Randall Garrison

[National Defence, October 22nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, Conservative bumbling on the national security file has reached new heights in the Delisle case.

It turns out that Australia, Great Britain and the United States all had their secret information compromised by this incredible four-year long leak. The Conservatives still cannot tell our allies what the full scope of the damage is.

Protecting the information coming from our intelligence networks needs to be a real priority, and the government is treating this as a sideshow. Instead of photo ops and attempts at preemptive damage control, when will the Conservatives get serious about cyber security?

[Combating Terrorism Act, October 22nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on Bill S-7, which proposes to do a number of things in amending the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act and the Security of Information Act, but I want to focus on just two things that this bill proposes to do, the two that I believe are the most significant. These are the reintroduction of the provisions for investigatory hearings and the reintroduction of preventive detention in national security cases, also known as recognizance with conditions.

Regrettably, Bill S-7 places measures before the House that the House had already wisely sunsetted in February of 2007 during the 39th Parliament by a vote of 159 to 124, a decisive vote. These measures were wisely rejected again by opposition parties when reintroduced by the Conservatives in 2009 in the 40th Parliament. Of course, these two measures were part of the package passed quickly in the aftermath of 9/11 when Canada's new Anti-terrorism Act was adopted by the House of Commons on November 28, 2001, and received royal assent on December 18, 2001, just over two months after the terrorist attack on the twin towers in New York.

Even in that climate of intense fear and even panic over national security, such was the concern about the two measures for investigatory hearings and preventive detention that a sunset clause was inserted so that these provisions would expire in five years. Yes, there was a climate of fear and panic that all of us remember well. I have personal reasons for recalling that day and its aftermath very clearly. My mother was flying from Washington, D.C., to Seattle that day, and a friend of my partner was flying from Boston to New York.

Fortunately, we located my mother safe on the ground in Denver, but my partner had to tell his friend's parents that their son had not been so lucky. He had to tell them we had confirmed their son was on the flight from Boston. He who had been late for everything in his life managed to catch that flight, unfortunately. We had to tell them that his body would never be recovered to be returned home to them in Indonesia as his was the second flight to hit the twin towers that day. My family remembers that day, but as residents of Vancouver Island we also remember that fear and panic can do harm, as well as responding emotionally to these kinds of issues.

Canadian history itself tells us a climate of fear and panic, no matter how real the threat, can all too easily lead to great injustice when governments act too hastily. I want to reflect a bit today on what happened to Japanese Canadians at the outbreak of World War II, action taken in a climate of panic also in the name of national security. I am going to offer my comments on Japanese Canadians as a kind of cautionary tale that relates very directly to the kind of measures we are asked to consider adopting in Bill S-7.

Much of what I will say here is based on the work of Ann Sunahara, her 2005 book titled The Politics of Racism. She has very interesting things to tell us about decision making with regard to the deportation of Japanese Canadians, because she was the first author to have access to government documents from that period after the expiry of the 30-year secrecy rule for these documents. In her book, Sunahara clearly demonstrates that government actions ordering the internment of more than 20,000 Japanese Canadians and the confiscation and sale of their property were based on nothing but fear and panic, often stemming from overt racism and ultimately facilitated by the latent racism against Japanese Canadians present throughout Canada at that time.

Again, it is a cautionary tale when we see members of the Canadian community today, especially Muslim Canadians, often targeted by anti-terrorism measures and the fear and panic that terrorism tends to cause.

Of the 23,000 Japanese Canadians in 1941, less than one-third were Japanese nationals. The rest were either native-born Canadians, some 13,500, or naturalized British subjects, some 3,650. Therefore, two-thirds of Japanese Canadians at that time should have enjoyed exactly the same rights as any other Canadian. Yet even Japanese Canadians born in Canada were denied the right to vote, denied the right to practise most professions and discriminated against in many ways. The so-called gentleman's agreement between Canada and Japan in 1907 had limited immigration from Japan to Canada to 400 per year, and in 1928 that number was revised downward to 150 per year.

Given this climate of latent or overt racism against Japanese Canadians, it is perhaps not all that surprising that after the outbreak of World War II in the Pacific, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in early December 1941, the Canadian cabinet adopted an order in council under the War Measures Act on January 14, 1942, ordering confiscation and sale of the Japanese Canadian fishing fleet and removal from the coast of all male Japanese nationals. Cabinet said explicitly this was for reasons of national security and to prevent sabotage or collaboration with a possible Japanese landing force.

In taking this action, Prime Minister King was following the lead of the United States and giving in to demands from B.C. provincial and federal politicians who continued to demand the removal of all Japanese Canadians from the coast: men, women and children.

On January 23, 1943, as a solution to the problem of how to pay for the internment of Japanese Canadians, and as a way to prevent their eventual return to the coast, the Canadian cabinet passed an order in council, again under the War Measures Act, that granted the custodian of enemy property the right to dispose of Japanese Canadian property in his care without the owner's consent.

What is important about these two things? What is the lesson they have brought today? At that time, cabinet did all of this against the advice of senior public servants and military officers. They did this, according to Sunahara, against the advice of the RCMP commissioner, the deputy minister of defence, the deputy minister of labour, the deputy minister of fisheries and the vice chief of the general staff of the Canadian military.

The actions against the Japanese were opposed, publicly and consistently, only by 28 CCF MPs, the predecessors of the NDP here in the House, to be joined in 1943 by a few Liberal senators after the disposition order was made.

The deportation of Japanese Canadians from the coast is often justified after the fact by selectively pointing to the U.S. experience, citing a similar experience for the removal of Japanese Americans from the U.S. Pacific mainland. However, relying on the U.S. mainland experience ignores the other U.S. experience and the awkward fact that in the U.S. territory of Hawaii there was no legal action taken against Japanese Americans. This is an area in which Japanese Americans were definitely on the front lines in the Pacific war, but where they constituted 32% of the population and so the economic impacts of internment would have been too difficult.

In Canada, at the end of the war, Prime Minister King was eventually forced to admit in the House that not only had not a single Japanese Canadian ever been convicted of sabotage or aiding the enemy, none had ever even been charged with these offences. Yet cabinet still refused to rescind the restrictions imposed by the order in council and did not end the exclusion of Japanese Canadians from the B.C. coast until 1949, again citing national security as the justification.

I have devoted most of my speech today to this dark period and this dark piece of Canadian history, one which took us nearly 40 years to come to terms with. Not until 1988 did Canada officially apologize and offer some compensation both to surviving internees and in the form of support for the National Association of Japanese Canadians. Obviously, this came far too late for most of those who suffered injustice.

In Esquimalt, where I live, we are only now restoring the Takata Gardens, the oldest Japanese gardens in North America, where the Takata family had operated a very successful tea house before being dispossessed for reasons of national security. This is a powerful local reminder to Esquimalt residents that injustice caused by fear and panic has costs for all Canadians, not just those who are the direct victims.

I see the experience of Japanese Canadians in World War II as a cautionary tale for all members in the House as we contemplate Bill S-7, a bill the government insists is necessary for national security. It is a cautionary tale that tells us of the sometimes ugly consequences of letting fear rule over rationality.

The provisions that we are talking about restoring here were never used in the five years they were in place. Some will cite the Air India inquiry where an application to hold an investigatory hearing was approved but challenged in court, and that hearing was ultimately never held as the sunset clause came into effect in the meantime. Therefore, we are left with no concrete example where an investigatory hearing was actually used. Yet in the 10 years since the Anti-terrorism Act was passed, the government has managed to get terrorism convictions for Momin Khawaja, Zakaria Amara, Saad Khalid and Saad Gaya of the so-called Toronto 18.

Therefore, I would ask this. Has our security been more at risk in the last five years since these provisions were allowed to expire? Does the government have any examples to show us when these powers could have been used?

Instead, I look back to the Japanese Canadian experience and we see the obvious contradiction of having fought a war for freedom and democracy and against racism, while at the same time treating a portion of our own citizens so unjustly.

Can we not see now the risk of a new contradiction? In the struggle to protect freedom, human rights and rule of law, we risk trampling the fundamental rights that are the basis of our democratic and legal system: the right to freedom from detention without charge and the right to protection against self-incrimination.

We also risk the unfair treatment of Muslim Canadians. Though perhaps not as severe as the deportation of Japanese Canadians in World War II, this constitutes a potential blot on our human rights record, which I know all in the House would like to avoid.

Let us not repeat the past but rather learn from it. Let us not stampede to trample rights because of our fears for national security. I urge all members of the House to reject the false security offered by Bill S-7 with its all too likely consequences of weakening our rights and the principles that are the foundation of our justice system.

We know that the best response to threats to our national security is to be found in giving resources to law enforcement and security agencies so they can do their jobs, while working within our system of rule of law and respecting those very rights that give meaning to the question for national security.

[Telecommunications, October 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the minister clearly has not addressed Huawei. The Conservatives did not take this seriously last May when the NDP first asked about it. The Prime Minister at that time was unequivocal when he said, “Those concerns have been examined and those concerns have been addressed in our mind”. Therefore, while our allies have been taking national security seriously, the Prime Minister dismissed our concerns flippantly.

Will they now give Canadians a clear answer? Are the Conservatives going to prevent Huawei from being part of important and sensitive communication systems in Canada, yes or no?

[Bullying, October 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise and speak in favour of Motion No. 385, put forward by my friend and colleague from Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, which I had the honour of seconding this morning. This motion is calling on all of us in the House of Commons to take concrete steps in the prevention of bullying. It is not good enough to say that bullying is someone else's responsibility or to hide behind Canada's notoriously complicated division of jurisdictions. It is not enough to say that this is best left to the local level, and it is clear that whatever we are doing at all levels in government in Canada today to combat bullying is not enough.

It is time for leadership in combating bullying. It is time for leadership right here in the House of Commons. Motion No. 385 calls for the creation of a special 12-member all-party committee to develop a national bullying prevention strategy. By reviewing studies on bullying, we can come to a better understanding of why it happens and what we can do to stop it. Unfortunately, creating an effective anti-bullying strategy is now an urgent need in our society, and for those who call for immediate action, I would like to remind them that effective action requires a strategy.

The prevalence and pervasiveness of bullying is shocking in our society. People can be bullied for any number of reasons, for being too short, too tall, too fat, too thin, for their sexual preference or even their perceived sexual preference or whether they conform to gender norms. I could go on and on with such a list. All forms of bullying are, of course, reprehensible and potentially harmful, but some forms of bullying appear to have more intense consequences. I am talking primarily about bullying based on sexism as it affects young women and girls and bullying based on homophobia, both of which all too often can end in violence, either violence perpetrated by the bullies or in the form of self-harm or suicide by the victims.

I can only speculate, but it appears to me that the deep-rooted sexism and homophobia in our society all too often reinforce and validate the attitudes and actions of bullies. The tragic suicide of Amanda Todd in Coquitlam just a few days ago is powerful testimony to the destructive power of bullying when backed by the oppressive cult of unrealistic body images for young women and the powerful pressures on adolescent women to seek personal validation in sexual activity they may not be ready for. The ongoing cyber bullying that has continued even after Amanda's death is shocking evidence of the need for urgent action.

Recently, many of us felt first-hand here in Ottawa the great sadness and immense sense of loss after the suicide of Jamie Hubley. This case is testimony to the enormous challenges of being one of the only out teenagers in a high school where homophobia often made that pressure unbearable. In the case of Jamie, it led to his suicide.

In contrast to the less well documented link between sexism and bullying, we have specific evidence of the reinforcing link between homophobia and bullying as a result of a study by Egale Canada entitled, “Every Class in Every School”. This was the first national climate survey on homophobia and transphobia in Canadian schools. Egale's survey, conducted in schools across Canada, found that 70% of all students—both LGBT-identified and non-LGBT-identified students—reported hearing homophobic comments every day in school, revealing a hostile climate in our schools toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and gender-variant students.

In this same study, 74% of trans-identified students, 55% of LGB students and only 26% of non-LGBTQ students reported being verbally harassed at school. That means the rates for transgendered students are more than three times those of all other students, and for lesbian, gay and bisexual students, it is more than double the rate for all other students. This is graphic evidence of the extent of homophobic bullying in our schools.

As I said earlier, there are many excuses for bullying, so much so that bullying is happening in our schools at astonishing levels. A separate analysis of Toronto area schools found that a student is being bullied every seven seconds. In a more in-depth study of bullying by the Centre for Youth Social Development at the UBC Faculty of Education, it was found that 64% of kids had been bullied at school,12% were bullied regularly, meaning once or more than once a week, and 72% had observed bullying at school, and of those, only 40% had actually tried to intervene to stop the bullying.

Even more shocking, though, is the fact that 64% considered bullying a normal part of school life and 20% to 50%, depending on the way the question was phrased, said bullying could be a good thing in that it makes people tougher and is a good way to solve problems. These are perhaps the most shocking statistics about the social acceptance of bullying and the failure of those who are around those being bullied to step in, act in their defence and declare the behaviour unacceptable.

Almost 80% of those students in the British Columbia survey pointed out that bullies are often popular and those who enjoy the highest status among their peers in school. They are leaders in schools and leaders in bullying.

As technology has advanced, so have the means of bullying. With social networking, smart phones and the Internet becoming second nature to everyone in Canada, especially young people, these resources become available for bullying, and bullying is now something that can easily happen 24 hours a day, any day of the year. Bullying is no longer a problem that only happens at school or on the playground. As the member for Vancouver Centre so aptly noted, the consequences of bullying spread worldwide very quickly.

We need to take bullying very seriously. The impacts on youth can be drastic and long lasting. Young people who are bullied are more likely to face depression. It is estimated that male victims of bullying are five times more likely, and female victims three times more likely, to be depressed than their non-bullied classmates. People who are victims of bullying are more susceptible to low self-esteem and are likely to suffer from anxiety and illness. Young people who are bullied are much more likely to engage in activities that result in self-harm, including extensive substance abuse.

On top of those personal tragedies, there are societal costs to bullying. Bullying adds to government costs in everything from health care to law enforcement. One of the shocking statistics that I ran across in thinking about bullying was that, of elementary school bullies, one in four will have a criminal record by the time they are 30 years old. Obviously engaging in bullying is an indicator of further problems to come in their lives.

We must reject the idea that bullying is just a fact of life. We must reject the idea that bullying has always been with us and always will be. These behaviours are learned. People are not born with hearts full of hate.

The solution is not to criminalize youth, as some in the House have suggested. Bullying is a vicious cycle in which most of the bullies have at some point been bullied themselves. However, we cannot excuse the bullying; we need to call it by its real name; and we cannot dismiss it as harmless child's play. We need to recognize that bullying is in fact based, too often, on sexism, racism, homophobia and trans-phobia.

The need for action is so obvious and so urgent. What the motion before us today would do is allow us to gain a desperately needed better understanding of bullying so we could then put in place a plan to prevent it from continuing. We need the bullying to stop in order to create a better Canada. We need to take action now. We have seen the hurt of the victims of bullying. We have seen the hurt of parents who have lost their children to bully-related suicides. We have heard the pleas of young Canadians who have lost their friends because it was all too much for them to bear.

The time for action is now. It is time for the House to take a strong leadership role, to take a stand against bullying by passing the motion and getting down to work on finding solutions and developing a strategy to implement them.

I commend the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord once again for bringing forward this motion. I hope to see support for it from all sides of the House.

[Bullying, October 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord for bringing this to the attention of the House. He has been asking questions since he arrived here to find out where the federal government will go on this issue and I commend him for bringing a motion forward that calls for action.

I know some people have said that this is just another study but I know the member's focus is really on the outputs of the committee. What kinds of things does he perceive will come from the committee?

[Public Safety, October 2nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the fact is Conservative cuts are putting Canadians at risk and it is not just food inspection.

Reckless budget cuts this year ended the joint emergency preparedness program. Internal government evaluations warned that these cuts would significantly and negatively impact emergency preparedness at the community level. Firefighters and local leaders have warned the Minister of Public Safety that these cuts will hamper their ability to respond to emergencies and to save lives.

Why are the Conservatives continuing to put Canadians at risk by cutting emergency preparedness?

[Helping Families in Need Act, September 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the member's dedication to making progress on aboriginal issues in this country is well known. I certainly thank him for his hard work.

I do not have the answer to his general question of why we failed so badly as a Parliament to address the needs of aboriginal people. When I look at those in my own community who use the food banks, only about 5% of the population of greater Victoria is aboriginal, but 15% of those who use the food banks are aboriginal. When we look at families that are in danger of becoming homeless, 12% of them are in danger, but aboriginal households make up a far higher percentage of those who are in substandard housing and are in danger of becoming homeless.

I come back to my point. Yes, let us help the families in critical need, but let us also go on to help the broad range of families, including aboriginal families, who through no fault of their own have trouble making ends meet and taking care of their children every day.

[Helping Families in Need Act, September 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I want to assure the hon. member that I am not trying to give a mixed message on the benefits. As I have said, all Canadians have the compassion to want to assist families that are in the most dire crisis.

I am trying to point out that in my community there are many parents who worry every day about their ability to put food on the table and provide shelter for their kids. For them that is a crisis. They want to make sure they can actually make that happen. I do not think any of us here would diminish the angst they feel at the end of every month when the food starts to run out and they have to go to food banks, or when they wonder whether they are going to have enough money to pay the rent or end up in a shelter.

When we talk about families in need, I agree with providing benefits to this narrow range of families in severe crisis, but let us not forget the other families in need in all of our communities.

[Helping Families in Need Act, September 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill C-44, a bill that has some very good ideas to help families who are in very critical situations. All Canadians have compassion for parents of critically ill children and, of course, for families who have lost a child.

The bill looks at provisions in both the Canada Labour Code and the Employment Insurance Act to try to help out those families in crisis. These include extending 35 weeks of EI benefits for parents caring for a critically ill child, plus a number of amendments that would allow for the stacking of benefits. Stacking sounds like a negative thing but in this case it is a very positive thing because it would mean allowing for the extension of benefits, like parental and sickness benefits, if they happen to coincide with care for a critically ill child. Obviously, on this side of the House, that is a concept that we believe is worthy of support.

There are also amendments to the Canada Labour Code that would remove some of the worry about job losses when one is caring for a critically ill child. It does so by extending parental leave and allowing extensions of unpaid leaves of absence so parents, if they are forced to take time off to care for their child, do not need to worry that their job will be gone when they return.

I am not only looking forward to the debate in committee on these positive ideas but I am also looking forward to considering a couple of other points in committee. Those will be the limitation on these new benefits to those in paid employment. There are lots of other families in similar situations to those who would be receiving these benefits but who are not presently in paid employment. I would like to hear ideas from the government, as we will be looking for ideas ourselves, as to how those kinds of families could also be assisted.

A second point, and an important one always, is how we will pay for this benefit. In their campaign, the Conservatives said that these new benefits would be paid for out of general revenues. Instead, we find in the bill that the benefits for parents of critically ill children would actually be paid for out of employment insurance premiums. I am looking forward to some discussion with the government about its previous promises on that.

I will now turn to the title of the bill for just a minute. The Conservatives like to give catchy titles to their bills and, in this case, it is called “helping families in need act”. While it does help families in very critical situations, in my riding there are many other families who struggle quietly every day to make ends meet. I am concerned that, while these are good measures, the policies of the government, in general, are putting further stress on those other families who may not have a critically ill child but who may have trouble putting food on the table or a roof over their heads to take care of their children. How do we ensure that the government keeps its responsibility to do something about the economy that would help those kinds of families, as well as those with these more tragic circumstances?

Last weekend, when I was at home, I was at a community event where I met a family of two parents, one of whom is self-employed and the other was in waged employment. They have one small child who, I think, just had his second birthday. The mother, who is self-employed, is expecting her second child within the month. Her partner was just laid off. They were renting a house, which they could no longer afford, so, being responsible and trying to take care of themselves, they moved to a basement suite. However, there is very real fear in that family about where they go next if they cannot find more employment for the one partner who has been in waged employment. As he is working only one day a week, they can barely afford the rent on their basement suite. It is very easy for those of us in more fortunate circumstances to forget that some people fear every day that they will end up out of work, with kids and eventually be among those who are homeless.

At a time when unemployment is rising, Parliament needs to pay attention and the government needs to pay attention to all those families who are struggling every day to make ends meet.

In my community, since 2008, food bank use has increased by 15.5%. It means that during the last year over 19,000 people in greater Victoria accessed the food bank and, among those, according to the food bank's annual report, were 5,500 children. When we are talking about families in need, there are many more families in need every day in my community.

Forty-nine per cent of those people who visit the food bank are families with children. Many of those people have jobs, but they are working in minimum wage jobs and it is becoming impossible to make ends meet. I just saw statistics that in greater Victoria, one in six workers has two or more jobs to try to support his or her family.

Since 2010, we have the very unfortunate circumstance in my community that by March the food bank begins to run out of food. Looking at statistics across B.C., 38% of the food banks have been forced at some time to reduce the size of their hampers. The majority of food banks limit visits to one per month and provide hampers which will provide food for five days or less.

Yes, the bill goes in the right direction for a very limited number of families, but I want to see some action from the government in trying to find measures to help all those families in need across the country.

In particular, my concern about funding these measures goes back to the EI fund. I want to ensure that with what we are doing here we are not taking away with one hand what we have given with the other. We are taking money out of that EI fund to fund these new benefits, but at the same time, we see the government restricting the income of part-time workers by clawing back their income. When they finally find a job to supplement their EI benefits to try to keep a roof over their heads, the government is reaching into their pockets and taking money back.

We have to ensure there is not a contradiction in the way we finance this new benefit and in the needs of all those other families in times of rising unemployment. We are still awaiting action from the government as the recession deepens. We are still waiting for the government to provide some relief to those families who are facing unemployment.

In my community, unemployment rates this year have been steadily rising. We have seen a rise of more than .1% a month, starting last spring through the month of August. If this trend continues through the winter, we are going to have a lot more families in need in my community in particular, because in greater Victoria costs are very high.

I want to cite a report that was just published by the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness. It is called the “Quiet Crisis: Homelessness and At Risk in Greater Victoria”.

On any given night in my community, over 1,000 people are in temporary accommodation. During the last year in my community, shelters ran at 111% capacity, meaning people were actually sleeping on a mat on the floor. They did not have a bed in the shelter. During the year, 1,617 unique individuals use the shelters in my community.

What does that have to do with this bill? This is about helping families in need. Unfortunately, a lot of people who use the shelters in my community are families with kids. Why is that? On average, rents have increased more than 20% in my community in the last five years, yet the benefits that are available to people have not kept pace. People must earn significantly above the minimum wage in greater Victoria to be able to afford to keep a roof over their heads.

The Community Social Planning Council estimates it takes $18.07 an hour working 35 hours a week for a single parent with a child to keep a roof over their heads. That is almost double the minimum wage in Victoria, and that is if one is lucky enough to have a job.

Some 12.8% of households in my community have been evaluated as being in poor housing, meaning they are living in overcrowded housing or housing that is in disrepair, or they are spending more than 30% of their income on housing.

Again, I think the benefits in Bill C-44 are worthy of support by all members of Parliament. I think all Canadians have compassion for parents who are having to care for a critically ill child or who have lost a child through violence. There is no doubt about our willingness to support those things.

However, when we are having this kind of debate and taking these measures, I am asking that we keep in mind those many more families who struggle quietly every day to make ends meet, to take up their responsibilities by finding a job and ensuring that job will actually pay enough so that they can support their families in the long term.

[Public Safety, September 24th, 2012]

A 1,400-page study about the privatization of prisons does not just appear out of nowhere. However, the Minister of Public Safety kept Canadians and even the correctional investigator in the dark about this secret study. Mike Harris already tried this in Ontario and it cost the taxpayers millions.

Why are the Conservatives wasting money investigating an idea that has already failed? Once again, are the Conservatives moving to privatize prisons in full or in part? Yes or no.