Peter Stoffer

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, October 26th, 2009]

With respect to the crew personnel who were on board during the October 2004 HMCS Chicoutimi fire: (a) how many are still working with the Canadian Forces (CF) as submariners; (b) how many have left the CF permanently for any reason; (c) how many have left their positions and were transferred to other departments within the CF; and (d) what compensation or severance has been paid to crew members?

[Long Service Congratulations, October 26th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud today to stand in the House to recognize one of Parliament Hill's greatest employees, Mr. Robert “Bob” Beauchamp. Bob Beauchamp has been on Parliament Hill for 31 years, serving this great House and all of its members. He has been through eight prime ministers and many elections.

Mr. Beauchamp was also the local president of his union, working with the membership in order to bring better value and benefits to this workers. Without Mr. Beauchamp and the people who work on Parliament Hill, we as parliamentarians could not do our job.

We thank his wife Sharon, his children Kimberley, Christopher, Patrick, and his six grandkids for sharing Bob with all of us. Whether one is driving a bus, moving tables or moving legislation, we are all part of the democratic process. We salute Bob for 31 years of great service. He will retire on November 12. We wish him the very best. God bless Bob.

[Ending Conditional Sentences for Property and Other Serious Crimes Act, October 26th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, if the individual was listening to my speech earlier, he would know that I did talk about victims. I talked about one lady in my riding who lost her daughter to a drunk driver.

Having lived in Yukon and witnessed a tremendous amount of crime there, and having also lived in British Columbia and Nova Scotia and seen many friends who were victims of crime, every single one of those people are very angry and very upset.

One of the things that I have always sought is victim impact statements. Every single victim should have their day in court to tell the judge and the jury exactly what the offender has done that created turmoil in their lives. I believe that if every victim had the opportunity to appear before a judge and/or jury to make an victim impact statement, it would assist the legal system tremendously.

[Ending Conditional Sentences for Property and Other Serious Crimes Act, October 26th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Northumberland—Quinte West for his speech and his work as a police officer on the front line for many, many years.

Is the debate based on politics; that is, what is best to be elected or what is best for society? No party has the wherewithal to say that it is the party with this issue and no other party can debate or talk about this issue. It is simply not true. Every single member of Parliament has had people come to them over their period of time here to talk about a crime that has been committed against them, what they have read in the paper, or what they have seen on the news. In many cases, unless people have been in a courtroom and understand the procedure from the time the crime has been committed to the sentencing aspect of it, many of us just simply get our information from what we hear. If we have been victims of crime, we understand the process a little better than others.

The previous speaker spoke about people doing time in prison and what happens when they are there? That is the key. It is one thing to say to someone that they are going to jail for six months, six years, 25 years, but what happens to that individual behind bars? What happens to them in the prison system? Are the human resources there to actually try to change this person's opinion? Are they there to say, “All right, buddy, what you've done was seriously wrong. That type of behaviour was against society's rules. Now we are going to ask you to work with us and we are going to try to correct that behaviour”.

The reality is that what we get from the Conservatives is the back end of what we call the justice issues. We do not know if they are acting on a revenge premise or the justice issue. I will give them the benefit of the doubt, because I know a lot of them personally, and I think that they are actually trying to do what they believe is best for their constituents and Canadian society.

When we debate these types of issues, we have to have an honest and thoughtful debate, one that is not pointing fingers at anybody. No riding is exempt from crime. No person in this House is an expert on what to do in this regard. That is why it is important for the House of Commons to have this type of debate and eventually committees can bring in experts.

When we have this type of debate, we would think that the government, with all the research capability at its fingerprints, when it brings legislation forward in terms of increased sentences or whatever it brings, that it would be able to bring up the financial costs as well, not just the cost of what happens when the crime is committed but the actual costs of longer duration of prison time for these perpetrators.

The Conservatives should be able to come up with those answers fairly quickly. They have all the research capability at their fingertips, but we never get that from them until much later. If they are looking for more support, if they are looking for more positive debate on this particular issue, I ask them to bring those financial figures forward. Then we can find out exactly who will pay for this. It is one thing to say to someone, “Buddy, you did something wrong. We are going to tack on an extra 10 years to your sentence”, but there is a financial cost to that, a financial cost to the taxpayers of Canada.

I remember a Conservative Party once in this place called the Reform Party, and its members always said that nothing should be presented to the House until a dollar figure was attached to it, and it did not matter what it was. This particular Conservative Party, if there are any fiscal conservatives left over there, seems to have forgotten that aspect of it. Plus, we are asking the government, where is the evidence that this will actually deter crime? Where is the evidence? That is all we are asking for.

We are not saying what the Conservatives are doing is wrong or right. All we are asking is, where is the evidence that these particular pieces of legislation will indeed do exactly what they say it will do? If they brought that and the cost figures forward, they would probably get a lot more support in the initial stages of this discussion.

I will give the Conservatives credit for bringing forward issues that a lot of people do not like to talk about. However, if we cannot debate these issues in the House of Commons, then where can we debate them?

I agree. There are some people in this country, if I had them in front of me, I do not know what I would do with them after seeing some of the crimes they have committed. But I have asked for over twelve and a half years, through many justice ministers, including two with the Conservative Party, to bring forward a comprehensive child Internet pornography bill, and I am still waiting.

I have had the legislation. A previous member here had the legislation. The former attorney general of Saskatchewan, Mr. Chris Axworthy, brought it forward many times. We are still waiting. From Liberals and Conservatives, we are waiting to stop child pornography in this country. Whether or not we can completely stop it, I do not know, but the reality is that we have to do a lot better to protect our children in this regard.

It does not just necessarily mean putting those perpetrators behind bars. It is trying to get at the root of the problem first.

A priest once told me that when dealing with crime or anything of this nature, crime is like dandelions. We can cut off the tops of the dandelions but if we do not get at the root of the problem, they will just grow back again, and this is what we in the NDP have emphasized for many years. We have to get at the root of the crime to really prevent it from happening again. That is where the real investment and real expenditures should be made.

If we can create for the families and children of communities right across this country, from coast to coast to coast, a system of ensuring that they all have proper nutrition, proper education, proper housing, proper health care, et cetera, many of them would not fall into the lap of crime, but unfortunately, when they do not see a way out, many of them resort to substance abuse and to criminal activity in order to get through their lives on a day to day basis. In fact, many of them fall into gangs.

This is what happens when we do not invest in families and children right from the very beginning. We can lock them all up but we are never going to prevent it from happening. There is no question that deterrents will have an effect on some people, but if we are truly serious about justice issues in this country, we have to get at the root of the problem to begin with.

Crime has been with us since time immemorial. We have always had some form of thievery in this country, ever since man has been around. Since Adam and Eve we have had some form of crime in this world, and not one person has been able to completely stamp it out. We know that when we look at the Scandinavian countries, when we look at the European countries and what they are doing in prevention, and we see what they are doing when criminals are in jail, we see that many times they will not repeat what they have done before, and also many of them do not commit the crime in the first place.

It begs the question: What do we do with someone who murders three children? What do we do with someone who has had 12 impaired driving charges, and on the 13th time, went and killed someone?

In my own riding, when I first became an MP, I will never forget it. We gave a beautiful 18-year-old girl a grade 12 graduation certificate. Three months later, we sent her family a condolence card on the death of their daughter because of a drunk driver in Nova Scotia who had nine impaired driving charges. On the 10th one he got it right. He finally killed someone. He went to jail for the maximum sentence at that time of eight years.

I can assure members that I and my entire community were very upset with the fact that it was only eight years. I would love to have seen a more personal, longer sentence. But we have to ask ourselves how he got a driver's licence after every single other offence. The fact is that we did not get at the root of that problem. We just slapped him on the wrist. We put him in jail the first time, fined him, and then just let him carry on his way.

Society, in fact politicians at all levels, failed the system because we forgot to go after this guy and teach him from the beginning that drinking and driving was an unacceptable aspect of our society and that thou shalt not do it again, but we just ignored it and passed it on.

Again, if we are going to prevent crime from happening, we have to get at the roots of it. It is critical that we as parliamentarians look at the roots of all of this in society from our aboriginal people to new immigrants, to gangs, to the whole bit. For the Conservative Party to say that it has all the answers is simply not true.

Here is something else that is really quite offensive in many ways. RCMP officers, in many ways, are the front line warriors when it comes to crime in this country. They are the ones who are up all night. They are the ones who go after the bad guys in our communities.

What does the Conservative government do? People who understand agreements with the RCMP know that the RCMP does not have an association or a union. After six months through the RCMP pay council, it turned around and agreed to a 3.5% increase. That is not very much money for our brave men and women who wear the red serge. The government agreed to it and signed the deal that said this is what they were going to receive. What happened on December 23? In an email, just before Christmas, what did the Conservatives do? They told the RCMP that, without debate, without discussion, they were going to rollback that increase they agreed to back to 1.5%.

What is the Conservative Party saying to the RCMP? “Yes, we value your service. We're proud to have you as police officers in this country doing the job that we ask you to do. And when we negotiate in writing and agree to your pay increase, yes, we're going to honour that”. Then, without notice, bang. Gone. Rolled back to 1.5%. I have yet to hear one Conservative stand in this House and apologize for that action. It begs the question: Why did they roll back that salary without debate in the House of Commons, without any previous warning, and just prior to Christmas? I have spoken with many RCMP officers and their families across this country who are very upset and very angry over that.

I will say this to the federal government, and these Conservatives, if they care to listen. They do not have all the answers to crime and punishment in this country. However, by working co-operatively in this House of Commons, we can work together to ensure that those perpetrators of serious crimes do pay the time that they deserve. However, at the same time, for all of those people who are suffering from mental health issues, from social issues, from all other issues, who find no other way in life but to resort to crime, we as a society should be there to invest in those early treatment programs to ensure that they do not fall into crime in the first place.

If we have that ability, as a Parliament, to do that, then I think we can not only reduce crime drastically in this country but we as a society will be able to move forward, as other countries have as well.

[Ending Conditional Sentences for Property and Other Serious Crimes Act, October 26th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I asked a financial question because I have a bill, Bill C-201, that deals with veterans. The first thing out of the mouths of the Conservatives was “What is it going to cost?”, not what is best for the veterans, but what it is going to cos. They did not care about veterans and their families and the issue of what my bill would do to help them. All they asked about was the cost.

So, I will ask once again. Has he got the evidence to prove that this would actually prevent crime, and what is the financial cost of the bill?

He said some of the provinces would pay for it, and that is true. However, would the money then be transferred from the federal government to the provinces to pay for that?

With a burgeoning deficit, where is the money going to come from, increased taxes or cuts to services?

I have no problems with him debating the issue of crime and punishment, but someone has to pay the financial costs for this. Yes, there is a cost when people commit crime, but there is also a cost when we put them behind bars for extended periods of time.

So, how much would it cost and where is the evidence to support his conclusions that this would actually prevent crime?

These are two very basic questions.

[Ending Conditional Sentences for Property and Other Serious Crimes Act, October 26th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his comments and his ability to try to get tough on crime.

He indicated during his speech that there are many occasions on which he spoke to his constituents about this issue. I was wondering if the member, for the record, would advise us if he has advised his constituents of any evidence based facts that this would actually reduce crime. If he has, perhaps he could table it in the House or perhaps he would be able to provide it during the committee process.

Has the member been clear with his constituents about the actual financial costs and who will pay for all the additional sentences, jails, prisons and so on?

I have no problems with the perception of getting tough on the worst criminals. I have a bill on child Internet pornography and I would like us to get a lot tougher on child pornographers in this country than we are now. We hear about truth in advertising. We would like to know what the economic costs of the provisions in this bill will be. Who is going to pay for it? Where is the evidence that it would actually reduce crime in this country?

[Ending Conditional Sentences for Property and Other Serious Crimes Act, October 26th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot let it go by that the Conservatives like to consider themselves the law and order party but the reality is that the people who uphold law and order in this country, the RCMP, had their salary increases rolled back on December 23 from 3.5% to 1.5% without notification.

What a slap in the face to those hon. men and women who serve our country and go after the bad guys every day. I would like the hon. member's comments on how he and the police in his riding felt just before Christmas when their salary increases were rolled back arbitrarily by the government.

[Ending Conditional Sentences for Property and Other Serious Crimes Act, October 26th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is absolutely correct. If the power is taken out of the judgment of the judges, then decisions we make could eventually lead to the debate of why we have judges at all.

There is no question that people who have a crime committed against them feel very angry, upset and despondent about what happened to them. The fact is that many of those crimes are committed by people who started life with a mental or physical challenge. Whatever the challenges are, we are not walking in their shoes.

There are a million reasons why people resort to crime, which is why it is important that judges have the discretion, through a legal system that allows all the facts and bearings of a case to go before a judge or jury of his peers, to make a complete analysis of what the time should be when fitting the crime.

I hear fiscal Conservatives talk about the financial aspects of everything, but when it comes to this, they are very silent on what the actual costs will be. Why does the member believe the Conservative Party is so reluctant to release financial information on what these particular legislations would eventually cost the taxpayers of Canada?

[Questions on the Order Paper, October 23rd, 2009]

With respect to the privatization of the military supply chain process for the Canadian Forces, since 2006: (a) what is the government’s position on such privatization; (b) what is the business case for such privatization; (c) what products or services are anticipated to be supplied through a privatized supply chain; (d) what discussions have occurred with private consultants or contractors; and (e) have any contracts been signed and, if so, (i) with whom, (ii) on what date, (iii) in what amount, (iv) who approved the contracts on behalf of the government, (v) which contracts were not subject to a competitive bid process?

[Infrastructure, October 23rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, in beautiful Nova Scotia, the Colchester civic centre is ready to go. The municipal county and provincial dollars are all in place. The only player missing is the federal government, which tends to make me believe that Nova Scotia is being punished because Bill Casey once stood up for it.

When will the people of Truro and Colchester county get the money from the federal government so they can proceed with that wonderful centre?