Pierre Dionne Labelle

[Business of Supply, June 5th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I do feel strongly about the Senate and the use of public funds by unelected individuals who were appointed so they could take advantage of these privileges. We are not proposing to abolish the Senate.

Here is what the motion says: “That all funding should cease to be provided to the Senate...”.

We are not talking about abolishing the Senate. That is not what the motion is about. We want to ensure that senators do not receive different treatment than most Canadians.

[Business of Supply, June 5th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Halifax.

Josée gets up very early in the morning and takes her child to daycare. She has been working in a grocery store for 15 years. She has no pension and is not unionized.

Roger, my neighbour in Saint-Jérôme, rises at 5:30 in the morning and gets in his car. He used to work at Air Canada, but was later transferred to Aveos. Aveos closed. Now he is forced to commute from Saint-Jérôme to work in the east end. He is on the road for an hour and a half every morning.

Denise is 75 years old. She has health problems. She goes to the hospital and waits 15 hours in the emergency room. She has trouble getting the health care she needs. She has no support at home.

While this goes on, what is Parliament doing? What is being done by the people sitting in front of me and next to me—the people who were elected to run this country? We are busy discussing people who were not elected and use a lot of taxpayers' money illegally. When Josée, Roger and Denise come home in the evening, they turn on the radio and hear about Duffy, Wallin, Brazeau and Harb, and they are fed up with politics.

There is a moral and social crisis in Canada regarding the political elite. It starts with the municipalities. People are disgusted by what is happening at the municipal level. They are disgusted by what is happening at the provincial level. At the federal level, it is more than people can stomach. It is incredible that there can be such an abuse of funds, especially since these people are not legitimately appointed. Who are these people in the Senate?

Before the scandals broke, I was not really interested in who sits in the Senate. However, I recently looked up the senators and why they are there. It is despicable.

We cannot accept that a political instrument such as the Senate is used to reward fundraisers. It is unbelievable. The list is long. Liberal and Conservative fundraisers have equal representation. They are obviously friends. A buddy is a buddy. I look at the list of people who have been appointed to the Senate by the Conservative Party and I just cannot believe it.

I will start with the Liberals' friends. David Smith is a chair of the national fundraising campaign. James Cowan was vice-chair of the Nova Scotia fundraising campaign. I have a couple of examples for the Conservatives. Irving Gerstein was a party fundraiser. Judith Seidman was co-chair of the leadership campaign. Other buddies include Donald Neil Plett, president of the Conservative Party, and David Braley, a major donor. The list goes on. It is a cushy job for party cronies. We cannot accept that. It is an incredible situation.

Can someone in this House tell me why Jacques Demers is a senator? I like the man. I liked him as a hockey coach. However, he is now behind the bench of a team that is asleep at the switch. What is Josée Verner doing there? People did not vote for her. She is a failed candidate. Right after the election they sent her to the Senate. That is just incredible. It is outrageous. People are fed up. They are disgusted with politics. They do not want to vote any more, and that has been brought about by the people who are governing this country in a totalitarian and, I dare say, unethical manner. It has come to this.

My ancestors fought in Lower Canada for the 92 resolutions, for responsible government, for elected individuals who would be accountable to a parliament for making laws and administering them and who would be accountable to the electorate. My ancestors were hanged for that.

Here we have a situation where people can overturn the decisions of the public's elected representatives without being accountable to anyone. That is unacceptable.

The Liberals are scaring people. They are saying that our motion will paralyze Parliament and that we will not be able to pass any more laws. They have spent the past 30 years scaring Quebec and the rest of Canada. It is unacceptable that they are standing and trying to ridicule us when, basically, they are the ridiculous ones in the eyes of history.

They forced the Constitution down our throats even though Quebec did not sign it. Now, they are saying that this is unconstitutional and so on. Where was their respect for the democratic process when the Constitution was signed in 1982? They had no respect. I am getting carried away, but I believe that things need to change.

Moving on to the subject of volunteering, I have worked with exceptional men and women in the community over the past 15 years. Every day, hundreds of people are working for causes they believe in, whether it is supporting abused women, women's groups or food banks. Every day, hundreds of people give of their time to food banks to help people living in poverty and isolation.

I am told that the politics could never attract volunteers to improve the country's situation. I do not believe it. I have seen people work hard, raise money, go into hospitals and go into schools to help children. Why would such volunteerism not be appropriate in politics?

I have seen people get involved in protecting wetlands and fighting against oil development projects that threatened the environment. I have seen volunteers get involved in sports organizations across the country. It is not ridiculous to propose that senators not be paid. It is an idea that I really like.

When we talk about the amending formula, we must remember that Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Chrétien patriated the Constitution without Quebec's consent, obviously, and imposed an unworkable amending formula on us. They locked the Constitution up tight, and now that we are trying to make reforms, we are being told that changes require the support of 50% of the population and seven of the provinces, yet Quebec did not support this amending formula. In fact, people do not agree with the Constitution.

Was the Constitution ratified at the national level? Was a vote held on it? People are discouraged and fed up with the situation. In that regard, today's debate is moving things forward. I am talking primarily to the people who are watching at home. I am not trying to convince the people in power, because they are cynics. They use their power for their own purposes.

If Canadians want responsible MPs who will improve the political situation in Canada, they should vote for the NDP.

[Safer Witnesses Act, May 30th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I have an answer for that. Members of Parliament are paid to be here. This is not additional spending.

Witness protection is very important. Do they remember Ma Chouette, the anonymous witness who spoke out about the sponsorship scandal? They always wanted to find out who that was. It is important to protect witnesses.

[Safer Witnesses Act, May 30th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, having worked for a long time with municipalities, I know the situation in Quebec, and I imagine that the situation of municipalities elsewhere in Canada is no different.

Municipal funding is a major challenge because infrastructure is crumbling everywhere and money has to be allocated to projects that the municipalities are working on. They have to provide local services for the people. The municipalities are already having a great deal of difficulty covering their expenses, and additional costs will only make things more difficult for them. I believe that if the federal government introduces bills, it must follow up with the money.

[Safer Witnesses Act, May 30th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I will not repeat what has been said all evening.

The NDP is of the same mind as some of the police chiefs and police associations that testified in committee, and it shares some of the concerns expressed by municipal officials. Transferring the cost of a program to other levels of government is a fairly common occurrence with Conservative bills. Conservative bills often result in increased pressure on provincial budgets. In the case of employment insurance, the effect is obvious: people who exhaust their benefits will turn to welfare, which is a provincial program. Therefore, the province will absorb these costs.

In the case of prisons, the provinces will have to build more of them to enforce the government's proposed law and order regulations. That will also result in additional costs that will have to be borne by the municipalities. It is crystal clear.

[Safer Witnesses Act, May 30th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in the House to speak about a bill that is dear to my heart, and that is Bill C-51.

The NDP has said that it will support this bill. Why? For various reasons. First, the bill broadens the eligibility criteria for the witness protection program to include witnesses recommended by the Department of National Defence. It will also extend the period of emergency protection and clear up some of the technical problems that were occurring in relation to coordination with provincial programs. It has been said many times in the past several hours that the program will likely generate additional costs. The members opposite do not seem to believe that. Time will tell.

When it comes to witness protection, in Quebec in particular, there have been clear examples in recent years of why it is absolutely necessary to have witnesses to help target and stop criminal groups. Many police operations would have failed miserably had it not been for the co-operation of informants. Take for example, Opération SharQc, which resulted in the arrest of 115 Hells Angels, thanks to the help of an informant and the protection he was offered by the police. In Quebec, the Sûreté du Québec protects witnesses.

There have also been other arrests, such as those of all of “Mom” Boucher's Nomads, a chapter of Hells Angels. Once again, an informant, “Godasse” Gagné, worked with the police.

Clearly, the witness protection program covers a wide variety of activities. When it comes to terrorism, there is a certain type of witness that needs to be protected. When it comes to organized crime and street gangs, we are not talking about some poor innocent witness. It is important to be clear on that. These are not choirboys. They are people with rap sheets longer than the government's mammoth bill.

Although these witness protection programs have been very effective recently in the fight against organized crime, there have also been some abuses, things the public felt should not have been done. Informant witnesses, under the protection of the police and the government, received large sums of money for their co-operation. Of course, giving up 115 notorious criminals for arrest has its price. One witness was given $3 million. The public saw this as an abuse. There have also been witnesses who received new identities and then went out and committed crimes a few years later. That happened in Quebec, and the public is not okay with those types of abuses.

I would like to point out that the witness protection program is managed by police forces. We know nothing of the agreements between the police and witnesses. The rules are not clear, and there is no transparency.

Tonight, there has been a lot of talk about the need for transparency with these kinds of agreements. Based on what I know about how the program is administered, I can say that, in Quebec, there was no transparency. There was so little transparency that there were abuses involving the public as well as reformed and protected witnesses. They challenged their agreements with police, to the point where they formed an association, the Association des témoins spéciaux du Québec. That shows just how bad things got. These protected witnesses sued the Quebec government for $6 million for breach of contract.

What I am trying to say is that transparency is an issue.

There has been support for the improvements made to the bill. There is support for the fact that Bill C-51 expands the witness protection program to include criminals involved in street gangs. I think that is key to eventually eliminating that scourge.

Members have also said that this bill assumes that the funding currently allocated to the RCMP is sufficient. We do not feel that is the case. In addition, the bill unfortunately does not follow through on the recommendation to create an independent organization to oversee all of the witness protection programs.

It is important to understand that when a police force is dealing with a witness from organized crime who made the first step to access this type of program, there is no proper balance of power between the police and the criminal. A lot of pressure and responsibility is put on the commissioner. The new statute, especially clause 12, indicates that the commissioner must protect the witness' identity, but may also disclose the witness' identity if the commissioner deems it appropriate to do so. In fact, the commissioner becomes judge and master of this program. We know that sometimes he is put in a position of being judge and jury. It does not serve the justice system well for police forces to be judge and jury. We often see this when police forces investigate other police forces. This does not necessarily produce the best results.

An independent agency made up of specialists that are completely independent from the police forces could manage this program effectively, have clear criteria and agreements that are respected and deemed appropriate by the public. When we negotiate agreements with criminals, we must remember that we represent public ethics and power and that we cannot negotiate any old thing. I would say that in this type of program, it is a bit like shaking hands with the devil. We have to be careful. I am not the only one who prefers to have this safeguard in the bill.

I would like to quote from a letter sent to the Minister of Public Safety from the Barreau du Québec.

Under clause 12, the commissioner may disclose confidential information if the protected person consents to the disclosure or has previously made such a disclosure or acted in a manner that results in such a disclosure.

We can agree that if a criminal under witness protection wants to terminate his protection, it is up to him.

Furthermore, the commissioner could disclose that confidential information if he has reasonable grounds to believe that the disclosure is essential for the purposes of the administration of justice; this could be necessary in the context of investigating a serious offence if there is reason to believe that the protected person can provide material information or evidence in relation to, or has been involved in the commission of, the offence; preventing the commission of a serious offence; or finally, establishing the innocence of a person...

The commissioner can lift a witness's protection for about a dozen reasons. This is a very serious decision. This disclosure could put the commissioner in a conflict of interest.

As we have also seen, it is not the role of the commissioner to act as judge and jury. The committee recognizes the importance of this issue, but does not feel it compiled enough information to be able to make an informed decision. In its final report, the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security recommended the establishment of an independent body to administer and manage the federal witness protection program.

Furthermore, in the report that followed the Air India tragedy, the commission recommended the creation of an independent body, specifically, a national security witness protection coordinator.

I agree with those recommendations. It would have been better if this bill had included a provision to create an independent body to oversee Canada's witness protection program.

[Georges Moustaki, May 23rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, Georges Moustaki, with his Mediterranean face, the face of a wandering Jew and a Greek shepherd, and his wild hair, left us this morning, taking the byways he travelled all his life to finally join Félix Leclerc, Jacques Brel, Barbara and Georges Brassens in the pantheon of French song.

Moustaki was a poet who wrote about intimate and universal concepts, and his songs have been sung throughout the world in every language by musicians from several generations.

He was a humanist and pacifist who lived on the left bank. As a champion of freedom and simple living, he was an icon for an entire generation—a generation for whom love and the future of our planet were more important than all the gold, power or money in the world.

Here are the lyrics of one of Moustaki's songs:

See the people bustling about,
Clothed in lies and deception.
You can be a beggar and proud of it,
Clothed in rags but not poor.

Thank you, Moustaki.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1, May 7th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is right. Providing job opportunities is the most effective way to fight youth crime and all forms of criminal behaviour. It is a proven fact: when people are working and can pay their bills and save up some money, they are less likely to turn to illegal activities.

As for youth, indeed, employment integration measures targeting young people in particular are the best solution to the problem of crime and violent crime.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1, May 7th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for the question.

The Conservatives' approach, which consists of using omnibus bills to amend 50, 60 or even 70 acts, makes it impossible for us to single out any measures and give our consent for specific measures. Then, as we have seen over the past two years, we come back to the House for question period and the Conservatives keep saying that we voted against this or that measure. That is not true. I am confident that those watching us at home see what is really going on.

We did not vote against this or that measure. We voted against the fact that some measures, which taken individually could be beneficial, have been grouped with others to try to make us swallow a bitter pill with a spoonful of honey.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1, May 7th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to use those 15 seconds to withdraw that remark and to underscore the excellent work done by the official opposition's finance critic.