Rick Casson

[Justice, November 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, this week a 30 year old sex predator from Texas who was charged with luring a 14 year old Ottawa boy to a hotel for sex and the production of child pornography was let go with a slap on the wrist. Canada has become a destination for sex tourists who prey on our children by exploiting weak Liberal laws. We repeatedly have warned the minister about the threat to our children.

In light of this alarming reality will the justice minister now commit to protecting our children by raising the age of sexual consent?

[Special Events, November 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the year 2005 has been a special year in Canada. In conjunction with the 60th anniversary of the victories in Europe and the Pacific that ended the second world war, 2005 was named the Year of the Veteran, giving Canadians an entire year to say thanks to those who fought and still fight for our freedom.

This year also saw centennial celebrations in Alberta and Saskatchewan, marking 100 years since these two great provinces joined Confederation. Thousands of centennial medals were presented to hardworking Albertans. The Queen even stopped by for a visit and helped us celebrate our western heritage, and our place in Canada.

In response to these two special events and wanting a permanent reminder of the year, the Alberta government has renamed two of our highways. Highway 2, running north and south through Edmonton, Red Deer and Calgary has been renamed the Queen Elizabeth II Highway, while Highway 36, running north from Warner, through Taber, Brooks, Hanna and points north has been renamed the Veterans Highway.

Now we have permanent reminders of this special year and these historic events.

[Canada's military mission in Afghanistan, November 15th, 2005]

Mr. Chair, I would like to thank the minister for being here tonight to lead off this debate and hopefully we will be hearing from the Minister of National Defence later on, which I am sure we will.

I believe the operation in Afghanistan will be the most intense operation in which this country has been involved and probably the most dangerous since Korea. This is not a peacekeeping mission. The general in charge has indicated that we will be taking the fight to the Taliban, that we are there to perform operations and that the possibility of Canadians being hurt is great.

This is not at all a peacekeeping mission. The mission is to clean up the most dangerous part of that country. Some of the terms that have been used are “less benign” and “unstable”. The fact is that it is just damn dangerous and this is where our troops are going. We need to have the confidence as a nation and certainly as the official opposition that everything has been done to provide these troops with the absolute best equipment and training and to ensure they have the facilities on the ground to protect them around the base perimeter.

I want to hear from the minister, and perhaps we can ask the defence minister later as well, that indeed has happened. We hear that the forces are having trouble finding enough trained troops, the numbers that are required, to send over there and that they are having trouble finding the equipment to properly equip these people to ensure their safety.

I would like the minister to state that this indeed has happened and that our troops are equipped, trained and in the best possible situation in this most dangerous part of the world.

[Criminal Code, November 15th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, the member for Wild Rose has been working on justice issues for the 12 years he has been in the House, which is quite a lengthy session. Before that he worked with children as a school teacher. He is a citizen of Canada now but he was born in the United States. He has quite a history of standing up for people who do not have enough strength to stand up for themselves in some cases.

The issue of this private member's bill, which he just mentioned now, is the fact that it is really not changing what gets done. What he is asking for is a change in the order or precedence where somebody who is seen to be breaking parole can be taken into custody and then the due diligence is followed up after that. However, getting that person away from a dangerous situation where the public is at risk is the idea.

I would like him to explain a little more about the fact that it is not really asking for a huge amendment in the Criminal Code. It is just asking for a different order of precedence when it comes to taking these people back into custody.

[Criminal Code, November 15th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Wild Rose for bringing this important bill forward.

He mentioned quite a few scenarios of some of the people who could be protected if the police were given this power. It is not a parole issue, but I often think of people who have restraining orders against them, who just walk right through those restraining orders and harm someone they know and have some kind of vendetta against.

He also talked about children. He and I worked together recently on a private member's bill to raise the age of sexual consent in Canada. Sadly, that was defeated, but that fight is not over. We will continue that another day.

I would like him to expand on the fact that the main focus of what he is proposing here is to protect Canadians. We all know that the first and foremost job of any government is the security and safety of the citizens of the country. Could he expand on some of the scenarios where he sees that this piece of legislation would help protect Canadians?

[Pacific Gateway Act, October 31st, 2005]

Madam Speaker, as I mentioned earlier, I have an issue brought to me by the private sector. It was a request for an inland terminal and was brought to me by some people who are trying to export out of southern Alberta. They have created a bit of an inland terminal to unload grain cars, but they want to expand it to be able to handle containers.

I think that is going to be critical as we go through the development of the agricultural industry, as I have explained. Customers are going to want to know where the product came from, not just what country. If there ever is a problem, they are going to want know what field it came out of and how it was produced.

There is this whole issue of containers, the ability to ship and the opportunity that exists if we can open the west coast ports. Right now, products get backed up. Producers cannot get trains to haul product out there in the first place. When they do get it there, they are in a queue thousands and thousands of containers long before they can get it shipped out of the area.

There is another particular issue in my riding. We have a huge concentration of intensive livestock operations in southern Alberta. In my riding, there is a capacity for 600,000 to 700,000 head of feeder cattle. The BSE issue affected us tremendously. It hurt a lot of people. We learned a very pointed lesson as a result of that. We learned that the fact is we must have more markets. We must have a variety of markets that will take a variety of products. We had all of our eggs in one basket and that was the American market. When that border closed, we were in trouble.

There is an important aspect to this. This should be done for all aspects of our economy. We need to get out and find markets. I think the government can play a big role in finding those markets, but the private sector needs to do its part as well. If a product is needed in another part of the world, we need to find out who those people are and make the arrangements to get it there. Without a proper transportation system, we will not be able to do that.

The opportunity is there for our country. The blessings that we have been given in this great country through our natural resources and the people who create the goods can really be maximized if we have a proper system in place, find the markets, get the transportation system in place, and then turn the private sector loose.

[Pacific Gateway Act, October 31st, 2005]

Madam Speaker, we will now get back to being more relevant to the bill after those last comments.

I will be sharing my time with the member for Okanagan—Coquihalla. As a former treasurer of the province of Alberta, his input in the debate will be welcome and quite timely. I would also like to mention that the member for Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, the Conservative Party critic on transportation, has done a tremendous job on this issue and certainly carries forward issues from British Columbia to this Parliament.

Bill C-68 was the number applied to another bill in another Parliament which dealt with the gun registry, so I hope this bill will be more successful than that one was. The summary of Bill C-68 states:

This enactment provides for a declaration of the Government of Canada's Pacific Gateway strategy and, in support of that strategy, creates Canada's Pacific Gateway Council, a new advisory council that will be tasked with providing advice and analysis to maximize the effectiveness of the Pacific gateway and its contribution to Canada's prosperity.

In another part of the bill it defines that and this is the part that concerns me. It says that the council will “provide policy advice and analysis to the public and private sectors regarding the best application of public and private sector interventions”.

Some people get very nervous when they hear that instead of the government listening to people in the private sector, it is going to start telling them what to do. We will see how this process goes. Two of the aspects are that subcommittees can be created, one for transportation and another one for opportunities.

For this Pacific gateway initiative to be successful those opportunities have to be developed very quickly. We need to have markets for the products that we are so blessed with in this country, our natural resources, our energy, the manufactured goods, the value added that goes on in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. This gateway will deal mostly with those products but, of course, successful trade packages with the Asia-Pacific region will be good for all of Canada. That is what we have to remember.

A strong economy is good for all Canadians. It is good for the environment. It has been proven in the past that most environmental initiatives start when the economy is good. All of this comes together to create the importance of having a strong ability to move product. That is my concern.

In the bill the government talks about an expenditure of up to $590 million. The B.C. government has identified a need of $3.5 billion in B.C. alone. This bill is talking about just a fraction of what is needed. The list of items that the British Columbia government has already identified as priority areas to move goods to the coast is very extensive. It is not only on the coast itself, it is the infrastructure, the highways, the rail lines to get the product from the interior of our country to the west coast.

I am from Alberta and we have a problem now with our rail transportation system. It is clogged for the movement of grain. There is lots of grain on the Prairies, but it is of poor quality this year. The system is clogged to the point where there is nothing moving at the moment. We have made a concerted effort. We have talked a lot in the House about finding other markets outside North America. It would be easy to just go south of the border and try to find a market. We could put a product on a truck and send it south and sell it, but we have to find other markets. That includes having more than just the ability to put a product on a truck.

Of course we can truck goods to the west coast. We can send products by rail, or by air for smaller items, but the big bulk movement of freight is in dire need of upgrading. There has been some investment by the private sector and the railroads to improve the system, but looking at the big picture it is absolutely amazing what the potential for growth is on the Prairies and in British Columbia. The little bit of improvement that has taken place is not enough to open up the bottlenecks that slow the product down.

In my area of southern Alberta people want to put together an interior container port so they can put agricultural products and manufactured products on rail cars and ship them to the coast. Right now the easiest way to do that would be to send them south and get them on the east-west system that the U.S. has. We have to be very careful of that. We need to put the investment and the effort into the Canadian system so that we can truly use our own resources and our own people to ship goods.

We talk about the issue of value added a lot when it comes to agricultural products, about not selling raw grain, about turning it into a product that can be shipped. In order to do all of these things, we have to have timely transportation systems. In this day and age people do not want to keep large stocks on hand. They want just in time delivery. That compounds the problem. If we cannot get the product to where it needs to be, then that sale will not happen. We have seen this. We are trying to get product into India and other areas that coincide with certain aspects of their culture, and if it does not get there on time, then it is of no use. It is absolutely critical.

When one drives off the prairies and goes through the mountains and follows along the highway and railway systems, one can see that the rail lines are absolutely running at capacity. Some changes have to be made so that they either carry double the height of product or the tracks are twinned so that traffic can move both ways. The port can work both ways. We need it to ship our products into the world market, but we also use it to bring products in. To get products off the coast and into the interior and even into eastern Canada quickly is something that absolutely has to happen.

One of the issues that was brought forward earlier by our critic was that a lot of work has already been done, and in particular the British Columbia government has spent a lot of time and effort identifying the areas that need to be improved. What we see here today is just a fraction of what is needed. I think it is even less than 20% of the total dollar value that is needed to put the infrastructure into place to make the transportation system work to get goods to the coast which is what the government is talking about.

We are going to support this initiative because it takes a small step in the right direction, but a lot more is needed. With the system that is in place and the council that is going to be in place, hopefully there will be some more commitment from the government. For many years we have been calling for investment back into the transportation system from the money that is collected through the gas tax. It has to be dedicated to this type of thing. We know that some of this has been started already but it is all tied up with other requirements and municipalities have to able to access the money.

I mentioned inland terminals. People in the trucking industry are facing higher costs in running a truck down the highway because of the higher fuel costs. For every mile that a truck moves it costs somebody more money because of the cost of the fuel. Usually it is the end user who pays. That would be the consumer. Consumer goods cost more.

Everything has to be made as efficient as possible. The highways have to be such that large quantities of goods move with very little interruption. A serious investment needs to be put into the rail lines. That probably is the best way to move large quantities and large tonnage of product to the coast. There is the infrastructure on the west coast for handling containers. I have even been told by people in the container industry that there will not be bulk grain shipments in the future. Even grain will have to be put into a container so that the product is traceable. People who purchase and consume it will be able to ask where the product was grown, who grew it and what methods were used.

A lot of change is happening. As we know, the possibilities are endless in the west, in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia, for our natural resources and our energy sector. As for the ability to produce, we are becoming a bigger player in this country.

Although this initiative is a small step, it is something that our party will be supporting when it comes to a vote.

[Pacific Gateway Act, October 31st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, my first question for the minister concerns the composition of the board. Would the minister comment on the fairness of appointing two members from B.C. and only one member from each of the prairie provinces?

My second question concerns the expectation of a possible increase in container traffic of manufactured value added goods and grain coming off the Prairies. People are saying that the bulk shipping of grain might be a thing of the past because the customer will want to have trace back to where the product came from, right to the actual farmer's field. In order to do that a container would have to be used and properly handled.

Some of the numbers that we have been given on the potential increase in container traffic is huge. I do not see the point of setting up an advisory council with a mandate over a number of years when it looks as though it may be six years before it reaches a conclusion. Would the minister comment on what the time line is on some action here?

We need capacity and that capacity has to begin immediately. It is now past due. If we take another length of time to rehash the things, which we already know and which the minister already knows from other sectors that have advised him, why do we need to go through this process to add another length of time when we should actually be putting some money in the ground?

[Criminal Code, October 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, as my colleague indicated earlier, she comes from a city where crime is a serious issue and the safety of citizens is also of major concern.

The main purpose of a government is the safety and security of its citizens. If a government fails in that, then I think it has failed in every other aspect of government.

I will try to relate the questions of the hon. member to some of the comments Chuck Cadman made. In wrapping up the debate on his earlier bill, he indicated that he brought forward the issue of street racing for some of the victims. He named them in his speech, and I will not do that, but he indicated “and others [who] lost their lives to the deliberate actions of selfish, irresponsible and self-centred individuals in hot cars”.

I think that speaks volumes for the kind of guy Chuck was. He was very pointed about the people he wanted the legislation to target, but he also thought of the other side and worried about the people who had become victims. As we know, the issue of victims' rights is what brought him to the House, and we continue that. Many of his initiatives dealt with victims' rights.

This is about the issue of the rights of the criminal versus the rights of the victim. The best way to have rights for victims is for them not to become victims. The issue is this: if we are going to worry about the rights of victims, then let us not make them victims. Let us have laws in place that stop them from becoming victims. Let us have amendments to the Criminal Code such as those Chuck proposed and which this bill partially addresses. Then we will not have as many victims to deal with.

We can argue about the justice system and the sentencing that exists, but we feel that minimum sentences, with progressively stiffer sentencing, must be put into the Criminal Code in many places.

In closing, I will mention one instance when Chuck and I were together. In Banff we were at a caucus retreat right after we were elected for the first time in 1997. Somebody gave Chuck a message, calling him Mr. Cadman. When Chuck replied, he was referred to as “sir”. He had a pretty good sense of humour and he said, “Boy, that's sure not what they were calling me the last time I was in Banff”. In his earlier life he had played in a band and was hitchhiking across Canada in the 1960s. I think the authorities in Banff took exception to Mr. Cadman at that time, so it just goes to show us. At one time the authorities invited him to leave town and the next time he came back as a member of Parliament.

This is quite an incredible country when we think of the Chuck Cadman story.

[Criminal Code, October 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, before I get started on my comments on Bill C-65, I would like to respond to the previous speaker who said he was open to any suggestions about how we could improve policing and the courts.

He has been part of a government that has been in control of this country for the last 12 years. His government has wasted billions of dollars on a gun registry. Maybe those billions should have gone to policing. That could have stopped street racing.

The government could have done all kinds of things. All kinds of suggestions have been brought forward in the House, so as for him standing up and asking for ideas on how to do this, let me say that we have given him a lot of ideas. Taking the $2 billion that was thrown away on a gun registry and putting it toward front line police would have been a great start and it would have helped Mr. Cadman in his pursuit of more justice in this country.

Mr. Speaker, in addressing the issue of Bill C-65, I will be splitting my time with the member for Vegreville--Wainwright.

Mr. Speaker, we were talking a little about Chuck Cadman. You and I were colleagues of his. There is a reason why Chuck was successful. We all have talked about it to some degree here today. On all the issues he brought forward to the House in a personal way in his private member's bills and through his support on the justice committee and others, the fact was that when he took on dealing with an issue he was right.

His perspective, his ideas and his amendments to the Criminal Code were exactly what is needed to create a safer society for the citizens of Canada. That was his approach. He wanted to make Canadians feel safer and actually be safer in their homes and in their lives. Many of the issues that he brought forward, and the issue that brought him to the House of Commons in the first place, which he campaigned on for many years, did just that. He wanted to make changes to the Criminal Code that would bring in stronger laws and provide more deterrents just to make Canadians safer in their homes and safer on the streets.

When Chuck brought an issue forward, there were a number of things that he went through. He was very resourceful. He was very pointed. His issues were well researched. He did not bring anything forward that was not of substance and that he had not looked into from all angles. He researched the Criminal Code and consulted widely with Canadians and experts in these areas. So when he brought an issue forward, it was always one that people would take note of. We only wish the government had taken note more often of some of the things he brought forward.

He did this in such a way that there was little to argue with. He would counter all of the arguments. He would do the research. He would make sure that when he made a suggestion about an amendment to the code it would stand alone and stand the test of scrutiny. With these things in mind, Chuck would formulate ideas and changes, as he did with the bill on street racing.

He did not stop there. He had a way of managing the situation when it came to the House. We have all brought private members' bills forward, but when he brought his bills forward he would work with members of all parties. He was not afraid to consult with the party critics or committee members from all parties to see how they felt, to see if he could garner their support.

In many cases, I believe, he did alter what he was working on to some degree to make sure it gained the support of the other parties in the House. He was willing to do that. He did it in his style, which was not at all one of confrontation. His style was one of working together to come up with the best possible scenario for Canadians as a whole. That was his main mandate.

The fact is that the main function of a government is to ensure the safety and security of its citizens. I think that was very high on Chuck's list of important issues. He worked hard to maintain that type of focus. He felt that if we were actually going to protect Canadians, then we had better do it in a meaningful manner.

I do not appreciate the fact that people stand in the House and say that the law is the law, but then we have the justice system we do, especially when that is said by a member of the government that appoints the senior judges in this country, a government that is responsible for seeing that resources are in place to protect Canadians. As for them saying that, it is all fine and dandy, but the justice system is failing. We know that it is.

That is why we need changes such as those that Chuck Cadman brought forward, changes to strengthen laws and to have strong minimum sentencing to deter people from committing crimes.

Let me talk about what he said when he introduced his bill. I have retrieved the comments that he made back in October of 2003 on Bill C-338, the predecessor of Bill C-230. He went into all of the issues that had brought him to bringing forward the bill. There was the fact that on the streets of the big cities there had been slaughter from street racing, that innocent people had been mowed down and killed, and there was the fact that there seemed to be enough disposable income among car enthusiasts so that they could soup up these cars to do extraordinary things.

I am an old hot rodder myself; I still have an old muscle car that I tour around in and take to shows. That horsepower has to be treated with respect because it is dangerous, but these modern vehicles are something else. The technology that can be put into a very small car to make it go fast is unbelievable, and people will do it. In most instances, the people behind the wheel do not have the experience or the driving capability to handle that kind of horsepower.

The government tries to address these issues in Bill C-65, but I believe it fails because of its sentencing aspects. The basic premise of the bill, of course, is to make sure that street racing is added to the list of aggravated instances and crimes. That is the right thing to do, but in the end, as we have seen time and time again with this Liberal government, it completely fails to deliver the goods when it comes to the sentencing.

For the government to tie Chuck's name to this I think is right because this is an issue that he brought forward, but the government fails him miserably when it comes to putting forth the very essence of what he was trying to do. The fact is that the legislation the government has brought forward is going to fail and does not go as far as Chuck would have wished it to go. The bottom line in what he was trying to do was protect Canadians. He tried to send a message to the government through his private member's bill that this is exactly what the government needed to do.

We can argue all around the issue and say that the bill is on the right track, and maybe it is a small step in the right direction, but if we are going to make it work, if we are going to really have some teeth in it, then the issues and the progressive sentencing and penalties that Chuck had researched and come up with are, I believe, exactly what need to be put in the bill.

The précis the minister put out even indicates that Mr. Cadman's bill included an additional clause with progressively longer periods of mandatory driving prohibitions for repeat offenders lasting from one year to life. He indicates in his own documentation that this was not something that the government was willing to do.

Here is the quandary we always find ourselves in. A small step is good, and if it is the right direction then it is something we basically should support, but when the government totally fails in regard to the original initiative that was brought forward, then that is something we have a problem with and we cannot support.

One thing really made me pay attention here. One of the sentences that Chuck would have had imposed for a first offence was this: “for a first offence, during a period of not more than three years plus any period to which the offender is sentenced to imprisonment, and not less than one year”.

He was saying that if the person who committed the crime were put in prison, then the driving prohibition would happen after the person came out. I think the government carried that forward, but Chuck would imposed a pretty serious sentence to start with. If people are going to contemplate street racing and they know that the result of their actions is going to put them in jail and take their drivers' licences away for one to three years on the first offence, and longer if they get a second offence or hurt somebody for life, I would say that these are meaningful sentences which would be a deterrent.

As I pointed out, when Chuck Cadman brought a bill to the House of Commons, it was well researched and well thought out. He looked at the whole scope of what effect it would have on society, not only on the perpetrator but on society in general. I believe he was on the right track with what he brought forward. I believe the government has let him down somewhat in the version it has brought forward.