectory of Bill C-31. This bill is the result of a report by the procedure and House affairs committee, which I have in my hand. The report was very general in nature. The committee looked at the previous election to see if voter participation could be improved, how the machinery of government could be improved to allow elections to run more smoothly and to ensure that as parliamentarians we could improve elections by design to increase the number of people participating in elections.

It was interesting that after the committee report was tabled, very quickly there was a response from the government. That is not unusual, but the part that was strange was that the government cherry-picked from the Commons committee report. It came up with suggestions and lo and behold, after the response from the government, Bill C-31 was before us.

I point this out because Bill C-31 was not part of the Conservative Party platform. It was not a suggestion that had been made by grassroots organizations. It was not something that had been on the radar in general for people who are looking at how elections are conducted.

It was very interesting when I heard at committee the witnesses' concerns around the bill. They had concerns regarding the privacy issue. For anyone who is watching, listening or reading the transcripts, what the bill would do is it would require when voters presented themselves to vote, to have voter identification, government issued photo ID. When a voter did not have photo ID, there was a series of conditions regarding other documentation that would be allowed. Finally, if a voter did not have identification, there would be a process by which another person could vouch for the voter.

We heard from people who deal with the homeless, first nations, aboriginal peoples and people who represent students. They have said that this was a bad bill. Notwithstanding, and I am sure we will hear this from the government in response, there is a method for people who do not have proper ID to be vouched for.

The problem heard at committee was that the government is proposing in the bill that one person can vouch for another person as long as they are on the voters list. I underline this because people who are advocates for the homeless, first nations and students said that this is not necessarily an option for the people they represent, because they might not be able to find someone who is on the voters list or who resides in the riding, which is required in the bill.

The other critical issue, of course, is the privacy issue. I raised it at committee. It is worth noting that according to the bill every voter's date of birth will be published on the voters list for Elections Canada to verify that the person before an elections official is the person who is eligible to vote. That sounds fine, except when we look closer at the bill, there is also a verification number for every voter.

Photo ID is required. There is a verification number for every voter. The birthdate of every voter is on the electoral list. I opposed the inclusion of the birthdate and the NDP opposed the inclusion of birthdate information on the electoral list because of its dissemination. Every riding has hundreds of polls. There are 308 ridings. That is a lot of information being floated around. This is not anything against the good people who work as poll clerks during elections; it is just obvious that this information could fall into the wrong hands.

What has shocked me the most was the amendment by the Bloc, supported at committee by the Liberals and eventually by the Conservatives in the House, that birthdate information would actually be shared with political parties. I want to underline that all political parties, not just the ones in this House, but every single registered political party would have the day and year of birth of every single voter.

It is important to underline that because the Senate wants to make an amendment. While I welcome that, it does not go far enough. This bill at its foundation is flawed for reasons I have already mentioned about those people who might not normally have access to proper identification.

I brought forward these concerns at committee. At the time the Bloc and the Liberals got together to pass this amendment to share the date of birth information with political parties. Members should try to explain that to their constituents. I could not, I would not and I refused. I fought it at the committee. The Conservatives at the committee opposed this amendment, but when the bill came to the House, we heard from the government House leader that in the spirit of cooperation to get the bill through, the Conservatives would not fight this amendment.

I am sorry, but when it comes to issues of privacy, protection and integrity we do not just look the other way. That is exactly what members of the Conservative Party did. They looked the other way on privacy. I have a letter in my hand from Ms. Stoddart, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. The letter suggests that this is a problem for her as well.

There are two parties, the Liberals and the Bloc, that got together to benefit themselves to give birthdate information to their political organizations. Clearly, the political parties see this as a bonanza. They can target voters. For the Liberals I am sure it is helpful because they can do some fundraising. The Liberals have to look to new sources for their fundraising. They will have to fill the void after having relied for so long on big donors. With this information, they will now focus their attention on citizens. It is very tempting for political parties to have this information.

People should not buy the idea that somehow this is going to help with verification of voters. There is already in the bill a verification number and photo ID is required. The idea that we would actually sell out privacy and the government would look the other way in order to get the bill through does not wash.

The amendments from the Senate are in front of us. I will establish that not only do I have a problem with the inherent contradiction with the Senate sending us amendments on elections legislation, but also the Senate amendments do not go far enough. They do not deal with those who, we heard at committee, will be disenfranchised, the homeless, aboriginal people and students.

There is a Globe and Mail editorial that talks about the whole issue of privacy. It says:

As Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart explained in a recent letter to [myself] whose party was the only one to oppose the bill, “One of the basic rules of data protection is that personal information should be collected and used sparingly and in proportion to the problem it is intended to address.” But the bill, which sailed through final reading in the House of Commons last evening, pays no heed to her legitimate objections.

Not only is the Privacy Commissioner against the bill, but from this editorial it would seem that Globe and Mail editors are against it as well. They underline the importance of why is the bill in front of us, what is the issue, what is the problem?

The government has put forward a notion that there is a huge problem with voter fraud. To be fair, it has been careful to underline it as potential voter fraud. If that is the issue, then I have no idea why the government did not look at other common sense solutions to deal with potential voter fraud. We put forward ideas at committee, at amendment stage, and made suggestions as to what the government could do.

We all know that voter cards are ubiquitous and often are left lying around in many apartment buildings. There is the potential for voter fraud. The NDP suggested in committee, and received the nod from the Chief Electoral Officer, that those voter cards should be in a sealed envelope. That would make sense. It is not exactly a high tech solution, but it would ensure that voter cards were not left lying around and instead would be sent directly to the voters. That was our first common sense solution.

The second common sense solution we put forward was to have universal enumeration at every election. When the Liberal government brought in voters lists, it was not to make the list more accurate, but rather to save money. In our democracy, if there is one thing we should invest in over anything else, it is the integrity of our voting system, and that means the voters list. That means having universal enumeration.

There used to be enumeration. People would go door to door to make sure that everyone had a chance to get on the voters list. Verification was done and the voters list was more accurate. I do not know a person in this House or in this country who would say that since we have had the centralized computer voters list that we have had more accurate representation.

Those two common sense solutions should have been adopted before we sold out people's privacy, before we put up barriers to the franchise to the most vulnerable, and before we got into this taffy pull between the Senate and the House. I agree with the Bloc and the government that it is passing strange we are waiting on the Senate to tell us how to run elections.

The bottom line is that this is a flawed bill. It is a big brother bill. The fact that it sailed through committee should not pass it off as being a valid bill. In fact, it is vapid in terms of what it is trying to do.

I want to underline what this bill claims to do and what the results will be if it passes. Not only will there be problems with privacy, but I believe the bill will be challenged on two fronts.

In testimony before the committee, the Chief Electoral Officer said that because of the new requirement for photo ID, more than 5% of eligible voters will not be able to vote. They will show up at the polling station perhaps five or 10 minutes before the polls close without their ID and will be told to go home. Therefore, they will not have the opportunity to vote. Others have mentioned this. I think of Duff Conacher, who has written about this extensively.

We might end up with a situation akin to what happened in Florida in one of the U.S. elections. This is not my submission. It is the submission of others. Others will call into question the validity of the election because people will not have been able to exercise their franchise. There will be situations where there are close votes. Those votes will be challenged. In a minority Parliament, that might decide which party did or did not form government.

Elections Canada will do a good job in promoting the required changes, but if we do not have a safety valve like the statutory declaration that the NDP put forward, which works in provinces with high voter turnout, then people will challenge the outcome of the election. That could lead to some unintended consequences.

I am putting everyone on notice that others have looked at this and they are saying that they will need to challenge this bill in court, some for civil libertarian reasons, some because of the private aspects and others because they believe that this kind of legislation is inherently wrong.

In summary, what we have in this bill is a Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs report that looked at elections in general and how to improve things. The report was tabled in Parliament soon after and, this is the part about the Conservative play book, the Conservatives used the committee report to cherry-pick and back a bill they had intended to put forward because that is exactly what happened. There was a response to this committee report very soon after and, more quickly than I have ever seen, a bill was in front of us based on the government's response to a committee report.

In that report we had the requirement for photo ID and then a cascading requirement, for those who did not have photo ID, to use other forms of ID. At the end of the day, people who are most disadvantaged, be it the homeless, aboriginal people or students, would be vulnerable.

It is interesting that a couple of weeks ago the government announced, with great fanfare, democratic reform week. If we were to believe the advertising, the government was doing everything it could to ensure that more people had access to the franchise. They need to look at this bill because what I have just outlined are barriers to franchise.

The Conservatives talked recently about having more young people vote by having an extra day to vote, which they had no scientific proof for. They had a nice photo op with some people in front of the Centre Block and somehow we were to believe that because of this extra day of voting we would have higher voter participation.

What they need to do is examine Bill C-31 and tell me honestly, when they look at the privacy provisions for allowing one's birthdate to be included both on the voters list and shared with political parties, notwithstanding the amendments, the fact that more young people will be required to show ID that they might not have access to, people concerned about privacy telling me they will ask to be taken off the voters list because they do not want big brother and the government, which is kind of strange coming from what used to be a party of libertarian dimensions, they do not want that to happen. They will take their names off the voters list and at the end of the day what we have is a bill that would undermine voter participation and not buttress it.

When we put this all together, we should keep in mind that the government did not want to listen to common sense, which was to have voter ID cards put into envelopes to prevent the concerns around voter fraud because people are using these cards or could, and the fact that there were four cases of voter fraud during the last three elections. In fact, there was more candidate fraud than voter fraud when members crossed the floor, which we remember, after they advertised that they would run for the Liberal Party or the Conservative Party.

Everyday people are more concerned about that fraud than the potential for voter fraud. They are more concerned about their privacy rights being trashed than they are about having these kinds of provisions put in. At the end of the day, they see that this bill would not improve our democracy. It would undermine it.

I would ask all members to keep in mind that when they go to their constituents or when this becomes a court case, because I believe it challenges the franchise, and many lawyers have said it, that the Conservatives were the ones who sat by and rubber stamped this process.

I urge all members to stand up against this bill, stand for democracy and more voter participation, and ensure we have a democracy we can all be proud of. I urge all members to vote against this bill and send it back. The Senate has made some minor improvements on the birthdate information but at the end of the day this is a flawed bill, a big brother bill and does not deserve to be passed.

[Canada Elections Act, June 18th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I will start with the points on which I am in agreement with my friend from the Bloc. I agree with the fact that having this come from the Senate is passing strange. I would challenge him on one point, though, in that some senators have gone through elections, some as candidates and many as backroom employees. They raised money and did good services for their party and were rewarded with a seat in the other place.

I would agree with him that it is passing strange to have amendments coming from the Senate on something that affects elections and potential concerns around voter fraud, but my concern, however, relates to the comment the member made, and I want to get this right, that because the Bloc has shown how it is done and has a good machine, and because its members have used some of the facets that are in Bill C-31, this is reason enough for us to adopt it here.

My concern is that when we look at things like sharing birthdate information, I could not disagree with him more.

When I talk to my constituents about this, and I wrote about it in one of my householders, people are shocked to learn that we actually would share birthdate information not only with Elections Canada, which means throughout the ridings and throughout the country--and that paper could fall off the table and into in the wrong hands--but with political parties. The fact that political parties would have this information shocks people. This came about through the amendment from the Liberals and the Bloc at committee.

People are extremely shocked. They do not want their birthdate information shared with Elections Canada in a public way, and they sure do not want it shared with a political party. They were shocked to learn that the Bloc and the Liberals had joined together on this and then the icing on the cake was having the Conservative Party allow this amendment to go through. People just do not understand.

That is what my question is about. I have a letter from the Privacy Commissioner, who did not have the luxury of presenting her case before committee. I had to write to her after it was fiated through committee. She argues against doing what the member suggests would be helping the system. How can he argue that sharing birthdate information has anything to do with increasing voter participation?

In fact, what increases voter participation is trust in the system. There seems to be a disconnect. People see this as what I call a big brother bill. What we are doing here is making citizens' privacy vulnerable in legislation. Some of the people who have called have said they would remove their names from the voters' lists because this is an invasion of privacy. Then the effect will be that we will have fewer people voting.

I would like the member's comments on this birthdate information and how he connects it with a higher rate of voter participation.

[Canada Elections Act, June 18th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, my friend from the Bloc inferred in his comments that it was the role of the political parties to verify whether a voter is legitimate. I want to ensure that is what he was mentioning because from my perspective I would wholeheartedly disagree. Scrutineers are there to ensure the vote is done fairly and to ensure there is oversight.

Would the member not agree that the role lies with Elections Canada to ensure objectivity and that there is no political partisan taint on the process, that we really should be entrusting Elections Canada to verify voters and ensure that voters are correct? I will talk about how I think that should be done if he is able to wait around for a couple of minutes, because I will be speaking to this bill. Does he believe that it is the role of Elections Canada to verify who the voters are and not us?

[Government Accountability, June 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the government promised transparency and accountability in government. One of the cornerstones of this promise was the creation of a parliamentary budget officer.

Six months after the Federal Accountability Act passed, Canadians are still waiting. In the meantime, we continue to receive financial forecasts that do not reflect accurate budget figures. Canadians demand truth in advertising, whether it is on budget surpluses, foreign aid or climate change. This is more than just a broken promise. This is breaking faith with Canadians. Accountability is important to them.

When will the government right this wrong and announce the appointment of a—

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 2006, June 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the member talked about broken promises and budgets. I want to ask him a couple of things before I get on to Gwyn Morgan.

There was a government that talked about pharmacare, a government that talked about child care, a government that talked about the GST, a government that talked about free trade. It would be important for the member to look in the mirror and honestly account for the broken promises of the Liberal Party when it was in government. I agree with him about the broken promises of the Conservative Party, but Canadians will be confused as to why he is getting up on his soap box and preaching from his perspective.

On Gwyn Morgan, is he saying that the Liberal Party now is using Gwyn Morgan to write its policy on financial arrangements? He might want to take a look at Gwyn Morgan's record in third world countries. I would ask him to look up Andrew Nikiforuk who has done some research on this before he uses Gwyn Morgan as the Liberal Party's chief adviser on financial affairs.