Scott Simms

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, October 7th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague mentioned several issues, a mixed bag of all kinds of things, from the forestry sector to the auto sector to EI. However, I would like to ask him specifically about pensions and how we can help. I know he has many workers in his riding who, similar to mine, are currently living on pensions that are in jeopardy. They were called defined benefit pensions. However, because they are unable to recoup a lot of the costs when they wind up, they are not valued the same as they were before. Could he comment on that?

I also want to talk about equalization. Being from Newfoundland and Labrador, we are in a blessed position now where we do not take equalization because we are considered to be a have province, according to the per capita formula. Right now Quebec receives money from the equalization program, of which it wants more. If he truly believes Quebec will become the independent nation he hopes it will be, what will that do to average citizens of Quebec once the province achieves that independence? Will it chose to raise taxes or cut services?

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, October 7th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, first, would the member address the situation on what I believe was his tacit approval of the bill and the vote to follow. He then described it as a tangled mess, a spaghetti fashion which I think was the terminology he used? I fail to see how he will untangle this mess. What appeals to him the most that would allow him and his party to vote for it?

Second, with regard to the EI solvency issue, the board has been created and $5 billion has been set aside to put solvency within the way employment insurance is handled. The actuaries, many experts and many papers have stated that in order for this to be solvent, it has to be at $15 billion. Perhaps some of his amendments could deal with the EI as well as the idea of pensions. Could the hon. member comment on that as well?

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, October 7th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, if it gets any more exciting than that, we will have to start doing pay-per-view on CPAC.

I want to tone it down just a tad, if we could. The parliamentary secretary started off his speech by saying the opposition will not acknowledge the fact that we have one of the strongest economies. I will acknowledge that as long as he acknowledges the fact that the heavy lifting was done before 2006.

Let us put that aside for a while, that being said. I would like to get to the details of some of the provisions that pertain to this as it comes back to one particular issue dear to my heart, which would be pensions.

Not a lot has been raised about pensions in the past little while, only for the sake of many pensions that have been stranded through the system, but there is also another element of pensions that we are not considering. That is the people who are currently working as transient workers across the spectrum, meaning from eastern Canada travelling to western Canada. It is hard for them to start these pension plans that are embedded within a certain company.

Did the government consider doing something similar to a supplemental plan to the Canada pension plan in order for people to take it upon themselves to invest in their own pensions as a direct contribution method, nationally?

[Petitions, October 6th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I want to say that about two months ago I met with a group from the Fish, Food and Allied Workers, the FFAW, which is the main union for fish harvesters and plant workers throughout Newfoundland and Labrador.

They were very compelling in the meeting. They talked to me about pilot project number two, best 14 weeks, which is essential to seasonal workers in that they use their best 14 weeks instead of their last 14 weeks, allowing them to get better benefits from EI.

This program is slated to expire on October 23. If it is not made permanent, which we would like, or at least temporary, then it will provide a disincentive for seasonal workers.

This is a petition with 75 signatures from people in Newfoundland and Labrador who want to see the program of best 14 weeks, which is scheduled to expire on October 23, made permanent.

[Serious Time for the Most Serious Crime Act, October 5th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am not really aware of that part of FASD and how to treat it in that particular sense. Quite frankly, as I said earlier, I am just not qualified to say that at this point. The member has brought up a good point. I suggest that he press this point even further within this House. If it is okay with him, I would like for him to send me the information that he is speaking of because I think it is a valid point.

That being said, in the spirit of providing a decent debate within this House, I want to thank the member for bringing that up. I can guarantee, thanks to Google, that I am going to try to figure out what it is he is talking about. I think that will add to the debate of FASD as to how we can reduce it, especially in the most vulnerable societies.

[Serious Time for the Most Serious Crime Act, October 5th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, after that speech I think my colleague should be one of the ones to lead the charge. I certainly put the compassionate argument. I will go back to what I said in my speech. One of the benefits of being a member of Parliament is that we have access to resources and people who work within the industry, people who are experts, people who know more than we do. Believe it or not, some of us actually believe there are others out there who know a lot more than we do. Because of the member's personal experience, he is able to bring the matter of FASD into this House and certainly give it the full debate it deserves. That goes back to the idea of the faint hope clause.

It is an incredible way to debate this issue through the measures he mentioned. The convening measure, the first ministers conference, is certainly something that can bring the whole country together, not to be divisive but to lift the bar on how we can address rehabilitation for people who commit the serious crimes and for people who are victims of FASD, and the member talked about IQs.

That being said, the federal government has that power through the Canada health and social transfer. It can become one of the driving agents behind this. There is nothing wrong with that, because by being in the driver's seat on this particular issue, let us face it, we also safeguard the five principles of health care across the country, which is universal to all despite in which territory or province people live.

I commend my colleague for bringing this up. I think that is all part of the debate within this House. Sometimes we do not give these issues the debate they deserve. It becomes a series of sound bites and cute little slogans that we use from time to time to gain ourselves momentum into the next election. Unfortunately, that may be what I would call the negative aspect of a minority Parliament, if indeed we want to use that. However, there are positives of a minority Parliament and the positives include fulsome debate in order to get something passed. Otherwise, if we do not have the numbers, we have to have honest debate.

Am I convinced that we are using this House in a situation like Bill S-6, the faint hope clause, which was formerly Bill C-36, and the idea of rehabilitation, or protecting victims or allowing victims to receive the justice they so desperately deserve? We need within this Parliament to give these people the voice that they deserve. If we surround it with sound bites and politics and divisiveness, which we see normally on the 10 o'clock news, then they become the ones to whom we have given short shrift. That is the unfortunate part of this.

I implore my colleagues, this is the big reason that I want to send this bill to committee, so that we can discuss these issues. Unfortunately, we did not have that chance before, but now we do.

[Serious Time for the Most Serious Crime Act, October 5th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague asked a great question. We have touched on many other subjects today. He mentioned a 50% reduction in youth crime where there is an early childhood education component. It is of vital importance. We are now seeing the studies and data that prove to us the benefits of early childhood education, and I mean for the very youngest, even before a child is one year old. The trajectory dictates that with the right amount of education, a person will have a more fulsome and healthier life, and so on and so forth, as my colleague pointed out. The problem is that in this country right now we do not target the investment in this particular type of education.

What bothers me about this is that there is a satchel of money that is provided for day care, but that is not the point. The point is that the federal government does not say that it believes in early childhood education. It just gives a bit of cash and people can do with it as they may.

On the surface, it sounds like it is a wonderful thing that the government gives people money to do with as they want, but we also have to provide some of that money to people who are early childhood educators. They provide such an invaluable service. Since I am not an early childhood educator, I do not know the full benefits of what it is educators provide, but I can say they provide fantastic benefits and one of them is the reduction in crime that my hon. colleague spoke of.

[Serious Time for the Most Serious Crime Act, October 5th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, this is my first time speaking on this type of legislation. Prior to being called Bill S-6, it was Bill C-36 before the prorogation. I would like to talk about the process by which we get here and the tough on crime agenda that many of us on both sides of the House have referred to. There has been so much time spent on the issue of tackling violent crime, yet we have been using this, for the most part, as a divisive political wedge between many sections of the country, many sectors of society, and unfortunately a lot of what I would call the mature debate has been lost as a result of that.

Yes, I support sending the bill to committee at this point and I support the fact that we are able to carry on a mature conversation about people who are convicted for life for serious crimes. Even the bill's title, the serious time for the most serious crime act, in and of itself almost sounds like an advertising slogan. I feel as though we are trying to sell something through the Shopping Channel, pardon the vernacular, but nonetheless, members get the idea. This is how revved up this debate has become, to a point of wedge issues, fear tactics and all around misinformation by both sides because both sides have been so vehemently opposed to the other that we forget the fact that we at some point have to listen to the other side as to which part of the debate is germane to the situation and which part of the debate matters the most.

I want to provide a few more notes on that issue, but before I return to that, I want to talk about the background on the bill and the analysis of Bill S-6. As I mentioned earlier, it was introduced in the House as a Senate bill, but it was before us a while back as Bill C-36. It passed through the House with support of the parties here and was debated at second reading into the Senate when we faced the prorogation. I am going to leave the prorogation matter out of it because we have debated that ad nauseam. I do not think it was a fair thing to do, but nonetheless, we will leave it at that.

Section 745.6 is the clause that was devised and included in the Criminal Code in the wake of Parliament's decision to abolish the death penalty in 1976. Capital punishment was replaced with mandatory life terms of imprisonment for first degree and second degree murder. The faint hope clause is essentially the vernacular we use for what is being debated here today. That clause was seen as a necessary safeguard to a sentencing regime without capital punishment, to encourage the rehabilitation. Therein lies the other aspect of this debate that is so very important to this, which is rehabilitation.

Unfortunately, in terms of the idea and the concept and the methods by which we rehabilitate people who are convicted, that argument seems to be lost and I do not think we have had the full argument on this particular issue for quite some time. Since 2006, since crime has become far more at the forefront of the agenda than in the past, that part of it really has been left out. We have focused a lot on the crime itself. We have focused a lot on the victims, and there is nothing wrong with that. I am certainly in favour of that, and if I were not in favour of it, I would not be supporting that the bill go to committee. Nonetheless, we also have to have that mature debate that I spoke of that sometimes escapes us about the idea of rehabilitation and how this country deals with rehabilitation for people who get parole and go back onto the streets.

Are they rehabilitated? Are they a threat to society? Do we believe that our system allows these people to be rehabilitated enough? Do we raise the bar by which these people can be brought back into society? Does our penal system believe that these people are rehabilitated? Would our penal system benefit by focusing more on the more violent criminals who cannot be rehabilitated? These questions are the reason we should have a more fulsome debate on this issue.

I spoke of section 745.6. As I mentioned, the section goes back to 1976. Amendments by the Chrétien government in 1997 changed this particular section so as to require judicial review and the unanimous consent of 12 jurors as a prerequisite to the National Parole Board application process. Even at that point it was decided that the faint hope clause was a serious issue.

Several stories in the media referred to the faint hope clause as being used by people convicted of first degree murder and being released back into the public. There are several sides to every story, but on the surface this shocked people. There is shock value to this. Unfortunately, there are groups that use the issue of rehabilitation, or the lack thereof, for shock value in the media. It was addressed at that time in some of the stories that came out.

The most famous instance where a prisoner was granted parole through a faint hope application was the situation with Colin Thatcher, who was convicted of killing his ex-wife in 1984. He was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. Mr. Thatcher was granted full parole in 2006.

That is just one example of how we have sensationalized many of the issues involved in first degree murder, dangerous offenders, and rehabilitation.

In the international context of rehabilitation and in the context of how we deal with this issue, are we really having an honest debate?

I spoke earlier about the politics of the issue and I would like to return to that for just a moment.

A key benefit of being involved in the political system is our ability to rely upon expert advice. We listen to the experts and we find out how they deal with a particular situation. As politicians, we become generals. All issues come before us. I have issues to deal with. I just had a major flood in my riding and I am dealing with disaster relief. I dealt with employment insurance this morning and now I am dealing with serious crime. One of the benefits is that we have the resources to get as much material as we can in a very short period of time.

We can also hear the stories of serious crime that affects everybody: yes, the victims, and yes, the people involved in the penal system who have to rehabilitate serious offenders while at the same time looking after them.

Societies outside the penal system know quite a bit about this issue, so we should look to them for advice. Victims of crime groups generally support the elimination of the faint hope provision. Some other groups do not, and their opinions mean quite a bit to us.

The John Howard Society opposes the legislation. It believes the faint hope clause as it currently exists encourages prisoners to reform their behaviour in the hope of being granted early parole. The Elizabeth Fry Society opposes this bill and believes there are already sufficient checks and balances in place to ensure only offenders unlikely to pose a threat to public safety are paroled based on faint hope applications. The Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers, as well as the Quebec bar, oppose this legislation. To varying degrees, prison guards believe the faint hope clause makes their job safer.

These are just a few snippets of the stakeholder reaction to this. There are many groups out there that believe we should get rid of this. Victims of crime obviously believe people who are the most serious offenders should be doing the time, not going through the faint hope process.

I would also like to mention what my colleagues noted earlier about the fact that as far as the international context is concerned, and I certainly have the notes here as well, 28.4 years is the average time spent in jail for a Canadian convicted of first degree murder in this country. At 28.4 years, that is certainly on the high end of the scale.

In other countries, I think Sweden, Belgium and other European countries were mentioned, it was close to half that length of time. In the United States of America, it was also less, and several other countries followed suit.

There is certainly quite a bit of time spent here, on average 28.4 years. It still goes back to the situation of the faint hope clause. Do we provide a faint hope clause for people who have been convicted of first degree murder?

I can honestly say that in this particular situation I do support this bill going ahead to committee because I think it deserves further study. However, I also believe that the faint hope clause may provide an incentive for people who are not rehabilitated to go back into society and this is going to cause problems. It is something that concerns me greatly and it greatly concerns people I represent.

I do believe that in this particular situation one of the issues we should be giving more emphasis to is the idea of rehabilitation. I implore the House not to shift back into an example where we are using this as a poster or a sound bite for a political issue of the day, which unfortunately happens too often.

If we start using labels in this particular situation, we could be denying the public an honest debate on rehabilitation, which I feel needs to be debated in this country. I mean that in a general sense, not just for those who are convicted of doing the most serious crime.

I would suggest to the House that we take this issue and give it the reading and study it deserves, especially in regard to rehabilitation.

In this particular situation, we can look at examples of people who cannot be rehabilitated. A small number of those, we know, do receive a favourable hearing with respect to the faint hope clause. Even though the number is not great, we have to look at that as well. This was talked about in the campaign in 2006, to get rid of the faint hope clause. This just might be the way to go. However, I feel deeply within my heart that we have not fully debated how rehabilitation is handled in this country.

I thank the Speaker and the House for this time to present a few of my thoughts.

[Petitions, October 5th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, this petition is on a subject that is dear to my heart, as we have been campaigning for this for quite some time.

Back in 2005, three pilot projects were introduced to the Canadian public regarding employment insurance. These projects had been extended up until now but one has already expired. We are about to see the second one expire, which is what we normally call the best 14 weeks. Essentially, it allows people to use the best weeks they have accumulated, with 14 being the minimum, to receive benefits. Unfortunately, if this program fails, they will only be able to use the last 14 weeks, which, in effect, would provide a disincentive to work. I hope the government will see fit to make this program permanent or, at the very least, extend it.

I thank the petitioners primarily from the Fogo Island area for providing this petition to restore the best 14 weeks.

[Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act, October 4th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask my colleague a question on the record, given the fact that he is sitting next to me, which is why I am bringing it up.

He touched upon one aspect in his speech about how the private sector and major corporations are involved given the fact that we are talking about major ISPs, Internet service providers. Some of them have gone to great lengths to seek out and quash this material and certainly seek out the people putting this material online and to prosecute them as quickly as possible. Could he touch upon that issue?

The tenor of his speech also illustrated one good point, which is that we tend to be falling behind. How far are we falling back on this issue compared to the international context?