Paul Dewar

[The Environment, October 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the environment commissioner has documented the massive failure of the former Liberal government on climate change: $6 billion in climate change programs with no effective government-wide system to track expenditures, no performance standards and no results.

My question is for the President of the Treasury Board. What effort is the government making to track the missing money? When is the government going to get Canadians' hard-earned money back and put it where it belongs, in cleaning and greening this environment?

[Government Programs, October 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the government has eliminated $39 million in spending on the social economy. Canadians are asking why.

Social enterprises use business methods to achieve social and environmental goals. These triple bottom line enterprises provide Canadian communities with needed goods and services, from alternative energy to community tourism to affordable housing. They create jobs, include all Canadians and stabilize and humanize our towns and cities.

Evaluations of these programs, including the Community Futures Development Corporations, show that these groups mobilize volunteer time and private donations that match and often exceed the government support they receive. Furthermore, the jobs and training their employees receive expand tax revenues and reduce social transfers.

The government does not understand the implications of its ideological cuts. Canadians deeply believe that we can blend social, economic and environmental objectives and pursue these objectives through social enterprise.

In the interests of all Canadians, the President of Treasury Board should put back the money immediately.

[Criminal Code, September 29th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to respond to the private member's bill of the member of Parliament for Abbotsford.

I want to begin my remarks by putting things into context from my perspective.

As a teacher, I was involved with training young people about media awareness. I had the pleasure to work with the Media Awareness Network, which is based in Ottawa. Its work has been picked up and used as a model throughout the country. In fact, it is internationally renowned. What it does is educate young people. As its name suggests, it brings to schools, to children and to young people the tools they need to navigate not only the Internet, but various other media as well.

This is really important. All we have to do is turn on the television, walk down the streets and see the billboards, or look at our magazine stands. I believe we have taken the wrong direction in our society in how we display children and women and how we have sexualized and turned women and children into objects. Part of luring is about objectification, how we have commodified human beings.

I have two young boys. Sadly, it is something that I have had to educate them about at a very early age, about why we have magazines displayed that objectify women in advertising to sell products, when it has nothing to do with the product. We have this kind of pollution put in front of us and seemingly as a society we okay it or we do not do much about it.

With Media Awareness Network, we were able to teach students from the elementary level to high school and show them what kinds of media were out there and how to interpret some of the images. Let us be honest, it is quite confusing for someone who is four, five or six years of age to see some of these images in magazines, on television screens and on the Internet, and to try to understand how that relates to what they see in their everyday lives.

Quite clearly, if one were to take all the images that are thrown at our young people and children, put them in a context and say that this is reality, I think we would find that most children would be very confused and very disturbed if they were not given the guidance that most parents and teachers give. They need to be told that this is not reality, that this is a version of someone's reality and it does not reflect our human family and our human dimensions.

I wanted to start off with that because in essence what we are talking about is the objectification, the exploitation, the sexualization of young people, of children and of women, and we have seen that in the past. That is the heart of this issue. It is how we can tackle what really has become the commodification of human beings.

With that in mind, what we did with the Media Awareness Network was put young people onto the Internet and have them show us the kinds of sites and images that they saw on a day to day basis. This had to to do with advertising, the kinds of things that kids are confronted with all the time. We pointed out there were places that were dangerous and what they should do if someone talked to them on a chat line, how to prevent being lured and why these people do this. Again, it is very confusing for young people. Quite rightly, we hope, young people trust others. Sadly, there are people who exploit that.

What we really need to do is give them the tools to ensure they are not victimized. On that I guess I am a little surprised at the government's approach to this. On certain days we will hear the government say that this kind of behaviour is the fault of poor parenting. In essence, what it saying is that the government will be the parent because the parents are unable to do this. The government will make sure it does it. It will have the big hand of the law and take care of everything.

I am sad to say that this is not good enough and it is intellectually incongruent with what this political party asserts most of the time.

I also have to mention this weeks cutbacks to literacy to help grassroots organizations, schools, community organizations and libraries. They work with young people to give them the tools they need to ensure they are aware of what is out there, the kinds of predators, the pitfalls when one turns on a computer. They need to know there are people out there of whom they should be weary.

I find it strange that we have a government that on the one hand is saying we need to have a law like this, I would suppose, and without prejudice, because it would take care of the problem of luring children. On the other hand the government seems to be taking away all the tools that have been provided to prevent this. Ultimately, the way to deal with problems such as luring children is to prevent hee crime from happening.

I want to turn my attention to what has been done to date in other jurisdictions and what can be done. For the Ottawa police service and for many other police services, one of the problems they have right now is they do not have the tools to deal with the Internet being used as a tool, be it for luring children or for other crimes. Yet as Canadians, we are probably best suited to deal with this problem. We are at the top of the class in developing software and other IT tools to track this kind of phenomena. We have seen that when we have had to deal with and seriously take on concerns around terrorism.

On the other hand, when we are talking about police services and their ability and financial and human capacity to deal with Internet crimes, it seems as though it is an afterthought. That is not because they have not identified it. I happen to know the people on the police services board in Ottawa. I happen to know that this is a concern around the country, and I am sure other members know this. One of the problems police services are having right now is they do not have enough person power. They do not have enough of the IT tools that are necessary. Particularly, the police do not have people who are trained and who can remain in those positions.

This is the kind of approach we need. It is the kind of thing we need to do to prevent these kinds of crimes from happening. We need to be able to identify predators who are on line. Then we can arrest these people and make sure something can happen before the crime happens.

My major concern about the bill is not enough attention has been paid the prevention of crime. I extend that to an analysis on the approach the government seems to be taking on crime in general. Getting tough on crime is hard to argue with in some instances. However, it begs the question, what is the government doing to protect people and prevent these crimes?

If we are unable to have a debate and to put in the tools to prevent crime, then we are not fulfilling our responsibility and our jobs as legislators. Ultimately, we have failed our communities and we have failed children.

[Government Programs, September 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, despite having a $13 billion surplus, the government cut hundreds of millions of dollars from programs that help everyday Canadians. At the same time, it paid A.T. Kearney, an American consulting firm, a whopping $24 million for nine months of work and no value.

At a time of record surpluses, why is the Prime Minister willing to waste tens of millions of dollars on high priced consultants from Chicago and yet unwilling to consult everyday Canadians before axing their programs and sending out pink slips?

[Emergency Management Act, September 22nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague, the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre, has outlined for us what the parameters are when we are dealing with emergency preparedness.

When we dealt with the ice storm in Ottawa and Quebec as well, when I was volunteering to help out the army and others, one of the things that became crystal clear was that we relied upon the front line workers, the men and women, who are nurses, paramedics and people in our military, and we need to support them.

One area that concerns me greatly is the public health issue in emergency preparedness. We do not have enough public health nurses ready to go because we have abandoned public health. We need more capacity.

How can we better prepare ourselves in our communities by involving, training and building more nursing capacity?

[Emergency Management Act, September 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the hon. member's comments, suggestions and encouragement. I have a couple of quick questions.

A program had been put together after 9/11 to train local responders. It was the heavy urban search and rescue program. It was to set out to deal with biological chemical incidents. It was supposed to be a fifty-fifty saw off. Sadly, the previous government abandoned its commitment to the program so the urban centres were left on the hook to train people in this area.

My first comment is that it is fine to have this kind of infrastructure, but if we do not have the saw off and the equity in helping first responders, then really this is just words on paper.

The second point is I know firefighters, one a friend of mine, went to New York in the wake of 9/11. They did not know what they were getting into. We know the health effects that plagued the first responders. We need to take a look at that.

Could the member comment on that? When we send people into harm's way and into danger, how do we ensure they will not pay the price for a very long period of time? For some, it has been lethal and it has affected their health dramatically.

[Canada Elections Act, September 19th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, before I answer my colleague's excellent question, I should answer the second point raised by my previous colleague about this being a kind of an American style reform.

I simply suggest that the member take a look at the reference in my speech to the work that has been done by Professor Milner. He takes a look at the fact that it is not only the United States but that many other jurisdictions have successfully embraced fixed election dates, fixed but flexible. The American system does not have that flexibility. We would have the flexibility and it honours the Westminster tradition.

As to my colleague's question on proportional representation, we need to honour the voters of this country with a system that is fair. What we do not have presently is a fair system. It was referenced earlier that we have a system that was created back in the 18th century and obviously needs reform. We have seen reform in every other jurisdiction. Every other mature democracy, save two, have embraced some form of proportional representation. Why? It is because it is more democratic.

I would suggest to the House and to Canadians that this is not something that needs to be studied. We need to go to Canadians and have a citizens assembly, as has been done in other jurisdictions. We must provide these citizens with some of these ideas and hear from them what they think makes sense.

We proposed that process, by the way, as something we were going to follow in the last Parliament. Sadly, the government abandoned that commitment. I would like to see that embraced in this Parliament and discussed with Canadians.

[Canada Elections Act, September 19th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, as I said in my comments, something we can look at in committee is the setting of some criteria as to what is a confidence vote. However, with this legislation and this concept of fixed election dates, as we see this with the present government, this will take the rug out from under it, the strategy of trying to orchestrate a non-confidence vote simply to get a majority, as we have seen with previous governments.

In other words, if the bill were to pass and we do have fixed election dates, Canadians will question why the government would try to play brokerage politics, playing one region off the other simply to have a government fall and then gain a majority.

We all know, let us be honest that is the elephant in the room, that the government is simply looking for a way to orchestrate the fall of Parliament, particularly while one party is going through a leadership process. It may be a strategy it learned from another political party, I do not know, but that will be known to Canadians who will ask why the government is orchestrating the fall of Parliament when we have a fixed election date two or three years hence.

There are two criteria. One is that we can look at making amendments and set criteria for confidence, if that is possible. The second is that Canadians are smart and they will see when they are being manipulated. If there is a fixed election date and we have a government that is cynically trying to cause the fall of Parliament simply to get a majority, it will pay the price.

If we take a look at that in combination with the fact that this is the beginning and not the end of electoral reform, this is something we should embrace. We can see how we can make it better in committee and that is why my party will be supporting it.

[Canada Elections Act, September 19th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, as an aside, perhaps we all knew when elections were coming before because the money would start flying like no tomorrow from various ministers. They would be shoveling it out the train or plane depending on where they lived and we would know an election was coming.

We saw in this town and across the country that things came to a standstill around the time there was a perception of an election coming and files were not moved. In this past election, because it was a fairly long period, things were not getting done and, as a result, service to Canadians was affected negatively.

I personally believe that fixed election dates, particularly when it would occur just after summer vacations and when business is done throughout the land, people could begin ratcheting up their campaigns before the actual election date, which is common.

However, I do not think the business of the country will come to a standstill. People will understand and accept that an election is happening and that the government will no longer be able to manipulate it and, if it does, it will be in what I will call the public square. Everyone will be saying that we are throwing more money at something or we are going to stranglehold the bureaucracy by not allowing it to do anything because there is an election coming.

I personally think what should happen is what has happened in other jurisdictions that have brought in fixed election dates. It will make government more effective, more comprehensive and will, hopefully, avoid what we have seen in the past, which is the manipulation by the Prime Minister's Office, the executive branch or the bureaucracy simply for its own pursuit of power.

[Canada Elections Act, September 19th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise and speak to Bill C-16.

I chose to run for political office, as many here did, to make a difference. I believe we were sent here by our constituents to improve the state of the nation.

One of the areas where our nation definitely needs improvement is the structure and the function of our democracy. Before the last election, our party put forward a seven point plan to clean up and improve the state of our democracy. A friend of mine and a colleague of many who are here, Mr. Broadbent, proposed the seven point plan to clean up and put in the hands of Canadians some ideas that we could then bring to this place to improve the state of our nation and, indeed, the state and health of our democracy.

I want to go over those points. We know that with the accountability act the government quite smartly and rightly took some of our ideas and brought them forward. We certainly contributed to the committee on Bill C-2 in which the member for Winnipeg Centre and I proposed, as opposed to just opposing, ideas. We proposed some of the ideas that we had put forward in our plan, which was available to Canadians not only during the election but before the election.

To summarize the seven point plan, the first was to have democratic accountability in the House. We proposed that no member of Parliament could ignore his or her voters and wheel and deal for personal gain. No member of Parliament should be permitted to ignore the wishes of their voters and change parties. This was before the interesting musical chairs by the member for Vancouver Kingsway. We wanted to ensure that the wishes of voters were honoured. To cross the floor and become a member of another party, without first resigning his or her seat and running in a byelection, was not on.

Democracy is something that is evolving. It is an experiment of sorts and it is something where we know that when voters are not honoured, they do one of two things. Fist, they just walk away from the process, and no one wants to see that happen. Sadly, we have seen that happen over time. Second, they propose to change things.

The first thing we wanted to do in our seven point ethics packages was to ban floor-crossing. We saw that it dishonoured the wishes of voters.

The second point of our seven point plan was that election dates should be fixed, which is the spirit in the proposition the government has put before the House in Bill C-16. There are many reasons for that, which I will explain in a minute.

Point three, which we proposed before the last election, was to set spending limits in leadership contests. We saw in the previous Liberal Party leadership contest the contestant, who then became the prime minister, had over $12 million in the bank. Obviously, there was not much competition in the end, but he had lots of money. We had concerns at the time about the amount of money in leadership contests, and it was not just with the Liberal Party. Parties are largely financed by the public and the same principles pertinent to the public good should play to the internal affairs of parties as they do to electoral competition between parties.

Point four was electoral reform. This has been a demand, a suggestion, a proposition that was made probably before I was born. An organization of Canadians from coast to coast has been brought together from all parties. It has decided to focus on electoral reform, which obviously needs fixing.

Many people have suggested we look to the other healthy democracies that have proportional representation, that the will and the spirit of the voters is represented in legislative bodies. This clearly has not happened in the last number of elections. We need a process and we need to ensure that we get on with that process.

Fair Vote Canada, the organization to which I referred, has been tireless in advocating for fair elections so voters are not cheated, which has happened. It is not about parties. We know we have had majority governments that are false majorities, governments that are based on 38% and 39% of the vote. That is clearly wrong, it is undemocratic and it should be changed.

Point five was that unregulated lobbying and political cronyism must end. We have started on that path with some amendments we made on Bill C-2. We have to change government appointments so they are not patronage appointments. We have made some changes, but there is work to be done.

Point seven was access to information. Clearly, that is the window on democracy. It is a bit clouded now. We are working on that and there is more to come.

Now let me turn to the bill before us. The reason why we put forward fixed election dates long before others were talking about it in this place was because we saw the concerns that people had with the executive power, which has been concentrated over time, in the hands of the Prime Minister's Office. Some put it back to just after Pearson. We saw this lead to the deepening of cynicism among the voters of Canada. We had a previous government call a snap election when it was clear that the opposition at the time was not coalesced or organized. Why? Because it could win the election.

As was mentioned, governments sometimes go on too long. We remember the previous Conservative government, which waited until 1993 to finally let Canadians have their say. We could see a government call a snap election to get power or a government that hangs on to long. We see the benefit of having fixed election dates, but there are many other reasons, if we look to the people who have studied it.

I refer to Henry Milner, who is an author, visiting scholar and professor of political science at Laval University. He has studied this, and I consider this an objective opinion. He is one of the people we tapped into taking a look at fixed election dates. He showed that Canada is only 1 out of 12 of 40 comparable democracies that does not use some form of fixed election dates. Clearly, when we look at the juxtaposition between our democracy and others, it is worth examining, and he did that. He also said that these numbers contradicted the widely held misperception that flexible election dates were incompatible with parliamentary systems, as some have suggested.

I will turn to concerns with the fact that there have not been constitutional changes proposed in the bill. In effect, a prime minister can walk down the street and still call for an election. My colleague has made a proposal. In committee we will look at proposing ways to ensure that there are criteria on what is a confidence vote.

Most parliamentary democracies in Scandinavia and continental Europe, including several Westminster style systems, have what is called a flexible fix. In other words people would have concerns if there were a loss of confidence and the government should fall and set criteria accordingly. That is really what we are talking about: not fixed election dates, but nuance. It is a flexible fix so if there is a minority Parliament and the government loses the confidence of the House, there is an opportunity to go to the people, and that will not change. Therefore, we have fixed election dates when it is opportune.

Like many others, I am concerned that the present government is simply trying to engineer, between policy and brokerage politics, the fall of the House so it can then gain a majority. I actually think that with this debate and this bill in front of us people will become wise to that kind of backroom politicking. Not only with fixed election dates would we avoid the cynical use of power within the Prime Minister's Office, as we saw with previous governments, but the public would be aware of a fixed election date in October and would then question the government if it were orchestrating the fall of the House. The government would need to make that political argument. Is it playing brokerage politics simply to have the House fall so that it could gain a majority government? I see that as an important debate to have.

By adopting a precise date, preferably early in the fall as has been suggested, it would allow a campaign to take place at the end of the traditional vacation period in Canada. We also must take rural Canada into account. If we were to have an election too early in the fall it would affect farmers. Farmers, goodness knows, have had enough challenges and they do not need another one in front of them.

Although many of us had a terrific time going door to door in the last election and found it very invigorating ploughing through the snow, many of us, and probably most Canadians, would rather that be a footnote in history and not a practice to embrace.

If we were to build in provisions for holding early elections when necessary and in such an event stipulate that the following election would occur on the designated date four calendar years later, I believe Canadians would embrace that and it would help fix democracy.

I want to conclude by emphasizing the fact that this is something the NDP proposed before the election and it is something we embrace. We have some concerns but they can be dealt with in committee. We fully support fixed election dates.

I would like to leave the House and Canadians with the fact that this is not the end of electoral reform and democratic reform. Canadians are demanding that we fix our democracy, that we embrace the idea of democratic reform and that we embrace the idea of proportional representation. Canadians would then have genuine confidence in democracy. This is the beginning, definitely not the end. I look forward to engaging in debate with my colleagues.