Vic Toews

[RCMP and Law Enforcement in Canada, April 12th, 2005]

Mr. Chair, in speaking with RCMP officers or other police agencies in the province of Alberta and in her riding, what do they identify as their greatest needs in order to meet the challenges of fighting crime in the 21st century?

[RCMP and Law Enforcement in Canada, April 12th, 2005]

First of all, Mr. Chair, in respect of the cost sharing and the fact that the province is the one that asks for the police officers, during the time that I was minister of justice, and my colleagues were ministers of justice in a government there, what we used to do was put as much money as we could into the RCMP budget, but we knew that money could not be spent because the RCMP could not supply us with enough officers consistently every single year. We knew that.

In fact, that government over there shut down Depot, the only training centre for RCMP officers in Canada. That government shut it down. That created a huge problem in terms of replacing individuals. Seven years ago we were told that within seven years over 50% of all RCMP officers would be eligible for retirement. We were told, “Increase recruitment. Increase classes”. What did the government do? It shut it down.

So yes, we can go to the province of Manitoba today and it has a budget for RCMP officers, but it cannot get the officers because this government will not deliver on those officers.

[RCMP and Law Enforcement in Canada, April 12th, 2005]

Mr. Chair, the issue of gun control is not in dispute here. Conservatives support gun control. What we do not support is the long gun registry. To suggest that a police officer would rely on that registry to determine whether there was any firepower inside a house would be gross negligence on the part of that officer and the supervisor.

Imagine supervisors saying that they have checked the registry, that there is not a gun registered there and that police officers can walk right in. That is absolute foolishness. Every front line police officer who I have spoken with says the registry does not work.

We have now spent almost $2 billion on a registry that does not work. This statistic comes from the CBC. The CBC is another funded government organization. I am relying on the CBC to give me that information that it says it is $2 billion. Let us assume that the $2 billion figure is correct.

I know those members do not want to hear that. I can say that officers would like proper equipment. They would like more officers in the field. RCMP officers in my riding are working 70 and 80 hours a week. They work those hours because they do not have any replacements. Do members know that much of the time they put in is free overtime?

Let us put the money into paying our officers and getting more officers in the field, rather than this foolishness of the gun registry. That gun registry should have been gone a long time ago. Let us demonstrate that we care about our police officers by giving them backup, by giving them equipment and by paying them properly.

[RCMP and Law Enforcement in Canada, April 12th, 2005]

Mr. Chair, I am pleased to have the opportunity to participate in the debate this evening on the RCMP and law enforcement in Canada.

I am splitting my time with the member for Edmonton—Spruce Grove.

I just want to take issue with what was said by my colleague from the justice department. He said that violent crime was somehow going down. I would tell that member to take a look at statistics from 40 years ago and compare where our society was then to today. Now we have the additional fact that crimes are not even being reported any more under the Criminal Youth Justice Act. It is not in issue that crimes are going down; they are simply not being reported any more. People have given up.

If the hon. member wants to find out what the statistics are, he should go back 40 years and compare them year to year and he will see the truth, that violent crime is rising.

The request for the debate was made by my colleague from Yellowhead, following the March 3 deaths of the RCMP officers near Mayerthorpe, Alberta. I want to thank the member for bringing this matter to the House and for all his work.

I want to say again how profoundly grateful Canadians are to these four brave young men who lost their lives on duty. We are also thankful to all the men and women of the RCMP who serve our communities across the country and put their lives at risk in the service of others every day. My own riding is primarily serviced by RCMP officers. The only complaint that people in my riding have about the RCMP is that there are not enough officers. They want to see more of the RCMP and unfortunately they do not.

The crime of the four young officers who were killed like that, and I use the word “crime” deliberately because it is not a tragedy. Tragedies are not preventable. This is a crime that could have been prevented. It was a poignant reminder of our duty as parliamentarians to give our men and women in uniform the very best in support and resources.

In that context I would like to make some brief comments about the cuts that have been made over the past decade to the front lines of our law enforcement officials.

During the past few months, the justice committee has heard testimony about critical shortages of RCMP officers in Quebec and in other parts of Canada, including my own province of Manitoba.

I have received information from confidential internal RCMP sources which indicates that the staffing levels for the RCMP in Manitoba are falling to a critical level, particularly the highway patrol divisions. In my home town of Steinbach, the highway patrol was closed down on the number one highway. Basically, from Winnipeg to almost Falcon Lake, let us say, about 75 miles, was not patrolled by the RCMP because the highway patrol had been shut down.

A committee motion two months ago summoned the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, the Commissioner of the RCMP and the commanding officer of “C” division to explain before it why they ignored the committee's previous order to stay the closure of nine RCMP detachments in Quebec.

The Minister of Public Safety declined to appear in front of the committee and the RCMP Commissioner, although he did appear, did not give much by way of explanation, other than saying that he felt confident he had made the right decision.

During that same committee meeting, we heard from front line officers about the porous nature of our border, the fact that the border was not secure and that our officers simply were not there to take care of incidents as they arose.

Increasingly, with all this talk about the Gomery commission these days, some facts unrelated to the sponsorship have come to light during the testimony that actually shed some light on this issue. I would point members to the testimony of December 15, 2004. Mr. Dawson Hovey, who was in charge of the program review process of 1996, stated that he was required to reduce the RCMP budget by 10%, which involved a budget reduction of about $173 million and the deletion of over 2,200 RCMP positions. This was his sworn testimony.

I recall when I was in the public service in Manitoba as the minister of justice, a Liberal minister came to see me and said that what they were doing was reorganizing and that there would not be any cuts, knowing full well that there would be cuts. In fact, we learned the hard way in Manitoba that there were cuts. The people of Quebec are now learning that there are cuts.

It is no secret that our RCMP have been suffering from budgetary cuts. The government talks about increases in actual money, but it is not going to our front-line police officers.

The health of our police officers and the safety of our communities are suffering because of it. I do not know why the RCMP commissioner simply does not come out and say that the cuts have been made.

I want to take note of this incident. Let us learn from it. Let us honour those officers who have fallen by treating their fellow officers with respect, by providing them with the appropriate resources.

[Sponsorship Program, April 12th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, as the highest law officer in the country, the minister has an obligation to advise the Canadian people fully about this matter. Canadians have heard that his special counsel was picking up envelopes of sponsorship money.

When he heard about this, what steps did he take when this matter came to his attention?

[Sponsorship Program, April 12th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, last week the Minister of Justice was indignant at the opposition for suggesting what every Canadian believes, that the Liberal Party has some explaining to do.

Now Canadians have learned as a result of sworn evidence that a former member of the minister's own staff, his special counsel, has been identified as pocketing thousands of dollars in taxpayer money for favours for the Liberal Party.

When were these facts about his special counsel brought to the minister's attention?

[Sponsorship Program, April 11th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Brault told Canadians when he testified that among the people he illegally put on his payroll was Georges Farrah, one of the Prime Minister's parliamentary secretaries.

Did the Prime Minister know that Mr. Farrah had a no-work contract for Groupaction when he appointed him as a parliamentary secretary? Where was the wire brush then? How did he escape those bristles?

[Sponsorship Program, April 11th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party of Canada financed its 1997 and 2000 elections on money stolen from Canadian taxpayers.

Government contracts went to ad firms that added Liberal Party workers to their payrolls. These workers did nothing other than campaign for the Liberal Party.

During this time the Prime Minister was Mr. Chrétien's hand-picked man, his number one man in Quebec. How are Canadians to believe him when he says he knew nothing about these arrangements?

[Official Languages Act, April 11th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address Bill S-3, a bill to amend the Official Languages Act.

My riding of Provencher, which is in southeastern Manitoba, has the largest francophone population in rural western Canada. It comprises about 15% of the population with communities such as Ste. Anne, La Broquerie, Ste. Pierre, Ste. Malo, Ste. Agathe, Ste. Adolphe, Otterburne, Lorette, Pine Falls, Powerview, St. George and Île-des-Chaînes, to mention some of them. The French language is thriving in Manitoba and, in particular, in my riding.

I would like to comment briefly on a May 1998 report written by provincial judge Richard Chartier on the operation of the province's French language services policy in Manitoba. The report was commissioned by the Manitoba Progressive Conservative government while I was the attorney general and our government committed to implementing that report. I am pleased to see that the implementation continues.

Judge Chartier's report is aptly titled, “Above All, Common Sense”. It focuses on making bilingual services more readily accessible in designated areas of the province, including my area of the province. Judge Chartier's key recommendation was that community service centres be established to serve as outlets for government services. He said that the province could better meet the objectives of our French language service policy by making sure that our services in French were actively offered in those regions where our francophone population is concentrated.

In his report he wrote that it was important to try to find practical solutions that could be applied immediately, above all, solutions that made use of common sense. While the report does not have a direct application to Bill S-3, I believe we can learn from the principles contained in that report.

The major purpose of Bill S-3 is to make the commitment set out in part VII of the Official Languages Act binding on the government. Section 41 of the Official Languages Act commits the federal government to:

(a) enhancing the vitality of the English and French linguistic minority communities in Canada and supporting and assisting their development; and

(b) fostering the full recognition and use of both English and French in Canadian society.

The government has failed on both of those counts.

In 2004 the Federal Court of Appeal stated that “section 41 is declaratory of a commitment and that it does not create any right or duty that could at this point be enforced by the courts, by any procedure whatsoever”.

In other words, the court ruled that section 41 of the Official Languages Act was a broad statement of principle and not an actual legal obligation. The court went on to say, “the debate over section 41 must be conducted in Parliament, not in the courts”.

Bill S-3 addresses this ruling in two ways. First, it would add subsections requiring all federal institutions to take “positive measures...for the ongoing and effective advancement and implementation” of section 41”.

Second, it would add part VII of the Official Languages Act to a list of specific sections of the act that are justiciable, which is contained in section 77. In other words, the bill would make it clear that if the government does not live up to its obligations under part VII of the Official Languages Act it can be taken to court and forced to fulfill those obligations.

As a general principle, I am supportive of legislation that holds ministers accountable to their commitments. However there remain concerns with the bill as drafted. The first concern with Bill S-3 in fact centres around section 41.

Provincial governments have complained in the past that this section of the Official Languages Act infringes on their jurisdiction. The Bloc Québécois made the same argument the last time this bill came before the House.

My concern is that making section 41 justiciable, that is allowing it to be subject to court action, would clear the way for court challenges that might result in section 41 and the rest of part VII of the Official Languages Act being struck down on the grounds that it was ultra vires or outside the constitutional jurisdiction of the federal government. This concern was raised in committee in 2002 by the minister of justice at the time.

My colleague from Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry has committed to working with the members on the Standing Committee on Official Languages to amend the bill, perhaps by adding a section that expressly respects the provinces and limits the federal government to its own jurisdiction assigned to it in the Constitution so that it fulfills section 41 of the act within its constitutional mandate.

The second concern involves another section of the Official Languages Act that is affected by the bill, section 43. While Bill S-3 seeks to make the government's commitment under part VII of the Official Languages Act more enforceable, it does not clarify the scope of those commitments. As a result, unless the bill is amended, it could result in a wave of court actions and the loss of parliamentary control over the nature, extent and, indeed, the cost of the government's official languages program.

Section 43 currently states:

The Minister of Canadian Heritage shall take such measures as that Minister considers appropriate to advance the equality of status and use of English and French in Canadian society--

Bill S-3 would change the wording of section 43 to clarify that the heritage minister “shall take appropriate measures” instead of “shall take measures that the Minister considers appropriate”. While it removes the minister's discretion when it comes to the general goal, the bill still leaves sections (a) through (d), the list of specific measures, totally up to the discretion of the minister.

What that means is that the minister does not have to do any of the specific things listed in section 43 but if someone were dissatisfied with the minister's performance when it comes to her or his very general objective, they could take the matter to court regardless of whether the minister takes any or all of the specific measures listed.

Now it seems totally backward to me to make the general obligation legally enforceable and the specific ones up to the discretion of the minister. This act needs to be clarified in that respect and give both the minister a clear direction and give the court a clear framework for deciding whether or not the minister is fulfilling his or her obligations.

I hope we can make suitable amendments to the bill in committee to make it more effective in meeting its goals. I will support the bill in principle and I will encourage my colleagues on this side of the House to do likewise, although they will be free to vote as they see fit since this is an item of private members' business. I think the intention of the bill is something that many members would consider to be reasonable and worthwhile.

I do want to say that if we approach this issue in a common sense way, the way that Judge Chartier did in Manitoba with his report, I think that we can continue to work together as two linguistic groups in this country, French and English, to ensure that the constitutional responsibilities that our governments have are carried out.

[Supply, April 7th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, this tragedy not only affects the families in a deeply painful way but the families need closure on this issue. I think in these circumstances some type of public inquiry needs to take place. It would show respect for the victims of terrorism. It also would send out a much broader message, which is that Canada will not simply roll over when it is the victim of a terrorist attack, that it will expend as much time and energy as necessary to get at the facts and to the actual problem.

I believe the government should show that dedication, not just to ensure the families receive closure but to ensure the integrity of the Canadian justice system and, indeed, Canada's reputation as a front line fighter against terrorism in the world. Terrorists need know that things will not be pushed under the carpet simply because a criminal trial has ended. If there is something to be learned, then let us learn it from the public inquiry.

The minister should be open to this. She should not simply be meeting with the families. She should show that Canada stands shoulder to shoulder with its allies in the fight against terrorism.