Rick Casson

[Income Tax Act, March 31st, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I just want to make a few comments, and I will not take too much time. The purpose of the bill to increase activity among young people or anybody for that matter is well-intended. It is important that we do that.

However, if we are looking at using the tax system to promote amateur sports, why should we not look broad based tax relief for families? The Conservative Party is working on that. If we give tax relief across the board in substantive amounts to all families, then they can make the choice. The member from the government side who just spoke said that some people get involved in music or theatre and some get involved in sports. There are all kinds of activities that people can get into to round out their lives.

To target in on sports and to offer tax relief or tax credits for the amounts spent for enrolling our children is the wrong way to go to achieve what the member wants to achieve. We should do it through tax relief for all families.

In my personal instance, my children both played sports, and that seems like a long time ago. Also my daughter took music lessons. Therefore, where do we have the saw-off? A lot of the sports in which my children were involved were through high school and through the education system. Thank goodness, because when my son got out of hockey, it was getting to be pretty expensive. This is what I think the hon. member is trying to get at. We need to give some help for people to be involved. However, the travelling, the equipment and some of the other things that went along with it were far more expensive than signing up for the year.

If we are to be serious about promoting health and wellness, there are other ways to do it. I remember years ago when the participaction program was in place. That was something to which we all paid attention. There were commercials which promoted walking so far every day, or getting involved in other ways, or improving lifestyles through better eating habits or whatever. It was information that went out to Canadians in a regular fashion, and I think a lot of people paid attention to that.

If we are serious about offering families an opportunity to improve their children's activity in sports, let us do it on a broad based tax relief basis. Let us give the money back to the families. We should not take it from them in the first place through the tax system. Then they can make the choices that they want to put their children into whatever activity, whether it is amateur sport, theatre or music. There are so many things to do for our children that if families had a few more bucks to enrol them in some of these other issues, then I think everybody would be better off.

[The Budget, March 30th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Portage--Lisgar for his comments today. He has been making an issue of the EI surplus for a long time, especially since his time as our party critic in that area.

Before he was our critic in this area, he was also involved in aboriginal affairs for our party. He did mention the fact that there were things missing from this budget. He would have liked to see the budget address some of the discrepancies or some of the shortcomings in that department. I would like him to expand a little more on the aspect of the budget dealing with aboriginal affairs.

[The Budget, March 30th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague understands the industry file very well in speaking about corporate welfare and other issues that we certainly see as problems. His last comment about the amount of money that has been forked out compared to the little bit that has been returned, clearly is corporate welfare, and there is nothing else to call it.

I would like to focus in on a comment he made earlier about research and universities and the private sector being involved in research in our educational institutions. The research going on in my riding at the University of Lethbridge is second to none in the world with people working on spinal cord injuries and brain disorders. They have done some remarkable things and that needs to continue.

I would like the member to explain a little further how he feels about the combination of university research and private sector funds. What kind of mix needs to be there or does there need to be any at all?

[The Budget, March 25th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, certainly the benefits of a post-secondary education are there and the numbers are proven.

However, a lot of the people we see coming to our offices are under-employed. They have gone to university and they cannot find a job in their field. They have to take a job at a lesser rate of pay. Once they start working, the repayment schedule kicks in.

I want to bring up some of the other programs that the government has brought forth in years past. In the 1998 budget there was help for 12,000 graduates every year on a manageable debt load which was supposed to happen. Of that, in the first year, I think 44 graduates were eligible for that kind of help. That grew to 614. In 2001 it was 1,300. These programs, which are probably well intended, are not worked through and do not work. Here is a program that is supposed to help 12,000 grads, and by the year 2001 it is only up to 1,300 a year. So that program did not work very well.

We spend $100 million a year on annual grants for needy students. That was not spent. In the first year it was $73 million. In the second year it was $81 million. Money is left on the table. Why is that? I believe it is because information does not get out to students. For some reason the bureaucracy that exists around putting out these programs eats up a whole lot of those dollars.

It is fine to say that we will have a program in place to help people get into university, and certainly there should be, but it has to be delivered in a way that helps. If the money is left on the table here in Ottawa and it is not helping students, then it is of no use to anyone. If the government brings in a program, it should ensure that it can be delivered in a meaningful way to the people who need it.

[The Budget, March 25th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it is always hard to follow the member for Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam because he does such a great job.

We have had a couple of good members of Parliament come out of that riding. There was one in between the two good ones, but we are glad to have this one here. Hopefully he will say hi to Sharon Hayes who was a colleague of ours a few years ago. I am sure she is back in the riding taking care of business.

The opportunity to rise today to speak to the budget is appreciated, but it is also troubling because the budget put forward by the Liberals asks us to trust them because they are going to clean up the mess that they have created.

I guess the question will be, when Canadians go to the polls, can we trust them or not, and can the last 10 years of abuse of our tax dollars be easily forgotten? I do not believe it can.

All we have to do is look at the track record of the Liberals. They have done a terrible job of giving Canadians value for their money. Canadians are sending more money to Ottawa but hospital waiting lists are getting longer. Students are going deeper in debt and our soldiers are being spread more thinly all the time.

The issue of student debt is one that I would like to talk about because one of the programs that was brought forward in the budget was the ability for students to incur more debt. As members of Parliament, we deal with students who are up to their eyeballs in debt, have bill collectors at their doors, and are desperate for help.

It would be better to do something at the other end and help keep the debt down before it is incurred, instead of creating a law or regulation that allows students to have more debt because they will just be in more trouble when they get out into the workforce.

However, it does not seem that there is any problem with money going to Liberal-friendly ad firms, sinkholes like the gun registry, corporate welfare, Challenger jets, grants to special interest groups, and the Governor General. These tax dollars would be far more productive if they were left in the pockets of hardworking Canadians such as homemakers, farmers, fishermen and lumberjacks.

Let us look at the issue that the lumber industry has been facing for many years now because of inaction on behalf of the government. The long drawn out process that has been going on at the World Trade Organization and NAFTA is unacceptable.

The government knew that the softwood lumber agreement was coming to an end and it should have done something before it actually failed. It has been going on two years now and some of these communities have not seen one dime of the money that was promised.

A promise made means nothing unless the goods are delivered. We have seen agricultural programs that have been put into place with one-third of what was promised. That goes into some of the issues with education. Some of the grants and programs that have been put into place have not come anywhere close to delivering the amounts to students.

The government talked about control and strengthening the controls on the purse strings. I think it is a little late, after 10 years of Liberal government, for it to say it is going to clean up its act. As of December 12, with the appointment of the new Prime Minister, it says everything is changed all of a sudden and it is going to clean up its act. I am afraid that Canadians are not going buy that and the government will have to pay the price, and it is about time.

It keeps talking about putting comptrollership back into how business is done by government. It was the government that cancelled that position in 1994. Now it is talking about bringing it back 10 years later after it squandered billions of taxpayers' dollars.

It talked about program review to root out waste and mismanagement. This is just about right out of our campaign literature. We have been saying for years that every program put forward needs to be reviewed on a regular basis to ensure that it is still delivering the goods to Canadians that it was intended to do. If it is not, it should be stopped or realigned so that it can do that.

It talked about building a society or country for the 21st century; however, it is still using 19th century practices. Taxpayers' dollars are still being wasted. One has to work until June or July, as mentioned by the previous member, to pay the tax bill, and then one sees the money being wasted.

Above all, we see a Prime Minister who has his company flying a foreign flag to get around paying Canadian taxes. One thing that Canadians are proud of is the fact that they do pay their taxes and that they want them to go to something reasonable. All Canadians want to help out those who are less fortunate and to support the programs that do that. However, when they see their taxes being wasted, it does not go over very well.

One of the things we saw when the Prime Minister was on his leadership tour was his catering to the cities. He went to the cities and promised them things. Then immediately after he became Prime Minister, he reneged on them.

The government collected $7 billion last year in gas taxes. The GST rebate to municipalities is going to be $580 million. It will be $7 billion over 10 years. That was the figure used by the finance minister. That is how much the government collects in one year in gas taxes. It promised a portion of those gas taxes to the cities.

We have said that we will work with the provinces to set the system up whereby some relief would be given in the gas tax. That money would go not just to cities, but to municipalities for infrastructure. Every town, village, and municipal district in this country is hurting and needs those kinds of funds. The roads are falling apart and the people need help.

Being the critic for veterans affairs, I would like to get into some of the issues that are facing our veterans. This morning I had an opportunity to meet with a couple of groups of veterans on a couple of different issues.

One lady who came to see me was Mrs. Helen Rapp, the vice-chair of the military widows organization in Canada. She is a well informed lady who got directly to the point. She had a couple of issues that the government had failed to address. One of them was the issue of people who marry veterans over the age of 60. They do not qualify to receive the veterans' benefits upon their passing. I understand this is called the gold digger clause in the United States.

It was brought forward in legislation from 1902 and is still in place. These people have gone to the human rights commission and the Solicitor General. They have tried everything to get this reversed because it is wrong. These people marry, they get together because they love each other, and they want to support each other in their waning years. For the government to say that they do not qualify for their spouses' pension benefits if they marry veterans after the age of 60 is ridiculous. That needs to be addressed and it certainly was not addressed in the budget.

The other issue is that the survivors' benefit is now 50% and in most cases in other pension plans it is 60%. Veterans are asking that to happen and I did not see any recognition of that in the budget.

There was one item in the budget for the Juno Beach monument and that is important. We were briefed a week ago and department officials indicated how many monuments in how many countries around the world that Canada is responsible for. It is important that these monuments be maintained and properly funded. They have an appearance that Canadians and all people of the world can look at and be proud of the contribution that our fighting men and women have given to democracy and peace in the world.

I noted that some young people would go to the Vimy Ridge Memorial. They go over at a rate of pay that hardly gives them enough money to live on while they are there and that is something that needs to be addressed. Hopefully, the Minister of Veterans Affairs will pay attention to some of these issues and ensure that the monuments erected around the world in memory of our fighting men and women are properly maintained and properly funded.

There was a report that was tabled last week by the advisory committee on veterans affairs. In 2003 veterans affairs launched a service and program modernization task force. This needs to be done in the worst way.

There was another group of people who came to see me. The conditions of traditional veterans of World War I, World War II and Korean veterans are changing. They are getting older and their needs change as well, so they have to be looked at. However, we are bringing 5,000 new veterans back into society every year out of the armed forces. This is something that has to be done within veterans affairs. The whole way veterans are serviced needs to be changed and addressed.

These new problems that are arising, either with the traditional vets who are aging or the new ones coming in, must be addressed. Funding must be put in place so that it can be done.

[Agriculture, March 22nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, we have been into this crisis for 300 days and this morning the Prime Minister said that we have to recognize the urgency of the moment.

We have been fighting since May 20, 2003, to make the government wake up and deliver something to these producers. It took 300 days for the government to finally realize the urgency of the moment.

When will producers get one thin dime from the Liberal government?

[Agriculture, March 22nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, today the Prime Minister used the pain and despair our farm families are going through as a backdrop for what turned out to be nothing more than a Liberal campaign stop.

The Prime Minister was surrounded by more Liberal candidates than producers when he made that announcement.

The government has known for months that it has had money in reserve. Why did it put farm families through hell before the money was delivered?

[Justice, March 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the tired Liberal government is recycling a Jean Chrétien piece of legislation and touting it as legislation to protect children.

Bill C-12 does no such thing. Even Canada's most notorious pedophile thinks it is great. Why will the government not put teeth into the legislation so it will truly protect our children? Why will it not remove the loophole allowing for defence based on public good? There must be no defence for child molesters and pornographers.

Why will it not raise the age of consent from 14 to 16 years of age and catch up to the rest of the western world? Why will it not increase mandatory minimum sentences for those convicted of preying on our children? Harsher maximum sentences that are rarely levied are not a deterrent.

Child molesters, pedophiles and the creeps who prey on our children support the legislation. It is obvious to me that it will take a Conservative government to put legislation in place that will send a clear message--do not mess with our kids.

[Criminal Code, March 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague touched somewhat on a fact that is very disturbing to me, that there are pedophiles and child molesters who say there are parts of this legislation that they support. A responsible government should take note of that, find the section in the legislation that allows those creeps to find some benefit in the legislation, and make sure it is changed before it is passed into law.

Time after time we have made suggestions to the government that would allow it to improve the legislation to make it stronger and to really send the message out that if offenders mess with our kids, they will pay a strong price. The present legislation does not do that.

I would like my colleague to comment on the fact that there are parts of this legislation that the people who prey on our children actually support. What does he feel needs to be done to make the legislation stronger than it is?

[Criminal Code, March 9th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it is good to speak to this subject today. We have done it numerous times in the past. I certainly want to add our comments and those of my constituents to the debate.

I have to disagree with some of the comments we have just heard from across the floor. I do not think this is a great day for the protection of children in Canada. Until we have legislation in place that sends a clear message that anybody who fools around with our children will face the full consequence of the law, we have failed to do our jobs here. I do not think the bill does that and I will point out a number of reasons why I think that.

The member across the way referred to a motion that was brought to the House by my colleague from Wild Rose. I want to mention him in my comments today because, as we all know, he has made the issue of preying on our children one of his top priorities as he goes through his political and personal life. I support his endeavours. The motion that he brought forward in the House back on October 28 read:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should protect our children from further sexual exploitation by immediately eliminating from child pornography laws all defences for possession of child pornography which allow for the exploitation of children.

The motion was supported at that time, but there are still defences in this law for the possession of child pornography. That is one of the flaws we find in it.

The Conservative Party of Canada has problems with four main areas of the bill. The first one is it does not eliminate all defences for the criminal possession of child pornography. The second one is it does not raise the age of consent for adult-child sexual contact from 14 up to 16, and even some would suggest, 18. It is the lowest in the western world and that is not something I believe Canadians are proud of. It fails to institute mandatory sentences for child sexual assault, as has been done in the U.K.

There is a lot of debate and discussion here on raising the maximum sentences. However, raising maximum sentences that are never given is not a deterrent to the people who prey on our children. We should be raising minimum sentences and making sure that anybody who is convicted of exploiting our children is dealt with in a very severe manner.

The other one is the one dealing with evidence. I am working on a private member's bill that would change the way evidence could be presented in these cases. I have been doing some research on that. It is a very complex issue. It is not only in the Criminal Code but it also expands into other areas.

That is something that needs to be looked at. The people who fight child pornography in this country are bogged down by the amount of material they have to catalogue and bring to court. Certainly the accused has a right to know what the prosecution has in its possession and what it will be bringing forward. We have to be reasonable in the kind of cataloguing and evidence that has to be brought in these cases. That is something we really need to look at.

One of the real issues is that one of the most notorious pedophiles in Canada likes this bill. That should send a darn clear message that the government is on the wrong track in bringing the bill forward. He thinks that some of the provisions in the bill on giving evidence would be good for pedophiles. They would be able to bring forward young people to testify and they would enjoy that type of thing when it came to the court.

When somebody who enjoys this type of material sees merit in the bill because it will add to whatever they do to get enjoyment out of this type of material, and when he publicly states on his website that he thinks this is a good bill, then we really need to have a hard look at what we are doing. We need to make sure that we eliminate anything that pedophiles think will be to their advantage when they get to court on some of these issues.

There is controversy regarding the artistic merit defence. Changing it to the public good defence would leave a giant loophole in the law. I believe that some of the pedophiles in this country will see that as an advantageous tool that they will be able to use in their defence.

We have to eliminate any defence for people convicted of possession of child pornography. What possible public good could there be in images of children being abused? I cannot see what the government had in mind when it included a public good clause in the legislation. Images depicting children being abused in any way should not be allowed as art or for any other reason, such as research. Every time somebody looks at one of those images, the child goes through the whole process of abuse one more time.

That is a loophole in Bill C-12 and it needs to be taken out of the legislation. It should be changed before the bill is put into law. There is no reason to go forward with this and then come back years later and change it then. We feel very strongly about that. We need to make sure that aspect of the legislation is changed before it is put into law.

A poll was done a year or so ago and 80% of Canadians supported raising the age of consent for sexual activity. With 80% of Canadians onside, one would think the government would have paid heed to that but it did not.

A person as young as 14 years can be sexually exploited by an adult legally. There is a lot of talk about the issue of whether the sex is consensual, but we are talking about child-adult sex. If the age of consent could be raised to at least 16, that would protect thousands more children from people who choose to prey on them. That is an issue that needs to be dealt with. When that many Canadians are in support of it, any government should pay attention.

People have said that we cannot stop sex between teenagers, but that is not the issue; that is not what we are talking about. We are talking about child-adult sex. That is what we need to focus on. When these conditions, or what I call loopholes, that for some reason this should be allowed, are put into law, it is the same issue as artistic merit or public good being left in the bill. There is no reason to do it.

We are talking about children. We are talking about the most vulnerable people in our society. If we as legislators cannot come up with laws that will protect them to the ultimate degree because they cannot protect themselves, then we have not done our jobs. We need to have the strongest possible legislation in place.

Why would we as a nation be lagging behind the rest of the western world when it comes to these issues? It just does not make any sense. It makes us want to step back and wonder exactly what the minister was thinking when he developed the bill and why the government is pushing it through in its present state. Why can we as Canadians not be leaders instead of followers? Why can we not have the strongest legislation in place to protect children?

Canada has become known as a haven for pedophiles. The availability of the Internet to those types of people, the way they can dispense information rapidly and in such high volume requires us to have systems in place to stop it. Every time a market is created or there is a need for something like this, then another child has been abused. We have to stop the end use of it so it filters back and stops the creation of it.

The member who spoke previously made a lot of comments and put a lot of credence in the fact that maximum sentences were being increased. That does not do the job. Minimum sentences have to be increased so that the message is clear and unavoidable. People who prey on our children or hurt a child in Canada will pay the ultimate price. They will pay it upfront and a deterrent will be put in place to stop them from doing it again. If it is a maximum sentence that is never imposed by the courts, then what is the point of doing it?

There is the issue of support for our police departments. Many of us have met with police forces across the country. Some of the stories they tell us are horrific and they are things that stay in your mind. We cannot possibly understand how someone could do to children some of the things that are done.

We have to give the police the resources they need to protect children in Canada. To say that this is a great day for children, I completely disagree with that for many reasons. The fact that our police forces are so overworked and under-resourced in this area is one of them.

Every time another task force is created, there is a lot of hoopla in the media about it, but there are no more police officers given. It is just another task force that has to be shared by the present forces. We must increase the numbers of policemen on the ground and increase their ability to pursue these people and stop them from trading in this vile information.

There were some policemen on Parliament Hill a year or two ago. I witnessed what they had to say. While they were speaking to us, they hooked up a computer and went online. I am not sure how chat rooms work, but before the meeting was over, they had put up something that indicated there was an underage person being manipulated by an adult and those who wanted to take part could tune in. Before the meeting was over, the police had two or three hits from people from who knows where that were interested. That is how fast and how effective the Internet is for those people who promote that type of thing. It was quite a lesson to many of us as to how easily these things can happen.

The Toronto police force indicated that it had 2,300 names of suspected pedophiles in Canada and only 5% of them had been addressed. This in itself is a damning statistic, that we have actual names of people and we do not have the resources to go out and hold them to task or enough manpower to investigate what is going on and put a stop to it. The cases are many. The issues are huge.

I want to get back to the John Robin Sharpe case. I firmly believe that when people such as Mr. Sharpe come forward and indicate that they support the bill and they feel that there are aspects in it that they would find appealing and would convince society to become more tolerant of pedophiles, then we are really on the wrong track. We must make sure that any bill that is put forward does not fall into the hands of pedophiles, allowing them to ply their trade and prey on our children.

There a couple of other points I would like to make along these lines. There is the aspect of Canadians that have been involved. Thousands of Canadians have petitioned Parliament to take away all the defences for child pornography and to increase the resources that are available to the police to fight this issue. We have to listen to these people. They are going to a lot of effort. They are very involved and very knowledgeable on what is going on. They know the numbers of children that have been preyed upon. They have a huge concern.

When we see that many Canadians engaged in an issue, then the government should pay attention. The government should look at what they are suggesting and try to implement it into law. We have not seen that here. The loopholes that have been left are many and they need to be addressed.

Before I close I would like to move an amendment. I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following therefore:

“Bill C-12, an act to amend the Criminal Code (protection of children and other vulnerable persons) and the Canada Evidence Act, be not now read a third time but referred back to the Standing Committee on Justice, Human Rights, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness for the purpose of reconsidering all of its clauses with the view to eliminate loopholes identified by 'the nation's most notorious child pornographer', Robin Sharpe.