Wayne Marston

[Business of Supply, June 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, listening to the speech by the member for York Centre is much like listening to most of the Conservatives' response to this debate. Rather than talking about income splitting, they talk about what has gone on over the last number of years in this place. We could have that as a separate debate, but that is not the motion before us today. We do not hear them talking about 14% of the wealthiest Canadians benefiting from this.

My friend asks me about my wife from time to time. We have gone through cancer in our home and the only thing that we had to pay for was parking at the hospital. That is a benefit of the system that we have in this country.

We go to fundraisers from time to time for children with leukemia and other diseases whose families do not have the resources to pay for medications that are not covered by our health system. Would it not be better to pay for that medication using some of that $3 billion that we are about to give to the wealthiest Canadians?

[Business of Supply, June 10th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, to the member for Toronto Centre, I appreciate her speech. In fact, her speech is very much like something I would expect to hear from the NDP because that is the position we have taken.

To hear her agree with Jim Flaherty over the musings of her own leader is kind of surprising to me. I agreed with a major part of her speech. She spoke of the period between 1980 and 2010, about the average wage and the lack of buying power of the dollar, and the fact that a dollar today buys the same as it did in 1980. As her speech went on and again, it sounded more like the NDP than Liberal to me, because in that time where there was no growth, from 1993 to 2006, who was in power?

[Victims Bill of Rights, June 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, all of us are taking the bill very seriously.

One of the concerns I have with Bill C-32 is that it would create a certain expectation, but there is no legal obligation with respect to the bill within the judicial system. That leaves me questioning whether that would raise the expectations of victims when we have not really resolved it.

[Victims Bill of Rights, June 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things that is spoken of very often is giving victims a voice, but the other side is financial and psychological support.

For people who have been victims of these types of crimes, particularly where someone's life is lost, or a family member's, their world is destroyed in front of them, and they need all the help they can get. Their community helps, but the government having in place guidance, and having it clearly available to people, is very important.

[Victims Bill of Rights, June 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, part of the reason for my passion is that my sister was strangled to death when I was two years old. Our family was a victim of a circumstance. This was in 1949. Times were different. Police officers have come so very far from then, but even at that time, the RCMP officers involved did a very good job dealing with our family.

However, again, it is to come to that place of understanding of what motivates and creates these situations and to pre-empt them from ever happening in the first place. In our family's case, it was the mental illness of a family member, but in many cases, it is drug driven or other aspects. There are so many aspects of society we can reach out and touch if we want to do it. The committee is a place where this specific bill can be worked on so that we can accomplish that.

[Victims Bill of Rights, June 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, as a caring society, part of our role is to say to victims that we will take care of them. The other part of that equation, the other half, is to prevent having victims in the first place. There is that balancing act.

I am optimistic about working with the government at committee on something that is this significant, this important, to everyday Canadians. Have members thought about how significant this really is and how important it is for us to come together to find a way to make this the best possible bill?

[Victims Bill of Rights, June 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have to ask my friends across the way what took so long. I ran in the 2006 election and debated candidates who talked about victims' rights. I ran in 2008 and debated other candidates who talked about victims' rights. Now it is finally before the House. This will come as a great shock, but the New Democrats will support sending the bill to committee. We believe that if members want to listen to us and work with us, we will find a way to make the bill even better.

We can actually work together if we try, if all sides want to work together on such a bill, because it is an important bill. If we think about it, it outlines federal rights for victims of crime to be informed, to be protected, to participate, and to receive compensation. I understand there is not much said in the bill about how much compensation the government will provide.

Another aspect of the bill that concerns us, and we may be able to work that out in committee, is that it does not establish any legal obligations for those working in the criminal justice system to implement any of the rights that are aforementioned in the bill, which is very troubling.

The Conservatives say that they truly want to make victims a priority. I am in my ninth year here, and I hear this regularly from the other side. We will take them at their word. Instead of photo ops and all the announcements about what they will do, let us get down to business, let us get to work and do it.

The NDP has always supported victims' rights. We will continue to consult victims, victims groups and experts in the field in order to determine how we can best assist the people who are the victims. Members will hear me say many times in this speech that we should work together on this and get this done. Instead of the push and shove that occurs in this place so often, when we talk about victims's rights, we should all agree. Hopefully, we will find a way to get through this together.

With the Conservatives, the devil is always in the details. Therefore, until it goes to committee and there is a fulsome discussion, we will reserve our judgment on the bill. Hopefully, the committee will hear experts and victims. Those are the people who have lived these situations.

The Office of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime is an active participant in Justice Canada's consultations for victims. The suggestion was that we had to have a conclusive and applicable statement, integrated, accessible and simple resources and services that would establish baseline standards across the country. After all, this is the federal Government of Canada and equality before the law across our country is very important. There has to be an inclusion of the definition of “victim”, encompassing all persons who have suffered from crimes committed in Canada, fair, respectful and adaptive rights, something to which we should all relate. Victims should have a voice, the ability to take action, the right to be informed, and, as I said a few moments ago, financial support and protections, psychological support mechanisms, and we should limit the ability for offenders to benefit from their crimes or to reoffend.

At first glance, the bill responds to some of those requests by widening the definition of “victims of crime”, by codifying rights to be protected, to participate and to receive compensation. However, the bill does not designate legal obligations on other stakeholders in the judicial system. It simply provides access to a vague mechanism to file complaints with various federal departments, agencies and organizations that have a role to play in the justice system when victims have their rights infringed.

For example, complaints directed at provincial and territorial organizations, including the police, the Crown and victims' rights organizations, will be processed directly under the appropriate provincial or territorial laws. No specific funds have yet been attributed to the implementation of these mechanisms for examining complaints or to help out the provinces.

Are we creating some kind of two-tier system where the federal government will pay for some of it and the province will have to pay for some of it? This is an example of the kinds of questions we would like to see answered at committee. Maybe we need to have some amendments made to the bill to make it better. Only time will tell.

The NDP very clearly wants victims to have access to the services and supports they deem they need. That would require investment and partnership with the provinces, not just press conferences and some of the hot air we have heard for the last eight years. We recognize that for many victims, having assurances that they can participate in sentencing and parole hearings and being informed of the status of the prosecution are very important steps. That said, we want the government to provide real support and processes that will work, not just measures that it thinks will score political points.

We are looking at the details of the bill very closely. I want to reach across the aisle one more time and say to the government that we are looking at these details and want to work with it on this very important bill.

I have a story I want to tell. Lori Triano-Antidormi is the mother of a murdered child. That child was murdered two blocks from my home. The child was a couple of years old. The daycare worker took the child out for a walk and a woman, who all of us in the community knew was troubled, decided that day that the child contained the soul of her child. She killed the child to release her child to her once again. Obviously, that is a terribly sad story.

However, I want to talk about the strength of this mother. She said, “Not everyone believes the bill will be effective”. She thinks the bill will create false hope for victims. She is not only a victim of a crime, but is now a psychologist, 20-odd years later, so she treats others.

She also said:

My concern is promising [victims] more involvement in a very adversarial system...She says that, right now, victims have no role in a verdict unless they are a witness. “The crown has the final say.” Government change would 'only fuel vengeance.

That is quite a statement for a mother who has lost a child, to have the depth of personality to say that. I have had the good fortune of meeting her.

If the government were to make that change, she is sure it would fuel vengeance in the victim, which from a psychological perspective, her trade being psychology. It does not help the healing and recovery. This is one of the reasons it is important for us to listen to victims of crime, because not all victims of crime are seeking vengeance. They are seeking a better way of dealing with crime in our communities so it does not happen in the first place.

There is another fairly well-known victim. Sheldon Kennedy is a name that has been spoken in this place before. Several victims' advocates were on hand for an announcement, including Sheldon Kennedy, who was sexually abused by his minor league coach. His words were:

I’m not naive to think that we’re going to flip a switch and everything’s going to be better...But being able to have this announcement...is going to start the process of trying to be better at the way we handle victims, not only through the court process, but really understanding the damage that happens to victims.

It is not about what we do with a person in jail; it is what we do to prevent people being victimized in the first place. Therefore, when we are at committee, when we are looking at the bill and talking about the rights of our citizens, we have to take into account how as a society, how as a government, we are going to put the resources into place to prevent these terrible crimes where people, children, are victimized so many times.

As a person who at one point in my life was assaulted by an individual, I know what it feels like to be a victim. It is not pleasant. It is more important that we understand in advance and find those places in society to make the difference so we will not have victims who pay prices they should not have to pay.

[Canada-Honduras Economic Growth and Prosperity Act, June 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the remarks of the member for Brossard—La Prairie about what it would take to make an appropriate deal for the NDP and how we do these particular trade agreements.

There is one story I would add before I ask my question. We had indigenous people from Honduras, Venezuela, Philippines, and Mexico come to my office, as I am the critic for human rights. They talked about how they were pushed off their land by their government. They felt that part of it was because Canadian mining interests were in their country. Our leader, the member for Outremont, was at one of these meetings, and he said that in the next Canadian government, an NDP government, in any trade decisions it makes, one of the lenses it will look through will be that of human rights.

My question for the member, who has just given this eloquent speech, is this: how does he feel being in the House, where we have been legislated to be until midnight, when the NDP is speaking in this debate but the government is not putting up any members at all to defend the trade agreement it is so proud of?

[Canada-Honduras Economic Growth and Prosperity Act, June 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Acadie—Bathurst for the passion he always bring to this place. He reminded me that he and I both come out of the labour movement.

I talked earlier about the human rights situation in Honduras. I also talked about how Mr. Turner, the leader of the Liberals, opposed the original free trade agreement in 1988. Over the next two years, as a result of that free trade agreement, we lost 520,000 manufacturing jobs in Ontario. Between NAFTA and the free trade agreement, we lost 1,500 plants in Hamilton.

If the member thinks in terms of the average wage in Honduras of $5 a day, who will buy Canadian goods?

[Canada-Honduras Economic Growth and Prosperity Act, June 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend's speech. I recall that in 1988, when John Turner, the then leader of the Liberal Party, opposed the original free trade agreement, I agreed with him. Then in 1993—and, by the way, I am so old that I was a candidate in 1993—Mr. Chrétien, who was the leader at the time, posted five days before the election that he would not sign NAFTA, no matter what, because it was a violation of all the rights he believed in. Less than three months into his mandate, the Liberals signed it.

We are used to Liberals blowing hot and cold on trade, but the reality is that if we are to have trade, the idea is to raise all boats in Canada and in the nation we trade with. In the instance of any regime like the one in Honduras, we will not be able to do that unless we use the lever of that trade agreement to get into that agreement human rights and labour law and have them recognized with remedies. The Conservatives will not see the NDP support any deal that does not do that. The Liberals are free to do whatever they wish.