Paul Dewar

[The Environment, March 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, over the past year I have learned that the best part of being a member of Parliament is working with community members and with ordinary Canadians on issues that are important to them.

Earlier this year I received a request from the EarthCARE team at Richard Pfaff Secondary School asking me to join them in their effort to stop the licence renewal of a company that was responsible for releasing tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, into the Ottawa River. They were most concerned with what the effects would be on public health and the aquatic ecosystem.

Their actions and the actions of other concerned environmentalists resulted in the rejection of the licence renewal from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for the company responsible for the emissions.

Congratulations to the enthusiastic environmentalists from Richard Pfaff Secondary School for proving that we can make a difference and we can get results if we make our voices heard.

[Business of Supply, February 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I will start my comments today by observing that the motion itself is a little light on detail. My colleague from Burnaby—Douglas proposed an amendment that would have added some weight to the motion and would have helped in terms of the debate. I will come back to what his proposition was, which sadly was not adopted. I will take a look at where we are with immigration and settlement in Canada.

My riding of Ottawa Centre is very diverse. In fact, it is one of the most diverse ridings in the entire country. I am very proud of the fact that my riding is a reflection of what the whole country is about.

One of the things that is critical is the support offered to new Canadians and immigrants by many of the community institutions that have been built over many years. Before being elected as a member of Parliament, I had the honour to be on the board of one of those agencies, OCISO, the Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization. What it does is very similar to what other organizations across the country do which is to help serve immigrants and new Canadians when they arrive in Canada.

Having been on the board, I can say it is just stunning the amount of work that is done by organizations like OCISO, the Catholic Immigration Centre here in Ottawa, the Jewish Family Services of Ottawa, and many others as well. I am sure every member of Parliament can attest to organizations like those that do extremely good work on behalf of all of us but in particular help immigrants and new Canadians.

A problem I observed as a board member with OCISO is that those organizations are often taken for granted by government. It is very difficult for them to get adequate funding, funding that is going to be there for them and for the people they serve on a regular basis. Often they are nickeled and dimed to the point of utter frustration by yearly audits, when in fact, they are doing their jobs. Service organizations like OCISO, the Catholic Immigration Centre and the Jewish Family Services are among the most accountable operations to be found in the country. Yet, when we should be funding organizations like those, too often the case is that we do not.

Those organizations welcome people upon their arrival in Canada. They are the ones who take care of people's basic needs to ensure that there is adequate and appropriate language training, to make sure that they are welcomed into our wider communities, and to make sure that they have the services they require. For example, recently, refugees who had been in Thai camps for decades arrived here in Ottawa. The people who helped serve them were from some of the agencies I mentioned.

Instead of making sure that the organizations have adequate funding, often they have to go cap in hand to government every year. One of the things we could do is to make sure that there is stable funding for these organizations, to make sure that they will not have to worry about whether or not they can provide the services on a regular basis. To be quite honest about it, we are using these organizations and the people who work for them in a way that we would not put up with if it was our own family. These people are dedicated. They are doing the heavy lifting and they are the kind of people we need to support.

While we have not done it in the past, we should be providing stable funding for service organizations like OCISO, the Catholic Immigration Centre and Jewish Family Services. They are the ones who understand the issues. They are on the ground. They are the grassroots. They are the ones who do the work that is so important in terms of integration and settlement.

Many people who come to Canada have issues around foreign credentials recognition but also about entering our labour market. Just before the holiday break, I held three town halls on this issue. One town hall was with foreign trained doctors, one was with foreign trained engineers, and one was with an amalgam of different professionals. They are having problems having their foreign credentials recognized but also, once their foreign credentials are recognized, they are having problems finding employment.

Before I was elected to Parliament, I had the opportunity to work with teachers who were looking to have their foreign credentials recognized. We were able to get foreign credentials recognition for over 100 teachers fast-tracked because we worked with some of the service organizations that are working with new Canadians. The Ontario College of Teachers and the professional institutions were key here. They need to be brought into the equation and also the universities. In this case it was Queen's University. We were able to fast-track the foreign credentials recognition for these teachers.

One of the problems is what happens after that process, that is, in getting employment after obtaining recognition for foreign credentials.

We had thought that about 10 to 15 doctors would attend the town hall, but there were over 40. What I did not know until that point is how many foreign trained doctors are right here in Ottawa. There are 500. There are approximately 5,000 in the province. This is unbelievable. There is an obvious gap in our system. People who hail from this community know there is a shortage of doctors, not just in the rural areas, but right here in Ottawa. Yet, there are doctors right here in our community and the only barriers are the bureaucratic barriers that we have put in place. There are solutions. I hope the government will listen to the people who came to the town hall meeting and to the suggestions I will be putting forward in a report.

In the area of medicine we can change the situation by looking at what other jurisdictions have done. Other jurisdictions have fast-tracked those who have foreign credentials in the medical profession from another country. Other jurisdictions have made sure that there are not barriers like security clearances, which we have put in place. There are no barriers like having to go through the whole process of re-certification, in essence having to be re-educated.

In other jurisdictions doctors work with other doctors similar to an apprenticeship. They are not tested right at the beginning. They are allowed to integrate into the communities to understand the medical system. This has been done in France and in California. After they have had a certain period of time to understand the medical system, their performance is assessed. Where there are gaps, for instance, if pharmacology is different, they fill the gap. France has been doing this for over a decade. California has been doing it for quite a while.

The people who have gone through these scenarios have the solutions. We know what the problems are, but they have the solutions. It is about time we listened to them, not for their benefit exclusively, which is a solid thing to do, but for our own benefit as well. What is happening presently is that people are leaving our country. In many ways, we are falsely advertising. I will wrap up with the analogy that we have invited them into our home, we have left open the back door, we have turned off the lights, raided the cupboard and said, “Welcome to Canada”. That is not good enough. We need to change that and hopefully, we will.

[Business of Supply, February 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask a question about the refugee appeal process. We know this was an issue that previous governments tried to solve. Over the years, some refugees who have come to this country have tried to appeal to the government and, for reasons that we could spend a whole day debating, have had barriers put in front of them.

The member's government had a process but it languished and now we have a process that is not in place. Could the member comment on where the refugee appeal process is and where she would like it to be?

[Delegated Legislation, February 21st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak to the motion. I will begin my comments with some understanding of our role on this committee.

I am new to this place and therefore new to this committee but the committee is extremely important. It deals with all the legislation that has been passed in this place and through the Senate and ensures there is fair measure in terms of how the legislation is being implemented, that there are no problems in terms of the law that exists and the legislation that would be brought in. In other words, we need to ensure things are congruent and fair and, hopefully, to do no harm.

When we look at legislation it is important that we look at its purpose. Legislation normally exists to solve a problem and not to create problems. This committee, which is made up of members of Parliament, as well as members from the other place, scrutinizes, as is in the name of the committee, all legislation so there are no bumps along the road.

As with any legislation that is done by human endeavour, there are problems from time to time. Our role, hopefully, is not to get into a heated debate on a bill that will be coming to this place. What we have today is a motion questioning, in many ways, the work of the joint committee, and I say that without prejudice. I say that as an observation because the motion asks that the recommendation of the committee be sent back to the committee because the government believes it will be able to deal with it in its proposed legislation to deal with the Fisheries Act. In a nutshell, that is what is occurring here. No argument there.

For the record, I would like to bring forward some comments that were made by the hon. Minister of Fisheries and Oceans when he came to committee recently on this very issue. He said:

I want you to know that my department and this government value your insight and views, and we thank you for them. That is why I was eager to appear here before you, because I am committed to resolving this long-standing issue.

He was talking about the longstanding issue that we are dealing with in terms of the disallowance of subsection 36(2) of the Ontario fishery regulations. He acknowledged the concern and he wants to work to solve this problem.

He goes on to say:

You have told me and my predecessors that it is your view that the Fisheries Act does not provide legislative authority to enforce licensing conditions. The committee believes this subsection of the Ontario Fishery Regulations trespasses unduly on rights and liberties and makes an unusual and unexpected use of the powers conferred by Parliament. It allows officials to determine licence conditions, which are administrative decisions that, if breached, can land someone in jail.

He was simply paraphrasing our point of view. I will skip down to later in his commentary where he says:

In my previous role as fisheries critic, I stood in the House to debate against Bill C-52 a little more than a year ago. The bill would have amended the Fisheries Act to address the issue of concern to the committee, but would not have addressed outstanding issues of significance for our fisheries and Canada's fishing communities. You may recall that, during the debate in the House, I, too, questioned the value of a federal minister and his officials to throw people in jail. I believed then, as I do now, that there are other ways to enforce the rules that provide for orderly fisheries.

I mention that commentary because it is the minister acknowledging the problem that we are trying to grapple with and have grappled with at the joint committee. He acknowledges that this is something that needs to be dealt with. The debate perhaps here is how that should be done and when it should be done.

I believe those of us on the committee, as was mentioned by my colleague, the chair of the committee, would like this to be done quickly. Our concern and the debate in committee was that to wait for the overhaul of the Fisheries Act, which, as the minister said, is something that has not been done since Confederation, is no small task. In fact, it is something that requires diligence and will require a lot of scrutiny and debate.

As committee members, we needed to deal with due diligence. I felt strongly, as I do today, that we need to deal with this now because we can. To put it off again would not be doing due diligence. We would be throwing up our hands and abdicating our responsibility as members of Parliament to ensure we have the proper scrutiny of regulations and where there are problems we propose solutions. I am sure members in the other place would say the same thing.

When a committee proposes solutions it often needs to send correspondence to the relevant ministries and ministers stating that there was a problem with x, y or z. This has been going on, as has already been mentioned, since 1989 when I was a student at the University of Winnipeg.

We are asking the government to remedy this situation. If the government sends it back to committee it would be predictable. It would be a boomerang effect. We will debate this in committee again and say that it is still disallowed and make no changes and then we will be waiting for Godot.

What we need to do is be responsible. This is not, in my opinion, something that should be charged around the whole issue of the overhaul of the Fisheries Act. It should be taken as a separate piece to say that there is a remedy required and it has been going on since 1989.

When the minister was in opposition and certainly when I read his comments from the committee, he suggested there was a problem. Officials suggest there is a problem. The legal team that we are well served by on the committee knows there is a problem and is essentially saying that we need to remedy it now.

With all due respect to the government, I say without prejudice as a member of the committee on scrutiny and regulations that we cannot support the motion. What we need to do is provide a remedy that will not take long and will get through the House quickly to ensure we are doing our job as parliamentarians and that we are acting on the recommendations of a joint committee, recommendations that were unanimously agreed to by all parties, that the government and this place remedy the situation that has existed since 1989.

[Canada Elections Act, February 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, they can run but they cannot hide.

The electoral lists are not secure documents. Often, all it takes to activate a credit card is a name, address and date of birth. Now the Conservatives plan to give birthdate information to anyone who asks.

This big brother bill does nothing to protect the integrity of the voting system. All it takes is support from the government.

Will the Prime Minister take this matter seriously and scrap the peeping Tom clause in Bill C-31, yes or no?

[Canada Elections Act, February 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the Privacy Commissioner has said:

I fail to understand how the disclosure of birth information in [Bill C-31] would contribute to protecting or improving the integrity of the electoral process.

--the only reason put forward...to justify sharing date of birth information...it enables candidates and MPs to direct messages to constituents....

Will the Prime Minister promise Canadians that in the upcoming election he will not put the interests of political parties ahead of the rights of Canadians?

[Electoral Reform, February 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for bringing this motion to the House of Commons for us to debate and to vote on.

I begin by referring back to some comments made by other members. In particular, I challenge the member for Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington who said that the motion did not address electoral reform as put forward in committee. He also indicated that Mr. Broadbent was not in favour of the consultation process. He might want to change his take on this. We know Mr. Broadbent fought vigorously in committee for a parallel track so we could have citizen consultations. No one else did that. It was his work that allowed us to have the process in place. I want to put that on the record.

The government is trying to hijack electoral reform for its own purposes. Ironically, it is saying that it knows better than citizens. Let me explain that.

Before the Christmas break, my party put forward its intention to bring this issue to the House of Commons. We were being transparent, as we have been consistently. We let Canadians and Parliament know that we would bring this motion forward in the House. It was no secret.

Interestingly enough, after Christmas the government scurried and found a process to allow it to say it would move on the issue. It attempted to take it out of the hands of Parliament and therefore Canadians, because Parliament represents the interests of Canadians. The government said it knew better. It talked to its friends in consulting firms and lobbyists and put together a package. By doing this, it could say that it consulted Canadians. This was not good enough.

The terrible irony is that is not democratic. The whole point of the 43rd report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in the last Parliament was to ensure that Canadians would be heard, not only by their MPs, but through genuine citizen consultations as well. We know the previous government dithered on this, did not get to it and was unable to meet the commitment.

We are asking this Parliament to honour the commitment of the previous Parliament and deal with this issue. In the 2005 Speech from the Throne and the 2006 Speech from the Throne both governments, different political parties, claimed they would honour electoral reform. We are providing that opportunity for all parties.

It is passing strange that the Bloc Québécois says that everything has been done. It sounds to me like those members receive their message track from the government. Maybe this gives us an indication of more things to come with respect to the budget. They have said that all the commitments in the 43rd report from the procedure and House affairs committee have been honoured. They forgot to tell the House that the most important part of the report was to have MPs consult with citizens as well as to have citizen consultations.

I know the first past the post rewards the Bloc Québécois, and maybe that is something it does not want to encounter. I do not know. It is strange that those members would give us the impression that all the concerns, which were laid out in the report, and the commitments made to Canadians for a process occurred when in fact they had not.

The motion of my colleague is like a concurrence motion. It is asks this Parliament to commit to something it did not get to in the last Parliament. Canadians are very concerned. My predecessor on this issue, Mr. Broadbent, clearly outlined measures. He said that it was important to have ethics and accountability in government, and that might include a ban on floor crossing, which has not mentioned by the Conservative government. The Conservatives are concerned about electoral fraud vis-à-vis the opportunity for voter fraud. However, they do not mention candidate fraud, for example, when a candidate runs for the Liberals and then the next day becomes a Conservative.

Canadians are more concerned about candidate fraud than they are about this supposed potential for voter fraud of which there has been very little, in fact four cases over three elections. We have had more candidate fraud than we have had voter fraud, so that has to be addressed.

On the point of electoral reform, Mr. Broadbent along with others argued that the antiquated first past the post system will require major democratic reforms. To reach a degree of fairness in our present electoral system, he reasoned that a mixed system of individual constituency based MPs like we have now and proportional representation is necessary to erase the imbalance in the House of Commons.

I should note it is the model in New Zealand. New Zealand used to have a Canadian style system of concentrated power and there the voters rebelled against the alternating Labour Party and National Party dictatorships. Electoral reform now ensures coalition cabinets.

The present Prime Minister, in a paper with Mr. Flanagan, wrote:

In New Zealand, which used to have a Canadian-style system of concentrated power, the voters rebelled against alternating Labour party and National party dictatorships: electoral reform now ensures coalition cabinets.

Those are his words, not mine. That is our present Prime Minister writing that not that long ago, in 1997.

I agree with him that we have tired of this kind of dictatorship, this benevolent dictatorship as some have called it, where a party can receive 38% of the vote and have a big fat majority.

The problem is that the government along with the Bloc does not want to actually encounter this issue with Canadians because we need to deal with this issue.

I want to speak about the issue of democratic reform vis-à-vis the problems in terms of regional representation. In our system, where there are only votes that transfer into seats and are those which are cast for the candidate who gets the most votes, which is our first past the post system, the major disadvantage is for opposition parties.

Remember that under Preston Manning the Reform Party was shut out of seats in Ontario despite the fact that it received 20% of the vote. The system is also bad for governing parties. In the 1980s, for instance, the Liberals under Mr. Trudeau received 23% of the popular vote in western Canada. This should have meant 20 MPs from the west instead of the two who were sent to Ottawa.

As an anecdote, Mr. Broadbent, who was the leader of the NDP at the time, was approached by Mr. Trudeau and asked if he would not mind having a coalition government because Mr. Trudeau was so worried about the lack of representation in the west. Mr. Broadbent looked at the menu of choices Mr. Trudeau was offering policy-wise, and thanked him but said, not this time. A wise choice.

If we were to have a system structured as such, we would have regional representation built in. I turn to the examples of the last election. What happened in Montreal and Vancouver was a travesty. We had highway robbery of the democratic system by the Conservative government.

In the case of Montreal, Mr. Fortier was taken out of the back room and thrown into the cabinet with a portfolio of great importance. In Vancouver we saw what happened with candidate fraud with the Minister of International Trade. He was a Liberal one day and of course became a Conservative the next day.

If we had a system similar to New Zealand which would take away from the concentrated power that is a dictatorship, as the Prime Minister stated in his paper, we would have a system which would represent regions as well. That work has been done.

The work we have put forward is the mixed member, not the multi-member as the member for Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington suggested. That would allow members to be elected first past the post so they would be representing their riding and to have people assigned proportionally.

That is exactly the system that would ensure that we would not have these dictatorships as the Prime Minister suggested and it would ensure that we have regional representation. The Conservatives, having won power, could have had someone representing those regions where they were not successful, in the urban areas like Vancouver and Montreal, and they would have the legitimacy of having an elected person in cabinet.

I am delighted that we are debating this issue. I look forward to the vote and encourage all members to vote for what is a very progressive, insightful and important motion.

[Electoral Reform, February 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her excellent presentation and for putting this motion forward to the House. I applaud her for laying out the history of this issue, particularly the work done by my predecessor, the former representative from Ottawa Centre, Mr. Broadbent.

I want to ask the hon. member about one of the things that is critical in this issue and was cited by her: civic participation. In the report that we are asking to be implemented, all parties called for citizen engagement. I wonder if she would shed some light on that. The government claims to have a process in place. Would she comment on that?

[Canada Elections Act, February 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, as was mentioned earlier by my colleague from Winnipeg Centre, we had the opportunity here to deal with real democratic reform and that was an opportunity missed.

I should add that on the concern about women participating, if we look at those who are most vulnerable and falling into poverty, sadly, it is disproportionately represented by women. What we have here are not only concerns about socio-economic, we can do a gender analysis and we see that we are putting up barriers for women.

One can only imagine what all those women who fought for the vote are thinking. If those statues here on the Hill could come to life, one can only imagine what they would have to say about this bill. They would be very angry. They would be asking us what we are doing. They would tell us to look at the bill and then they would say “shame on us”.

[Canada Elections Act, February 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I did not have a chance during my speech to quote John Perry Barlow who said, “Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping Tom to install your window blinds”.

That is true. Relying on the government to protect our privacy is like a peeping Tom installing our window blinds. We have government sanctioned window blinds.

I would say to the member that it was brought up in committee to deaf ears. I have actually written to the Privacy Commissioner and hopefully we will be hearing from her soon on that very issue.