Wayne Easter

[November 30th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, on September 30, I asked the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food a direct question relating to the government's response, or more so its lack of response, to the United States country of origin labelling legislation. I qualified my remarks that one of the defining characteristics of the Conservative government is to announce but never deliver.

As usual, the government claimed that it has taken action. It claimed that it raised the matter with the United States administration. On January 12, in a media release, the Minister of International Trade assured Canadian producers, and I will quote from the release, “I am pleased that key issues raised by Canada are addressed in these measures”. That was on January 12. That statement came after the United States published regulations in December 2008 for its COOL legislation. The Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food was reported as claiming at the time, “We have gotten what we asked”--the United States Department of Agriculture--“to do”. It sounds like a success story does it not?

The same government issued a news release on November 19 of this year, in which the Minister of International Trade said, “Our assessments are showing us that COOL is having a negative impact on Canadian farmers and livestock producers”. Obviously. Is that not quite the revelation?

The success the government talked about in the spring did not happen. So much for the Conservative government's ability to gain concessions for Canadian producers. Its failure to gain results from the United States administration has been demonstrated by the necessity now of going to the WTO.

The reality is that the Conservatives' failure to take action, their failure to present the United States with a clear position in respect of countermeasures we might take has cost Canadian farmers. To a great extent we are losing the hog industry in Canada. Beef producers are in serious trouble. The Conservative government has to be held to account for its lack of action.

The Canadian Pork Council, which represents a sector of the farm economy that is suffering from COOL, told the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food:

The introduction of mandatory country-of-origin labelling in the U.S. has wreaked havoc on a sector already suffering from financial losses. Since 2009, exports of live hogs are down 40% compared with the same period last year. This breaks down as follows: 30% fewer Canadian weaner and feeder hogs going into the U.S. and 65% fewer Canadian market hogs being exported to the U.S. On an annual basis this represents a loss of about $250 million worth of exports.

Instead of utilizing business risk management where it has spent $861,400,000 less than last year, instead of utilizing that program and re-profiling it so producers could survive in the interim, the government continues to fail Canadian producers.

I ask the parliamentary secretary why do the Conservatives not continue to take strong measures against the United States and why do they not support our producers in the interim?

[Child Protection Act (Online Sexual Exploitation), November 26th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I just want to re-emphasize the hon. member's point, Detective Matthews, who appeared a considerable number of years ago, is one of the leading people in getting not only the Canadian government but governments around the world to deal with this serious issue.

I do not think any of us who were sitting in the room that day will forget those images. As I sat there looking at them, I wondered how human beings could do to other human beings what they sometimes do. I guess I will put it that way.

The member's comments remind me of a meeting I happened to attend in Paris as solicitor general on the same subject. This exploitation can take place anywhere in the world and then is viewed across the world. The abuse of human beings and children for people's thrills or, in some cases, financial gain is absolutely shocking. It is one of the worst crimes. It has been on deck for a considerable time and very definitely must be dealt with if we are going to do the right thing for future generations.

I agree with my hon. friend that what we saw that day was very disturbing. I think all of us in the House would agree that police officers and others who track down these kinds of crimes on a daily basis need to be congratulated because it has to be a mental drain to look at these images, track them down and then deal with them constructively.

[Child Protection Act (Online Sexual Exploitation), November 26th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-58. It is important to summarize again what the bill is about.

This bill would impose reporting duties on Internet service providers, ISPs, and on those who offer Internet services to the public when child pornography appears in accounts provided to their subscribers, or if they have reasonable grounds to believe that their service is being or has been used to commit a child pornography offence. That basically summarizes the bill. As a party, Liberal members support the bill at second reading and sending it to committee.

It is important to look at some of the history.

The governing party tries to leave the impression that it is the only party that believes in law and order. However, this has been on the agenda for a long time. We looked at it when we were in government, when I was the solicitor general. We were very worried about child pornography.

Although the Internet is a wonderful tool in terms of providing information to citizens, it is also a tool that others can use to exploit children and exploit people in many other ways.

Although the government tries to indicate that it is the only party that believes in law and order, it is not. I think all of us in this House believe in law and order.

When we pass laws in this place we have to ensure that they are balanced laws and that they will do what they are intended to do without creating unseen consequences and complications for others in society.

As with all legislation that mandates a third party to report online dealings to the police, a balance needs to be struck between policing and privacy concerns to protect Internet neutrality. We intend to examine these questions at committee.

That is why it is extremely important that we send the bill to committee and allow the proper witnesses to come forward, people who work on the Internet system and understand the technicalities and the difficulties of imposing this new burden on providers, albeit for all the right reasons. We need to understand the implications of that in terms of the laws that we make as well.

I might point out another reality, which the member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe mentioned yesterday in a somewhat similar tone. The reality is that in 2005 the mandatory minimum sentence of one year for an offence of possessing and creating child pornography was instituted by a Liberal government. The definition of child pornography was broadened by a Liberal government to include depictions, digital or otherwise, in order to trap more perpetrators of the crime. That took us up to late 2005. Then we take the canvas over to January 23, 2006. The hon. member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe said:

I have sat through the justice committee meetings and read the literature since that time without interruption. I have not attended every meeting, but I have been there for the whole agenda. There has been nothing on child pornography in that time. If we are all united in Parliament to try to do some good and combat the ill effects of the web and child pornography exploitation in particular, we ought to say to each other that this is not good enough.

The key point the member is making, with which I agree, is that we have to come together quickly. As I said, this was an issue when I was solicitor general in 2003. Each and every day the Internet system is used for the exploitation of others, so we have to get this bill to committee and deal with this issue. It has taken the government a considerable amount of time to bring this bill forward.

As well, I would point out that all attorneys general across Canada, based on the attorney general meetings with the provinces, basically support the move in this direction. Because of the slowness of the federal government in terms of moving forward, some of those governments are taking action on their own.

If we are going to have good laws in Canada, there has to be coordination across the board. That is why it is so important that the federal government take the lead in terms of the implementation of these laws. It is important that we get Bill C-58 to committee, have our hearings and get it acted upon.

While I am on my feet talking about law and order issues, and I have mentioned this before in the House of Commons, there is an area that I am really concerned about and it fits into this debate in some fashion. That is the whole way the Minister of Public Safety is undermining the rehabilitation aspect of inmates by abolishing the prison farms.

I have said before that this is an extremely important issue. We have a government that is talking about law and order, but its law and order agenda seems to be to go out there and build super-jails and put more people in prison. If we are going to have a justice system that works, it has to be one that rehabilitates people. One of the best rehabilitative aspects of that system in fact is for those inmates to work on farms.

There are six of those farms across the country. One of the most productive farms is in the Kingston area. I have been there. In fact, it is in the Speaker's home riding. There are six institutions in that area. Frontenac Pen Farm is in that area. It has one of the best and most productive dairy herds in Canada, and the government is talking about closing it down. It is a farm in which inmates get out there and work with cattle and produce crops and supply other institutions in the Kingston area and across the country to Laval, Quebec, with food. This is productivity in which they take pride.

Contrary to what the Minister of Public Safety states, that skills of farmers are no longer worthy, they are in fact worthy. The inmates do not just learn how to be mechanics or how to milk a cow. They learn teamwork. They learn management. They learn computer skills. They learn how to relate through the use of feeding and working with cattle and livestock.

I want to take the opportunity, while I am on this bill, to emphasize this point again. The government, with no supporting data, has decided to close those prison farms across the country and lose that productivity, lose the rehabilitative aspects of inmates working on farms. That is a terrible decision. It is a wrong decision. I would encourage the minister to come to his senses and recognize that those farms are an important part of our corrections system and should remain.

I will admit that I got a wee bit off track from Bill C-58, but my point in expressing the seriousness of the decision of the government on prison farms is that while it talks about law and order, while it is great on messaging, its actions are not always in the same direction in which it is leaving the impression it is moving forward.

Bill C-58 is important. It stems from an agreement reached at the 2008 meeting of federal, provincial and territorial justice ministers to enact mandatory requirements for ISPs and online content providers to report cases of child pornography.

The major components of the bill that we support are: the mandatory reporting of all website addresses that ISPs are aware may contain child pornography; mandatory reporting to police when ISPs believe that a child pornography offence is or has been committed using their services; and that the provider must also preserve the relevant computer data for 21 days after notifying police, unless required by judicial order that the data is to be destroyed after the 21 day period.

Those are valid reasons and our party is willing to give support to this legislation, to send it to committee to be studied further and to be implemented, I hope quickly, so that this terrible issue of child pornography and the exploitation of children on the Internet can be dealt with.

[Criminal Code, November 24th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I agree with the member. We are dealing with an extremely serious issue here. It really goes to the core of the denial of proper information for committees and members of the House of Commons, so that they can make good decisions. I congratulate the member on his remarks because I think he outlined a number of areas where the government is in fact denying information to committee members.

I know the member did not hear the question from the member from the governing party, but her question related to the fact that opposition members are the majority on committees now. She tried to imply that, as a result of that, committees have become kangaroo courts and that therefore the committee members were denying witnesses who wanted to come before committee. I believe it is the defence committee that she was talking about.

The reality is, and I will ask the member to confirm or deny, that Canadians decided what the makeup of the House of Commons would be. They decided that they would not grant the party opposite a majority. We are doing our job as opposition members as a result.

A member of the government has suggested that we are denying a witness. We are not denying a witness. We are saying that if we are going to make proper decisions as a committee, the government should provide the documentation, the emails and the briefing notes to ministers. The committee needs to have access to the information, so that we can question that witness properly. Otherwise, how are we to know that the government has not told the individual to come to committee to give a misleading story or some such thing?

We need the evidence first. I would like the member to comment on that because I think it goes to the heart of what the government is all about: messaging, implying certain things, fear and intimidation. The ten percenters it sends into my riding and across this country are nothing short of hate mail. That is why they are. They are not providing information. I would like the member to comment on that.

[Business of Supply, November 20th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I enjoyed the member's remarks. I am going to question him on some of the not so big substantive things that can be done to improve climate change and also create economic activity.

As the member would know, I am the Liberal Party's agriculture critic. I think there is tremendous opportunity in the agriculture area in a rural base to create economic opportunities for the farm sector, for rural Canada by utilizing the environment to create those opportunities, whether it is using biomass production of energy waste, waste from forests, from lumber mills, growing crops for energy on farms, or the environmental goods and services that producers do on their farms.

As well, in my own province of Prince of Edward Island, one of the first acts of the Prime Minister when he came to power was to cancel a $32 million transatlantic cable across the Northumberland Strait to utilize export wind power. Would it not make sense to put that cable in now so that Prince Edward Island could have the opportunity to use windmills, clean energy, for domestic and export use?

[Afghanistan, November 20th, 2009]

The minister makes my point, Mr. Speaker.

One of the defining characteristics of the Conservative government is its vile tactics of fear and intimidation imposed upon Canadians who have the courage to speak truth to power.

In the case of Afghan detainees, the attack on the credibility of a dedicated public servant is designed to cover up what the government knew and when.

To expose the truth, will the minister call a full independent judicial inquiry? Would the government, for once, allow the truth to come forth?

[Afghanistan, November 20th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, Richard Colvin is the latest in a long list of honest Canadians who have had the integrity and courage to speak out on government wrongdoing; to name a few: Linda Keen, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission; Adrian Measner, Canadian Wheat Board; Matthew Bramley, environmentalist. All of these individuals have been personally attacked as a defence for government inaction.

Instead of listening and taking corrective action, the Conservative government engages in character assassination after character assassination.

Is there nothing the Conservative government will not do to people who come forward and expose its shortcomings?

[November 19th, 2009]

What a sad commentary, Madam Speaker.

Let me put it on the record. I just received a letter from hog producers about the program to date. They say, “Unfortunately, the situation for hog producers remains substantially unchanged as the government's proposed initiatives have failed to fully launch as of this date”. They go into a critical analysis of the bidding process and the hog industry loan loss program by stating, “As a debt forgiveness program would not be trade actionable and as the existing proposals are still not available to any producers in a concrete way, we ask that you bring the matter of debt forgiveness back to the House”.

So I have, but the fact of the matter is that the minister has allowed Treasury Board to pull the wool over their eyes so that the governments get paid and producers are left without funding.

[November 19th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, on September 17, I called on the Minister of Agriculture to address the crisis destroying our hog industry. That was two months ago and the situation has only deteriorated.

Since that time, we have seen the crisis in our hog industry only worsen. Instead of the government doing its duty and providing the assistance required, the evidence will now show that during the worst hog crisis in Canadian history the government has allowed the moneys in the business risk program to decline by, as the minister acknowledged I believe yesterday, $961,400,000. This is unacceptable.

There are ways that program could have been re-profiled to get the money into the producers' hands.

Does the minister and the government have any appreciation of just how ineffective they have been with their program?

I will quote from the testimony of Leza Matheson-Wolters, who appeared before the agriculture committee a couple of weeks ago. She and her husband are among P.E.I.'s most productive hog farmers and the current crisis quite literally is throwing them out of business. This is how she described the minister's program:

Currently, we have the HILLRP program, the hog industry loan loss reserve program, and the HFTP, the hog farm transition program. Neither of these programs will help, or save, the existence of my farm. The HILLRP program lends $85 per hog. I would first need to find a bank that would agree to consolidate my loans for a term of 60 months or less; but it would be at a higher interest rate than I have now, with the stipulation that I would pay off my APP first.

In other words, pay off the government first. This is security for the government, not for the hog industry.

She goes on to say:

But with our size of operation, it would mean that I'd first have to find a bank that would agree to this, then I would have to take a higher interest rate and pay off my APP, and then I wouldn't have any money left over. Therefore, the program is of no use to my operation. The result is that it will make things worse, not better, for me.

That is the sad reality for many hog producers.

As I said, under the business risk management program there could be solutions if the government only had the political will. It should drop the viability test, change the reference margins and let money flow under the business risk program. It has now allowed $961,400,000 less than the year before and that is less than previous years. I would ask the minister to not allow our efficient hog industry, among the most efficient in the world, with the best genetics in the world, to lapse and be replaced by the American hog industry.

My question remains the same. How can the minister and the government even pretend to have the best interests of farmers in mind when they fail to deliver on the promises and, worse yet, cut critical spending?

[Government Appointments, November 19th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative Party promised but did not deliver a public appointments commission to end political patronage. Instead, the Conservatives did exactly the opposite, unleashing unparalleled patronage for Conservative friends, in the last year rewarding 233 former Conservative MPs, ministers, campaign workers, candidates and donors who have contributed over $272,000 to Conservative coffers.

Will the Prime Minister explain why he broke his word and why taxpayers are paying to reward Conservative cronies?