Ryan Cleary

[Safe Streets and Communities Act, November 29th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I stand in the House today in opposition to Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill.

As I stated in a September speech in this House, I do not stand in opposition to every part of the bill. Indeed, some parts of Bill C-10 are worthwhile.

As a father, I have no objection to protecting children against pedophiles and sexual predators, of course not, even though the Conservative government would have people believe otherwise. That is the rub with Bill C-10 which throws so many pieces of legislation, nine bills, aboard the one bus, aboard the one omnibus bill.

I may agree with coming down hard on pedophiles, but I do not agree with filling prisons with people who probably should not be there, like the student who gets caught with six marijuana plants. What will throwing that student in jail do for him or her, or for society in general besides costing us a fortune in new human cages? My answer is nothing. It will do absolutely nothing.

Steve Sullivan, an advocate for victims of crime for almost two decades, wrote a piece earlier this month for the National Post. A particular quote stuck with me. He wrote:

Few of us lose sleep over child-sex offenders spending more time in prison. But some of the reforms will toughen the sentences for low-risk offenders, with low rates of recidivism. They won’t make children safer, but will cost five times more than what is being invested in Child Advocacy Centres that support abused children.

Bill C-10 is also known as the safe streets and communities act, but mandatory minimum sentences are not so much tough on crime as tough on Canadians suffering from mental illness, addictions and poverty. In fact, poverty will be punished even more than it is now. The bill targets youth for harsher punishments and will put more aboriginal people in prison.

One of the pillars of the omnibus crime bill is mandatory minimum sentences. The Conservative omnibus bill will dramatically expand mandatory minimum sentences, limiting judicial discretion to levels unseen before.

Experts say taking away discretion from judges clogs up the judicial system. That is not all that it will clog up. The provinces are particularly rebelling against this new crime bill. They charge it will clog up the prison system. The provinces say it will put increasing pressure on a prison system that is practically busting at the seams.

Experts say the omnibus crime bill will increase the country's prison population by untold thousands. As for the cost of housing that many more inmates, estimates range up to $5 billion a year. That is more than double the current expenditures for the corrections system alone. And that is a conservative estimate, not a Conservative government estimate. The Conservative government has not put a price on the omnibus crime bill, which makes no sense.

Yesterday, I stood in this House and debated the bill to kill the Canadian Wheat Board, which ended up passing even though the Conservative government failed to carry out a cost benefit analysis. How is that good governance, good fiscal governance, in these scary unpredictable times? I do not get it. Canadians do not get it.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has warned the Conservative government that provinces across the country will not pick up the tab for any new costs associated with the omnibus crime bill. Quebec has essentially said the same thing.

In my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador, the main prison is Her Majesty's Penitentiary in my riding of St. John's South—Mount Pearl. Her Majesty's Penitentiary dates back to Victorian times. The original stone building first opened in 1859. The pen is an aging fortress that has been called an appalling throwback to 19th century justice, which sounds like Bill C-10.

Felix Collins, the Progressive Conservative justice minister for Newfoundland and Labrador, has had this to say about the omnibus crime bill:

Most groups, most experts and most witnesses who have given presentations on this bill would advocate that the federal government is proceeding in the wrong direction, and that this procedure has been tried in other areas before and has proven to be a failure...Incarcerating more people is not the answer.

That quote pretty well sums it up. When Felix Collins, Newfoundland and Labrador's justice minister, speaks about the procedure being tried in other jurisdictions and failing in other jurisdictions, he is probably talking about Texas. Conservative Texas has warned us not to follow a failed fill-in-the-prison approach to justice.

The Canadian Bar Association, representing 37,000 Canadian legal professionals, has said the bill would, ”move Canada along a road that has failed in other countries, at a great expense”.

The Vancouver Sun ran a story yesterday with the headline, “Conservative crime bill is a costly mistake for Canada”. The story reads:

When Canada has some of the safest streets and communities in the world and a declining crime rate, why is [the] Prime Minister...pushing his omnibus crime bill through in such a machiavellian way? Many jurisdictions, including Texas and California, have warned this crime agenda not only doesn't work, but it doesn't make economic sense. Costing roughly $100,000 per year to incarcerate a person, mandatory sentences will raise taxes, increase debt, or force us to cut spending on essential programs like health and education. Bill C-10 arrogantly ignores proven facts from decades of research and experience.

Again, that about sums it up.

This is a quote I received from a constituent:

Who is helped by having a student, a future doctor or engineer, thrown in jail for a year and a half because they decided to make some hash for their own personal use? In what universe does that make sense? Stop wasting money on cages and start spending it on hospital beds and textbooks.

The line that sticks is, “Stop wasting money on cages and start spending it on hospital beds and textbooks”.

If the omnibus crime bill goes through, provinces like Newfoundland and Labrador will have less money to spend on health and education, let alone rehabilitation and preventative programs.

I will quote from an editorial in the St. John's edition of The Telegram, the daily newspaper where I come from. It states:

The provinces have been raising two kinds of concerns: one is that tough-on-crime laws don’t actually achieve their stated ends, because rehabilitation actually decreases crime rates in a way that longer incarceration does not. The second concern is far more pragmatic: while the federal government is making laws that extend prison terms, it doesn’t seem to be in any rush to help with the additional anticipated provincial costs connected to longer jail sentences and increased court time (increased court time, because it will be less attractive for criminals to plead guilty at early stages in a prosecution).

Who will say they are guilty if they know that “mandatory minimum” means they will definitely be going to prison?

Bill C-10 will not make Canada a better place to live. It will change Canada. It will change how we see ourselves as Newfoundlanders and Labradorians and Canadians and how we are seen on the world stage.

[Aviation Safety, November 29th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, 17 people died on March 12, 2009, when Cougar flight 491 went down after loss of oil pressure. Less than a year before, the same thing happened to an Australian helicopter, but Transport Canada failed to take action.

After the Newfoundland tragedy, the Transportation Safety Board recommended that all Cougars must be able to run dry for 30 minutes, but the Sikorsky still fails the test.

Why are we giving the Cougars a free pass at the risk of the lives of offshore workers?

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act, November 28th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very good question. From day one, since this legislation was introduced in the House of Commons, New Democrats have asked for a cost benefit analysis. Has a cost benefit analysis been carried out? The answer is no, it has not been carried out.

In the absence of a cost benefit analysis, in the absence of hard and fast numbers as to whether the Wheat Board fulfills its mandate and western farmers would be better off marketing and selling their wheat through a Canadian Wheat Board, this is pure speculation.

The fact is that in these uncertain financial times, with what is happening in the European Union and our partner to the south, the United States, the Conservatives are taking an incredible chance with the western economy by trying this experiment. In the absence of hard and fast numbers, and a solid cost benefit analysis, that is all this is: an experiment.

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act, November 28th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member across the way for the question and congratulate his father on that 1958 award.

What I know is this. My home province of Newfoundland and Labrador does not have a marketing arm. It has individual companies that try to market, brand and sell fish, and to date it has not worked. Its industry is but a shadow of its former self.

There was a complete review of the Newfoundland and Labrador fishery just carried out, a memorandum of understanding, and one of the principal findings of that MOU was that there should be a marketing arm established to brand and market Newfoundland and Labrador fish because it has not worked piecemeal.

It has not worked with individual processing companies selling and marketing their own products. It has not worked, so Newfoundland and Labrador is moving toward a marketing arm for its fish. If it works, if Newfoundland and Labrador fishermen are stronger as one, I would say to the hon. member across the way that the same would hold true for prairie farmers.

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act, November 28th, 2011]

My apologies.

[The Prime Minister's] crime legislation that triggered last spring’s election could pass through the Commons this week as it makes it way to becoming the law of the land - and Canadians still don’t know how much it costs.

We do not know how much it costs. How does that make sense? We do not know the cost to the Canadian economy of eliminating the Canadian Wheat Board. That is not good enough.

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act, November 28th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, we live in uncertain financial times. The economies of individual countries of the European Union, countries like Greece, Italy, and Spain are over their heads in debt, and it is getting worse. No one knows where or when the global financial hardship will end. The economy of our largest trading partner, the United States, is still mired in debt. The U.S. has yet to get back on its feet following the 2007 recession. Worries that Europe's crisis could worsen and spread are spooking investors and consumers.

Here in Canada our economy has fared better than most, but there is an undercurrent of unease, an undercurrent of nervousness, an undercurrent of fear. How will our economy weather the impending storm? That is the outstanding question. There is no answer, not yet.

The Conservative Minister of Finance has acknowledged that Canada's economy faces obvious risks from financial troubles in the United States and in Europe. When David Cameron, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, spoke to this House in September, he said that the problems in the eurozone are now so big that they have begun to threaten the stability of the world economy.

Here we are today in these uncertain financial times and the Conservative government's answer to these uncertain financial times is to gut the federal public service, throw more people in jail, download expenses to the provincial governments, and kill the Canadian Wheat Board.

Now, I am not a prairie boy. I have never walked in fields of golden wheat. I do not know what it is like to live on flat land, land flat as far as the eye can see. I am a bay man. That is what we call it back home. I am a bay man from around the bay. I have lived all my life on rocky land that rolls to the sea.

There is a common thread between the Prairies and the extreme east of this country, Newfoundland and Labrador. That common thread is common sense. My colleague, the NDP MP for Winnipeg Centre has pointed out in this House on numerous occasions, and this is a point that has resonated with me and should resonate with all Canadians, that there has never been one shred of evidence that farmers will be better off without the Canadian Wheat Board.

How can the Conservative government, which bills itself as being such a great steward of the Canadian economy in these tough economic times that will only get tougher, be so reckless as to turn the prairie farm economy on its head without even doing a cost benefit analysis? How?

Allen Oberg, a farmer and chair of the Canadian Wheat Board's board of directors, said:

This government has no plan. It has done no analysis. It has not even consulted farmers. Its approach is based solely on a blind commitment to a sound-bite phrase, called “marketing freedom”. Yet, here we are, barrelling ahead on a timeline that will rip apart a 75-year-old marketing system in a matter of months, and hamper any potential successor organization. This government's reckless approach will throw Canada's grain industry into disarray. It will jeopardize the $5-billion export sector. It will shift money away from the pockets of Canadian farmers into the hands of American corporations.

How can the Conservatives justify not carrying out a cost benefit analysis? How can the Conservatives base their argument on the strength of a free market when prairie farmers freely voted to market wheat through the Canadian Wheat Board?

On September 12, a majority of farmers voted in a plebiscite to keep the Wheat Board. A total of just over 38,000 farmers submitted mail-in ballots during the plebiscite, for a participation rate of 56%. That 56% is on par with the turnout for the last three federal elections.

Some 62% of respondents voted in favour of retaining the single desk for wheat. How can the Conservatives ignore those results? Easily enough when they have a majority government. That majority government power is a breeding ground for arrogance, a growing arrogance that has the Conservatives thinking they know better than Canadian farmers. That is not the case. Not so; not a chance.

What fishing and farming have most in common at this particular moment in our history is that they are both under direct attack by the Conservative government. In the Prairies, the Conservatives are attacking the livelihood of farmers with their attempt to kill off the Canadian Wheat Board. On the west and east coasts, the fisheries are their target with ongoing moves to gut what is left of the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

What the Conservative government should realize, and must realize, is that its buddies on Bay Street cannot feed Canadian families. That is a simple fact of life.

I do not get it. I do not understand why the Conservatives have it in for Canada's primary producers: fishermen and farmers. Why? Who will benefit? Who will be threatened?

At the same time that the federal Conservatives are attempting to kill off the Canadian Wheat Board, back home in my home province, the Progressive Conservative provincial government is moving toward the creation of a marketing board for fish.

The federal Conservatives are killing off the Wheat Board, which markets and brands Canadian wheat and barley around the world, at the same time that the provincial PCs in Newfoundland and Labrador are attempting to create a similar type fish board to market and brand our seafood around the world. That makes no sense. If anything, it shows that there should more study, more investigation, more review so that smart decisions can be made.

The federal Conservatives are killing the Wheat Board while the provincial PCs in Newfoundland and Labrador are birthing a fish board. Two governments, two different directions.

What do we know about the Canadian Wheat Board? We know the board sells grain to more than 70 countries around the world. The board returns all profits to farmers. That is between $4 billion and $7 billion a year. We know that the Wheat Board does not set grain prices. Prices are established by global supply and demand factors. However, the Canadian Wheat Board's size and market power are used to help maximize grain prices.

Therefore, it is logical to assume that in the absence of the Canadian Wheat Board prices will not be maximized, as was the case with the Australian wheat board whose monopoly was abolished in 2006. In three short years, Australia's 40,000 wheat farmers went from running their own grain marketing system, selling virtually all of Australia's wheat, 12% of world wheat production, worth about $5 billion, to being mere customers of Cargill, one of the world's largest agribusiness corporations, which is privately owned by a company in the United States.

Since 2006 the Australian wheat board's share of wheat sales has dropped from 100% to 23% nationally, with 25 companies in the market all looking to make money on the spread between purchase and sale price. Make no mistake, people are still making money off Australian wheat, but it is not so much the Australian farmer who is making the money as the new middleman, the big corporations.

I want to end my speech with this thought which struck me today after I read the Globe and Mail. I read this:

Stephen Harper's crime legislation that triggered--

[Fisheries and Oceans, November 21st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans has finally admitted what the rest of us already know, that the fishery is broken.

The five years of Conservative mismanagement after a decade of Liberal negligence cannot be reversed. By tearing up the Fisheries Act, firing scientists, laying off fisheries staff and turning out the lights will not put fish back in the sea or food on fishermen's tables.

The fishery is broken. Will the Conservative government finally support our fishing communities and put forward a concrete plan to fix it?

[Service Canada, November 18th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, those guys just do not get the desperation of the situation.

I wonder if the Prime Minister or the Minister of Finance would be prepared to visit an EI call centre to take a few telephone calls themselves. They could hear first-hand the damage their government is doing.

Across the country, fewer and fewer Canadians are eligible for EI. Almost 60% of unemployed workers in Canada do not qualify. Delays are way beyond anything acceptable.

When will the government stop steamrolling ahead with more cuts to Service Canada?

[Service Canada, November 18th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, Service Canada budget cuts mean fewer people are processing employment insurance claims and handling calls. Claimants are often forced to wait well beyond the normal processing time of about 28 days. With no income for six weeks to two months, workers and families are having a hard time putting food on the table and paying bills.

My question comes directly from a Service Canada employee in St. John's, Newfoundland. When is the government going to stop talking about automation and actually fix the problems at Service Canada?

[Fisheries and Oceans, October 27th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans made a recommendation for the government to create a task force to look into the management of the snow crab fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. We know that the Conservatives are not the best at taking advice. If they were, they would be examining the management of the fishery as a whole. That is fair enough. Perhaps we could look at one fishery problem at a time.

Will the Conservatives listen to the committee and create a task force to look into the management of the snow crab fishery?