Scott Simms

[Business of Supply, December 9th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, when my colleague from way over there talked about the situation, he talked about it with a great deal of passion. He has dealt with this since I have known him for the past six and a half years.

I am not sure where the question came from about responsibility, but I would like to talk about that for a moment. I am not sure that it is codified in any way, shape or form. I only wish the hon. member was able to stand and talk more about his thoughts on this.

Nonetheless, I want to ask my colleague about a program that I had brought up earlier three times with three different members. It is a program worth talking about, and that is the reinstatement of the court challenges program.

That program was a model used internationally. It was a model that was remarked upon by the United Nations as being a funded program that worked well in the face of human rights. Certainly it helped us in the face of our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms because it allowed us to challenge that unimpeded by cost or anything else.

I wonder if my colleague could comment on that.

[Business of Supply, December 9th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I will stick to the common theme that I spoke to with my other colleague. Given that I only have a short minute. I want to talk about the court challenges program, which was a fantastic program in and of itself. It was a fantastic vehicle by which some of the most vulnerable in our society were able to get their rights restored to them through the court system. I was hoping my hon. colleague would comment on that.

[Business of Supply, December 9th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I had a couple of questions, but I will pare it down to one. The first one was rather general, so I will omit that one for the time being.

First, I congratulate my colleague on a very informative speech. I have been a big fan of the court challenges program, which I hoped he would comment on as one of the vehicles we used. It was considered a great international model. Could my colleague comment on that program?

[Business of Supply, December 9th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I enjoyed the intervention from the hon. member for Peterborough. I found it kind of ironic. He said that we should be talking more about jobs and the economy. I spend a lot of time in this House debating, and 70% of what we talk about in legislation is about crime and punishment. What is it going to be? It is either that or the other thing. As a matter of fact, the member mentioned the importance of talking about jobs. If I truly believed the government's press releases about the jobs it is creating, it would not be much of an issue. For some reason the government keeps saying that jobs are an issue. Great, let us get on with it. Nonetheless, I digress for only a moment.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague about a program that was claimed as a model by the United Nations. It is the court challenges program, of which I am a big fan. Unfortunately, it went by the wayside under the current government.

[Business of Supply, December 9th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to see that the hon. member from the government is standing to debate. We do not often get to see members of the government debate on certain issues, whether it be an opposition day or whether it be government legislation, or even private members' bills. So I congratulate him for doing so. To say it is gutsy perhaps is a bit of an understatement.

Nonetheless, there was a comment the other day. This is from December 6, 2010, on CBC's Power & Politics. When asked about Mr. Fantino's outlandish comments, the current Minister of Public Safety and former attorney general admitted that the charter protects individuals who are falsely accused. Here is the quote, “The charter application is an application that applies generally to those who are falsely accused”.

I would see this as being somewhat of a narrow-minded opinion of what this is. Maybe he meant more than that and maybe I am overreacting to a comment. Maybe I am just taking one part of a comment and not the whole comment in and of itself. Maybe he meant more than that. Maybe he did not mean that.

Perhaps the member would have more information about what he actually meant when he said that.

[Protecting Victims From Sex Offenders Act, December 7th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I will certainly talk to the bill and try to be as relevant as I can.

The information in the national registry that can be collected only to enable police services to investigate crimes they have reasonable grounds to suspect are of a sexual nature has been amended. We saw this through Bill C-34. In some of the comments during the committee work on the bill, it was pointed out that something was missing. However, the need for reasonable grounds has been removed from subparagraph 2(2)(c)(i) of the act. As a result, police may collect information for the purpose of preventing and investigating crimes of a sexual nature. During the examination of Bill C-34, no witnesses raised the possibility of any abuse of use resulting from these amendments.

Would the hon. member please comment if these new methods, for which we are casting a wide net in the usage of this registry, especially when it comes to peace officers, concern her, even though those member will pass the bill?

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, December 7th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, one of the issues for me that stood out in this is the amount of concern with the regulations and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

It talked about many of the stakeholders being concerned about the decision to change the regulatory body through regulation under the IRPA rather than through stand-alone legislation. The new body would still not have the same power to sanction immigration consultants who are not members nor have appropriate enforcement measurement powers, which is always the ongoing concern here with legislation that requires a tougher stand than what we currently have, no matter what type of malfeasance it is.

I would like to get the hon. member's reaction to the boards and stakeholder reactions. The Canadian Bar Association said that it would prefer that individuals offering immigration advice for remuneration be required to be a member of the Law Society but, if consultants are to be permitted, it is concerned that draft legislation does not give the regulatory body sufficient teeth or provide sufficient governance, accountability and protection.

I would like to get the hon. member's reaction on that, as well as on the ability to enforce this.

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, December 7th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I was very interested in the part of the member's speech that discussed the title of the bill, which in this case was the cracking down on crooked consultants act. Certainly I would not make the blind assumption that all consultants in this case are of a nefarious nature. It is nice to see the Conservatives worked on that. And the member has used the expression “marketing gimmick”, which I think is apt and to the point, to describe something I have noticed about the titles we have been using on bills. The fairness at the pumps act is another one; it is a very small collaboration on what the pumps do. It has nothing to do with the actual price of the gas itself.

I would ask the member to comment on that even further and more particularly about the idea of the consultants and the fact that we are requiring increased penalties for the consultants who are doing things of a nefarious nature.

[Protecting Children from Sexual Predators Act, December 3rd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I enjoyed my colleague's comments about the mandatory minimums and the common expression for mandatory minimums being “deterrents”, in a general sense.

Let us look at the murder rates and how the mandatory minimum talks about 25 years imprisonment. Let us compare Houston to Toronto. One has the death penalty, one does not and one has a higher murder rate, which would be Houston.

Could he comment briefly on that?

The member mentioned section 26, but did not have time to talk about it in his speech. Perhaps he could start by making his comments on that section known to the House and to the public.

[Canadian Forces, December 3rd, 2010]

The problem, Mr. Speaker, is that we have certainly seen this before. The veterans ombudsman, Pat Stogran, came out publicly and scolded the Conservatives for ignoring the plight of injured and disabled veterans. What happened to him? He was indeed fired.

Pierre Daigle in simply doing his job has now exposed the government's further lack of action toward the families of soldiers who have lost their lives while in uniform.

Can we anticipate that Mr. Daigle will be fired for doing his job, like other brave critics before him, or will the Conservatives work with him and these families and do what is right?