Paul Szabo

[Resumption and Continuation of Railway Operations, November 30th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his strong statement on behalf of labour. At this point in time, the arguments resonate very strongly everywhere in this place except on the government side. It would appear that we are in the process of debating closure on a bill that we have not seen yet, which does not seem to show good faith by the government. Therefore, I suspect that it is not really showing good faith with regard to the prospects of negotiations being successful.

Wages are an outstanding matter on which they are not that far off. However, there is a very significant disparity between them on the hours and the mileage cap. This is concerning. It should be concerning to parliamentarians as well. The previous speaker from Beaches—East York laid out a reasoned argument that parliamentarians should get a comprehensive assessment from the Minister of Labour as to the facts and details.

It sounds eminently wise for us to determine what the prospects will be for progress in the negotiations.

I want to thank the member for his input, but I hope he can give us some words of wisdom with regard to how we can proceed to make sure there is a good faith resolution to this problem we have.

[Resumption and Continuation of Railway Operations, November 30th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I know the member has been involved in the past. We have been here some 16 years and we have seen it before.

In fact, the position the government always has taken, regardless of where we have been, has been to support the collective bargaining process first as long as the parties are meeting in good faith and there is a prospect for progress to be made, provided however, and this is the area of the question, that the consequences of not reactivating a sector, whether it be the rail sector or any other, is not creating irreparable damage and consequences, it may be in the public interest to in fact take action.

Would the member comment on what we are doing right now? I think a lot of people may not understand that what we have before us is effectively a debate on closure of a bill that we have not received yet. It is very clever because it means at 2 o'clock this debate will cease and it will not be called back until after the legislation is brought in. Then the clock on the closure motion will already be ticking and we will be able to finish that off and put closure on a bill we have not even seen yet.

It would appear, in my estimation, that asking how we will vote on a bill that we have not seen yet is a premature question. In fact, this whole approach we are taking right now really is probably straining the rules of proceeding on back to work legislation discussions, simply by turning the process inside out and backwards.

[Privilege, November 30th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I spoke to the member's amendment that we considered in relation to Bill C-36 and that asked for the matter to go back to committee. I was certainly grateful that the member brought it to the House, and I voted for that amendment to send it back to committee because I felt so strongly that the information requested by the committee was so vital and fundamental to the bill itself. One could not possibly, with 10-year-old information, properly debate the matter in committee, and that is what the member has brought to our attention.

I would like to make reference to House of Commons Procedure and Practice by O'Brien and Bosc, page 89, under the section “Rights and Immunities of Individual Members”, specifically the paragraph under “Freedom of Speech”. It reads as follows:

By far, the most important right accorded to Members of the House is the exercise of freedom of speech in parliamentary proceedings. It has been described as:

“[…] a fundamental right without which they would be hampered in the performance of their duties. It permits them to speak in the House without inhibition, to refer to any matter or express any opinion as they see fit, to say what they feel needs to be said in the furtherance of the national interest and the aspirations of their constituents”.

The reason this is relevant to the privilege issue raised by the member is that there is in fact a decision pending from the Supreme Court of Canada right now on the issue of access to information, and the argument is very directly related to the right of freedom of speech, a charter right, in fact, under section 2.

Just underneath that right in the charter, it also says that we have the right to vote. If we follow that through to its logical progression, as has been argued in the courts, if one has the right to vote, one must have the right of access to information. Because one needs that right of access to information, the right of access is implicit in the charter. That is the whole argument.

We have a situation here where in fact the right of freedom of speech has been inhibited because the access to information necessary for members of Parliament to discharge their duties has been interfered with by a minister of the Crown. Not only did he withhold this information from the justice committee, but it is also the same minister who withheld the RCMP report from the debate on the gun registry information and may in fact be involved in withholding documents with regard to the Afghanistan detainees.

There is a pattern here and it is a pattern that is disturbing to me. That is why I rose in the debate on the amendment and why I am rising today, because I believe that the rights of members of Parliament to discharge their responsibilities have been interfered with by the obstruction of the minister.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, November 30th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am very supportive of the bill. I did chair a subcommittee of the health committee on controlled drugs and substances, where we initially set up the schedules on precursors, designer drugs and a few other things.

There were a couple of questions and maybe the member can assist. The coordinating amendment in the bill seems to make a reference to subsection 19(8) and the reference in the member's bill is to subsection 1(9) of schedule III, not schedule I. I do not have the bills before me, but I wonder if the member could please explain what the difference would be if his bill is overridden by the government bill that is already in process.

Finally, since he has done all the work now, I wonder if the member has any comments on whether or not the process that we have to go through to amend the schedules to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act seems to be fairly onerous and may not be able to respond to the velocity of changes in terms of the advancement of drug science.

[Child Protection Act (Online Sexual Exploitation), November 26th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, the member has to admit that fining someone $1,000, as the penalty for a first offence, for having pornography on their website that is available for distribution is an anemic punishment.

The member has to admit that this has nothing to do with protection; it has to do with punishment. Somehow the member thinks that the bill and its anemic response to the problem will reduce the incidence. It will not. That is the difference in the Conservatives' thinking on criminal justice issues. They think it will provide some sort of prevention or deterrence. That is just not the case.

[Child Protection Act (Online Sexual Exploitation), November 26th, 2009]

I could not say it better, Madam Speaker.

I ask why we have this bill and why now. Why is it so weak? Is it just another facade? Is there any commitment to the issue of child protection? We can use all the words we want to say that we really care about that, but I bet I could pick a half-dozen people out of this place, get together as a committee, look at best practices around the world, get the facts, hold some public hearings and come up with a draft piece of legislation for the government to consider. I would love that opportunity, because I think that members in this place who were not muzzled and were not forced to follow linear thinking on criminal justice issues, members who were free to openly discuss and deal with these things would come up with much better legislation.

[Child Protection Act (Online Sexual Exploitation), November 26th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I think the member is quite right.

First of all, this was not the best effort of the government, quite frankly. It has not thought it through carefully. It has not taken the opportunity to look at ways in which we can have legislation that is going to deal with the incidents.

For some odd reason, the government seems to think that if we have a tough enough penalty out there, that is going to be a deterrent. That does not work. Bad criminals simply do not respond. They do not think about what the penalty is under the Criminal Code, and then decide whether or not they are going to do the crime. That is not the case.

With regard to the question about the money, the member is quite right. If the government has a bill and is prepared, then it has anticipated the questions and it will have the answers.

When Bill C-36 was before committee, the government did not even have an answer about how many people actually applied under section 745. Why is it that the government does not get it? It does not understand that if it is serious about legislation, it better bring forward the facts and the information, put it all on the table and let it stand on its merit. That would be good legislation.

[Child Protection Act (Online Sexual Exploitation), November 26th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, we should not be talking about the faint hope clause. The issue was that there was a feeling that we had to punish rather than prevent.

With regard to the faint hope clause, I gave the example that four out of the six women who were abused and who murdered their husbands, after going through the very rigorous process, were able to apply for early parole.

I voted in favour of the motion to strike out everything in the bill and refer it back to committee. That was my vote, to negative the bill. That was a clear vote. I voted to scrap the bill and throw it back to committee.

With regard to the universal benefit, it is not universal in the same sense because $1,200 a year is not enough for a family to be able to afford to put one child into child care for more than about three or four weeks.

I would suggest to the member that it is a very weak argument in regard to child protection issues.

[Child Protection Act (Online Sexual Exploitation), November 26th, 2009]

I did.

Public education is always part of the solution for all of our problems. When there are social problems, we have to look at them and understand them. Canada cannot pretend to be the creator of all good ideas; those ideas do come from other places. Other countries have done a lot of work on this, and yet the bill was so hastily put together that it actually is anemic in its approach to the issue of child protection. While it is okay to do what the bill proposes, and it will not harm things, I do not think the bill is going to help as much as people think it is.

We even have a question with regard to how we should police this and how we should make this happen. When we pass laws in this place, by and large, the federal police, the RCMP, will not be responsible for enforcing the laws we pass, but the provincial and regional police forces across the country. They are the ones. Ask them today. Ask them province-by-province, region-by-region, territory-by-territory, what is the shape of their budgets with regard to policing.

Why pass laws that we cannot enforce or whose potential we cannot actualize? If we cannot support the policing, is it there? Have we talked concurrently of a special fund being set up, or special task forces or special policing forces, because when one finds a “little nest”, that nest may be part of a whole colony. It is going to take time, but if we are serious about dealing with child protection in the context of child pornography, there has to be a strategy. The strategy should not be a matter of our tinkering with this and that. Then we cannot boast that we have the most comprehensive strategy and are the best in the world. It is misleading Canadians.

The previous member from the Bloc who spoke said that we have to make people aware. We all have to be part of the solution. We all have to be aware. We need the tools and the information, but here we are as parliamentarians and what we have is: a bill. Here is the bill. After one rips out all of the boilerplate pages that have nothing to do with the law, the document comes down to four items: Situations where there may be an offence by individuals or persons, and then there are the offences and the punishments for them.

For the first offence, an individual who has knowledge of but does not disclose that there is child pornography on a particular site can be fined not more than $1,000. When I read that, I thought we are not serious. We cannot be serious.

If we think that maybe the ISPs just did not realize what their legal obligation was, and that probably will be the case, that in itself is a reason for us to launch a major national public education and awareness campaign about this problem and about the tools we have and we should ask Canadians to be part of it. However, that is not in this bill.

Somebody decided that we ought to do this just because of what is happening in the world regarding domestic violence and crimes involving children and because we should get tough on crime. This is about punishing people after problems occur or after people get sick.

When I was elected to Parliament, the first committee I wanted to be on was the health committee. I remember that at the very first meeting I attended, officials appeared to give us the state of the union of the health care system in Canada. They told members of the committee that 75% of what we spend on health care deals with curing people after they have a problem, and 25% is spent on prevention. Their conclusion at the time was that the model of 25% prevention and 75% remediation after the problem occurs was not sustainable.

They built on it to say that the benefit of $1 spent on prevention was worth three times more than the benefit of $1 spent on cures and remediation. In other words, the value of prevention has a multiplier effect in terms of good and better outcomes. The same principle applies to criminal justice.

It is not good enough to say that if people do the crime, they will do the time, that we will throw people in jail and throw away the key because they are bad people. If we could reduce the number of people who are in jail or who have to be fined, that would be a good outcome.

We know statistics bear that out for things like conditional sentencing. They say that people who qualify for conditional sentencing, house arrest or whatever actually have a lower recidivism rate than do those who have to serve all of their time in jail. That is not just my opinion. Those are the facts, that there is lower recidivism if fewer people go to jail and more get conditional sentencing or early parole.

It makes some sense, but we do not make sense when we come forward with bills that are so narrow. They are almost political documents as opposed to justice documents. This is a political advertisement.

We will support the bill, but why not come forward with notes and information for members of Parliament so they can discuss it and make recommendations to the House, so that when the committee receives this bill it will be able to address some of the items that we addressed? That is what we should be doing at second reading, telling the committee what we are concerned about and asking it to look at our concerns. It has the opportunity to do it. I know the members on the justice committee will look at it.

We have to stop bringing bills forward that are not our best work. They could be much better. I hope that hon. members will get engaged, start debating this bill, and instruct the committee on the kinds of approaches we should take to make this legislation better, and, further, recommend to the House that there are other areas in which we should consider bringing forward legislation for the protection of children.

[Child Protection Act (Online Sexual Exploitation), November 26th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in this debate at second reading of Bill C-58, the latest bill the government has brought forward.

It struck me as peculiar that the bill was just tabled and, all of a sudden, it is before the House for debate without briefing notes from the minister, without a legislative summary, and without consultation or somehow engaging the members to consider the issue before us.

The issue is not really about Internet laws, but about the protection of children. That is what the bill is about. If we put it in that context, we will understand that this specific bill relating to child protection is a very small piece of the discussion. That concerns me, and I think that concern is slowly emerging.

We are at second reading of this bill. The reason I wanted to rise is that I would like to encourage members to put on the table as many recommendations as possible for committee to consider, not just this very narrow bill as it stands. We need to examine how this bill could have been part of a comprehensive approach to child protection beyond simply dealing with those who happen to detect child pornography on a computer, whether they be individuals or organizations.

When I saw the penalties for a first offence, in this particular case a $1,000, I thought, “My goodness, child pornography probably generates millions of dollars, so the $1,000 just does not seem to be in the ball park”. My premise is that if one is not part of the solution, then one must be part of the problem.

The previous speaker from the Bloc raised for members' consideration the issue of prevention and, of course, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection raised the need for us to do much more.

Whenever a criminal justice bill is before the House, not being a lawyer, I can enjoy the luxury of asking, what do I know about and how do I feel about this bill and what does it do to address the problem before us? I look at the issue that we are talking about and why we are doing what we propose and the elements of penalties and incarceration that are included. I also ask what are the issues with regard to rehabilitation, if possible, and what are the issues with regard to prevention?

I say this because when we talk about criminal justice issues, we have to deal with them before and after we have the problem. We know from all of the work that has ever been done on health and justice issues and from wherever we have social problems that understanding and admitting that we have a problem is the first step. The next step has to be, how do we prevent some of these problems?

I should say at the outset that the bill, in its narrow way, is worthwhile sending to committee and, I suspect, supporting to become law. But it is so narrow in its approach, it is tinkering. How many times have we asked why does the government not come forward with comprehensive legislation that actually addresses the issue? The issue is child protection, and we have problems there.

When I looked at the speech by the Minister of State for the Status of Women, who gave the government's position, I am pretty sure that somebody wrote it for her. Nonetheless, at least two or three times it mentions that Canada has “one of the most comprehensive frameworks in the world to combat child pornography” and that “we can and must do better”. A little later in the speech, the minister continued that “Canadian criminal laws against child pornography are among the most comprehensive in the world and apply to representations involving real and imaginary children”. That point is later repeated.

We can say that is the truth, but if Canadians look at the statistics, they should know that 39% of those accessing child pornography are viewing images of children between the ages of three and five years of age, and 19% are viewing images of infants under three years old. The public does not really know that, but we should consider that we are talking about a significant problem of children five years of age or younger. The vast majority of this problem is among children five years of age or younger.

Why does the government not ask itself how is it that a child five years or under could actually be a victim of child pornography? Can we imagine our own children being involved in this? If so, why? If not, why not? From our knowledge and experience, we know collectively the conditions that are fertile for bad or wrong things happening. We understand those things, but we are tinkering here. We have a serious problem. The minister of state admits it, but also says that we have the most comprehensive framework to deal with it. Well, we do not.

When we have a problem as pervasive as this, we can look back at some of the history of it and recall that we had a joint Commons-Senate report entitled “For the Sake of the Children”. It dealt with issues of family breakdown and recommended, for example, that if there were a custody dispute in an acrimonious divorce, there must be a parenting plan in place before a divorce can be granted by the courts. That was a joint Commons-Senate report done years ago.

It never happened. I have spent a fair bit of time working on children's issues. I wrote a book called The Child Poverty Solution dealing with the causes of child poverty. Child poverty is one of those things that tugs on the heart. Who could be against dealing with child poverty? However, it is family poverty, because every child in a poor family is poor. Why are families poor? On a scale divided into quartiles, no matter how much anybody makes, somebody will be in the fourth quartile.

Under the definition we have right now, if one is in the fourth quartile, one is basically counted as being among Canada's poor. Poverty needs a definition, but I am not going to get into that because the bill is not about child poverty other than the fact that such poverty is a contributing factor to a child being accessible and vulnerable to being a victim of child pornography.

I wrote another book called Divorce—The Bold Facts, which also dealt with family breakdown and the impact on children. The research that I did was just amazing. The implications for children of family breakdown are enormous. Where those children end up and the quality of care they get and the circumstances they have to live in, tell me that these are fertile areas for bad things to happen.

I wrote another book called Strong Families... Make a Strong Country dealing with the same thing. It showed statistically that the intact family, a child with a biological mother and biological father, had the least incidence of bad outcomes for children. The statistics show this out; it is not a subjective opinion. It is subjectively determinative, and this has been shown so many times. Another related book I wrote was called TRAGIC TOLERANCE... of Domestic Violence.

I am wearing my white ribbon because we are talking right now about an area that is extremely important. Domestic violence and violence against women are still rampant in our country. I spent five years on the board of my shelter for battered women, called Interim Place, and helped them get a second shelter built. However, I am hoping that these shelters will go out of business. In a perfect world, we would not need shelters for women and children who are abused.

We just considered Bill C-36, the bill dealing with the faint hope clause. Here, four out of the six women who applied for the faint hope clause were abused women who had killed their husbands and been convicted of first degree murder. All of them had children. Four of the six who applied actually were granted early parole, and while they still have a life sentence, they were granted early parole because of the compassionate understanding that bad things happen. In a couple of those cases, the husband was having an affair on the side and there were other consequential things, but there was a first degree murder. It is terrible that murder occurs, but Bill C-36 eliminates the opportunity for parole after 15 years. It says that if someone commits first degree murder, that person is going to serve 25 years before he or she gets the first opportunity for parole. Can we imagine what that does to a family with children? I do not understand why repeal of the faint hope clause is going to happen. I do not support the elimination of faint hope, but that is not before us right now.

I have said so many times in this place that public education—