Wayne Marston

[Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, October 4th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for taking the time to take a good, solid look at the bill because protecting Parliament's rights and the power that is vested in Parliament is very concerning. A minister is granted the ability to exercise parliamentary power via bills like this, but if we get to the point where all of the power is vested in the government ministers, our very democracy becomes at risk.

I am not saying that there are not good people sitting on the government benches who would do the best they can, but that will not always necessarily be the case. There are going to be times when we will have people with less good judgment dealing with cases such as this, or a person could get elected who has an ideology that does not match the real feelings of Canadians. In those instances, if the power is vested with the minister to the degree that there is no appeal process, no going back to get that second view or to have the opportunity to give consideration to an extenuating circumstance that might not have been known before, that does a disservice to Canadians.

[Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, October 4th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-43.

In a democracy, due process is the very life blood of our freedoms and the protection of citizens' rights. Political power as such must rest with this Parliament and not with any given minister. Any move that is seen as usurping the power of Parliament has to be, at the very least, questioned in this place.

Bill C-43, I would suggest, is coming on the heels of some very heated criticism of the Conservative government and its proposed refugee reform in Bill C-31. It also cuts at health care, as we hear spoken of in this place. It would seem to us that perhaps the government is trying to change the channel with Bill C-43.

The Conservatives' mantra for the last six years has been pretty much “tough on crime”. To some extent, they have extended that past the point of reality and into a great deal of spin.

When government members speak about the need for Bill C-43, they use some pretty extreme examples of foreign nationals abusing the immigration appeal process, to blow smoke over the fact that this bill is designed to effectively remove checks and balances that permit some flexibility within our system for extraordinary circumstances.

I am a believer in due process and the need for the right to an appeal. Not everybody's story is the same. There is a variety of things that can happen, and I will touch on those as I move forward.

However, I also support the ability for humanitarian and compassionate consideration for those people who, in some terms, might be inadmissible on various grounds: security, humanitarian, international rights violations or organized criminality. There are exceptions to every rule. Many times the whole story needs to be truly evaluated regarding a removal order.

We have had situations in Hamilton. For instance, at least one woman I am aware of, who had a number of children born in Canada, received a removal order. The order was suspended, but had there not been some reconsideration of the facts of that case, a pause for a second look, she and her children would have been forced out of this country. They may, in due course, still be forced to leave, but at least they will have had the benefit of due process and a real evaluation of their situation.

I want to stress that New Democrats do recognize the need for efficient and responsive judicial apparatus for the removal of serious criminals from Canada. Having said that, we do not support closing the door on an appeal process. There has to be balance.

None of us is perfect, nor are the ministers of the government. The reality is that sometimes in some places innocent people, even those not totally innocent, may have been inappropriately moved out of this country too quickly if they did not have the option of appeal.

In my opening remarks I talked about the supremacy of Parliament. We do not support granting the minister the power to unilaterally prohibit a foreign national from becoming a temporary citizen for up to 36 months based on public policy considerations. This is simply too vague and I would suggest unnecessarily too broad an application of ministerial discretion.

We have respect for the ministers of the government, and we understand that in most instances they are doing their due diligence as they see it. However, granting extraordinary powers is not going to be in the best interest of Canada and the rights of Canadians.

New Democrats stand with newcomers who want the government to focus on making the immigration system faster and fairer for the vast majority who have not committed any crimes and who have followed the rules.

Practically every member in this place has stories of people, good souls, who waited in line, filled out the forms and did all of the things that were required of them to gain access to Canada and eventually become a citizen, only to be waiting in suspended animation for years.

We want to be sure that whatever changes are made are fair. When the minister talks about this particular bill, he talks about tough but fair measures and repeatedly emphasizes that it is easy for a non-citizen to avoid deportation. The reality is that one should not commit crimes. That is understandable. That is something we support.

However, Bill C-43 redefines serious criminality for the purpose of access to appeal. I keep coming back to that area of appeal, that area of a last chance. Once a conclusion is made on a final deportation order, Canadians expect us to be absolutely sure of the importance and necessity of removing that person.

I would suggest that this change merits further committee study. We in the NDP will support sending the bill to committee. We understand there is an issue. This is not a circumstance where we are on this side of the House saying that we are just going to oppose blindly. We are going to offer positive suggestions for changes to the bill at committee. We will extend our hand to the government to ensure that whatever bill is put forward will accomplish the job at hand, but protect people's rights in the course of that effort.

The narrowing of circumstances under which humanitarian and compassionate considerations can be taken into account makes the system less flexible. This has already raised concerns from groups advocating for people with mental illnesses, for example, who may not have been in control of themselves at the time a crime was committed. There has to be some consideration for that circumstance.

I have had family members over the years who had various stages of depression or various stages of mental illness. In one case a close relative was medicated for all of her life and was hospitalized for 10 years for a serious situation. At that time she was not in control of who she was. That person by the way was my own mother.

The broader discretionary powers in Bill C-43 would grant the minister the power to issue or revoke a declaration that would prohibit a foreign national from becoming a temporary citizen for up to 36 months. Many people in the community feel that this would go too far, and that is something for the committee to consider.

It is troubling to note that the Conservatives have marketed the bill almost exclusively on its design to speed up the deportation of serious multiple offenders. Could that be to draw attention away from the fact that Bill C-43 would remove an appeal process and would bestow these new and extraordinary discretionary powers to the minister?

This is not a case where decisions should be made by one person. Very serious decisions take place relative to removing someone from our country. These decisions have an impact on a person's life and family. There are occasions where it is absolutely necessary to remove someone, but we want to be sure that on those occasions the person has had due process and an appeal process. When we reach the conclusion that the person must leave, we can do that in clear conscience, knowing the facts and not relying solely on the judgment of the minister.

I am going to skip through part of my speech because I think my time is just about up.

In 1999, the Australian immigration system underwent a reordering with striking similarities to what is before us today. It is often worthwhile to look at another country, particularly a democracy similar to our own. The mistakes that were made in the Australian case were clear and well documented, and for some reason our minister thinks that Canada ought to repeat them.

Previous to 1999, people were protected against deportation if they had been residents of Australia for 10 years or more. However new amendments gave the minister new powers to dismiss appeals without judicial review. Many of those people had arrived in Australia as infants.

That kind of excessive power is what the NDP is concerned about. We are concerned that the appeal process would be shoved aside and these extraordinary powers would be granted to the minister. That would have a terrible effect on people in the community and their view of what life is like in a free country.

[Commissioner for Children and Young Persons in Canada Act, October 2nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I reiterate for the record that the NDP does endorse and support this motion.

In the first speech made, we heard reference to poverty 2000 and the aspirations this House had in those days for eliminating child poverty. Around 1990, I was the chair of the poverty 2000 campaign in Hamilton when it first started and, sadly, we did not reach the goal we were looking at. In many ways, things are much worse than they once were.

Members will be aware that in 1991 Canada ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The convention, among other things, charges the current government with the responsibility of taking all available measures to make sure that children's rights are respected, protected and fulfilled. We heard in the parliamentary secretary's speech reference made to the government's belief that this is taking place today, though we have some disagreement about that.

When countries ratify such agreements, they agree to review the laws relating to children, which involves assessing social services, the legal and health and education systems, as well as levels of funding of these services. Governments are obliged to take all necessary steps to ensure that the minimum standards set by the convention are met.

The government was late in responding to questions that were posed in March by the United Nations committee reviewing Canada's participation in this protocol. The questions were to be answered by July 2, but the answers were in fact delivered to the UN committee just last Friday. This week in Geneva, the committee is reviewing Canada's record and we anticipate a response shortly. However, it was very troubling for us that Canada took all that time to respond to those questions. There are people out there, with perhaps a more cynical view than my own, who are concerned that the Conservatives' reasons for not responding earlier are that they did not want their response open to public scrutiny before they were delivered to the UN, and perhaps to face the potential questions that might have been asked internally within Canada.

As the government's response to the UN committee suggests, it does not track the numbers of children under state care. People have asked for and tried to get from the government just how many are under state care. One has to wonder whether it does not have the available information to work with. The office of a commissioner would do precisely that. It would accumulate the necessary information regarding the services provided, the number of children receiving them and the various levels of need in our country. It is important that people stop and ask themselves if that is not a role that a commissioner would offer to Canadians and to the government in support of the work of the government. In some senses, when the Conservatives took office we had the Parliamentary Budget Officer put into place to take an arm's length view of government operations, someone who could report to the Canadian people and the House. This would be something similar to protect the rights of children and to ensure that we meet the obligations that we have signed up to.

The international agreements that Canada is party to are significant, given they have been negotiated and put in place for the benefit of children in this case, or in other protocols to prevent torture and other aspects. The agreements are important because they reflect Canada's international reputation for how we treat our own citizenry in the public context. We can say, as a government, that we are doing these things but having a commissioner would add to the veracity of those statements.

Federal and provincial ministers are responsible for social policy, as just one example. However, they have not met in five years despite the fact there is evidence out there, which we believe, that children are falling through the cracks.

On September 25, the Government of Canada was repeatedly taken to task in Geneva by the UN committee on the rights of the child for its incoherence about how the federal government and the provincial programs actually help children, and for the lack of any evidence of a clear strategy. Committee members said that Canada's biggest challenge is to bring together the various parts of its political system to implement the convention throughout Canada and to improve the conditions for our most vulnerable children.

One could ask: Would that not be a role suited to a commissioner, as has been proposed by our friend from Westmount—Ville-Marie? I think so.

The Canadian response to the committee cites that first nations children are 4.2 times more likely to be investigated by child welfare officials than non-aboriginal children, and that this is driven by neglect linked to poverty, substance abuse, social isolation and domestic violence.

The government claims that coordination between the federal and provincial and territorial governments occurs, but the reality is that the relationship is between low-level officials who exchange information and call it coordination.

Current mechanisms for coordination serve to kind of grey the area around what is happening more than actually bringing things to the fore. In fact it could be argued that they protect government decisions from public scrutiny. They do not serve children.

Again, would this not be a place to insert a commissioner to help us all deal together to ensure the work is done?

It has been said in this place, and I do not disagree, that all members of this House have the best interests of children at heart. This would be another valuable tool, a force to pull it together in a way that would ensure the best possible delivery.

The government has claimed, repeatedly, in public that the universal child care benefit is designed specifically to help families pay for child care. In the section on poverty, in the recent response to the UN committee on the rights of children, the benefit is presented as a poverty reduction program. At $100 a month, it does neither effectively and most of the money goes to non-poor families.

Again, would this not be a place where a commissioner could insert himself or herself into the process to advise the government to make the appropriate changes?

There are various tax credits that we hear spoken of, such as the child tax credit, the fitness and arts credits and RESPs that benefit the wealthy more than the people who are below the poverty line.

There are a lot of places where a commissioner could be inserted.

Canada's 2010 report to the UN universal periodic review states that the principal intergovernmental forum for consultation on human rights is a body called the continuing committee of officials on human rights.

Most people inside and outside of government are not aware that there is such a body in Canada, but there is. The body meets twice yearly, behind closed doors, with no public reporting. It is mid-level bureaucracy that lacks enforcement authority.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development, in her previous life, released a report called, Reaching for the Top, which strongly recommended that the Government of Canada create a national office of child and youth health. She said:

There is a lack of the analysis as to how and how much children's rights have been achieved in the state and how progress has been made.

I apologize; the parliamentary secretary did not say that. Marta Mauras Perez, vice-chair of the committee on the rights of the child, said:

What we're telling you is really to raise the bar...

I have raised that question in this place. We are being challenged by the United Nations committee to do a better job, and in my view, and in my party's view, a commissioner would be a great asset.

[Commissioner for Children and Young Persons in Canada Act, October 2nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, New Democrats will be supporting the motion by the member for Westmount—Ville-Marie. We have a concern though, and I know I will hear moans from the government side.

Of late, with regard to human rights and responsive obligations to the United Nations, there has been a certain amount of push back from the government side or concerns with the United Nations. In my view, the commissioner's role would be to oversee Canada's response to our obligations to the United Nations with regard to the children of Canada. We would anticipate that the person who might get appointed to such a commission would not come from a rights-based background.

I would like the member's response to that.

[Helping Families In Need Act, September 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely right on the importance of protecting the family as a family unit. We think in terms of the mother or the father, but we have to broaden it out to make sure that the supports are there over the time they are needed.

In the case of my son, we did know about it for 28 days, but it was actually a year and a half before we saw him return home. That is different. The other case I spoke about was one where the young man was murdered. The family was in turmoil for three and a half years.

I do not know where the beginning or the end is, but as I spoke about working in committee, making an appropriate amendment might well be in order for something like this, and for the critic to sit down with the government side and say, “We have a progressive amendment here. Let us see what we can do together”.

[Helping Families In Need Act, September 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly do not have any problems with foreign workers being brought in when their expertise is required.

However, there was recently a year when we had about 300,000 people immigrate to Canada and about 240,000 temporary workers. Something is wrong with that equation.

The people I talked to in Nova Scotia were talking about the fact that their people were going west, being chased out of the province by these changes, and that they had little alternative but to turn to foreign workers.

Foreign workers in many instances are taken advantage of by some unscrupulous employers. They are paid less money. They do not feel they have the protections of the Government of Canada, although they are entitled to them when they are guests in our country.

However, we have workers who are willing to support those industries if they are allowed to stay in their communities and to hold them together.

In Nova Scotia they are scared to death of the aging of the population, because all of the young people have left. They believe the result will be endless retirement homes and seniors homes, with no young people generating and stimulating that economy to keep it working.

[Helping Families In Need Act, September 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today as a member of the official opposition. Our role as we see it is to criticize and critique the government side. This is one of those instances in which it is important to give reasonable credit to the government for this initiative. I was surprised that the government members are not taking advantage of the opportunity to explain to Canadians the significance of what they are doing.

Today there is controversy around EI changes. There are a number of areas where we would disagree quite heatedly with the government, but this is not one of those. One of the things I prided myself on when I came to this place was bringing my own life experience here to put a face to some of these issues. I am going to tell three stories. I told one in the House once before.

In 1949, my sister was murdered and at that time society was greatly different than it is today. One of the members of my family was arrested for a period of time and then subsequently proved he was not associated with the crime. Later there was an inquest and the ultimate outcome was that a 10-year-old girl had died at the hands of person or persons unknown, when in fact we did have a family member who we later learned had a severe mental illness and we could satisfy ourselves that in all likelihood that person was the perpetrator of the crime.

The impact of that situation was on the family and my father in particular because of where he worked at the time and the amount of time he needed to be off the job. For a time he was questioned and detained. Fortunately, he worked for the Canadian National Railway, which was relatively understanding of this, but there are other employers who would not be. There is no doubt he lost wages, but at least he retained his job and his position, even when at one point in time he was under suspicion for the crime.

The second story happened to me. In 2001, my 30-something-year-old son disappeared for 28 days and we had no idea where he went. He was living with my former wife at the time. He had a little apartment there, and he was a musician. When I went to check the apartment, his drum kit was gone, his guitar was gone, his computers were gone. Everything had been sold.

For 28 days we were on edge. In my case I had an employer at the time who was very understanding of the circumstances and I had the latitude to come and go as I wished. In the case of our son it turned out that he had developed stomach cancer and had headed to the United States to see if he could find treatment. That was a long time ago now and fortunately we reconnected with him.

He was a man who simply felt he did not want to burden his family. Getting back to what we're seeing in this legislation, he was worried that he was going to cost us money. Ultimately when people go to the United States for health care it does cost money, but we worked our way through that. The good news is that he survived with a treatment there that worked. However, had I not had an employer who was sympathetic to the situation, I would have had to rely on some recourse such as this. Again, I give direct credit to the government for doing this.

I have been involved with the third story since being elected. In Hamilton there was a young man named Billy Mason who went missing. The word was that someone escorted him out of an apartment with a shotgun. Donna Dixon, Billy's mother, came to me for help. Billy was in his early 20s and the police were quite sure that he had been murdered. Over the course of time she and three other families in Hamilton who had missing young people kept pursuing this.

I have talked in this place about the need for a DNA databank for missing persons.

Coming back to Donna, the mother of this young man, and the cost to her, she is off her job. I talked to her recently and she was getting some victim's help. It was ultimately found out through the confession of one guy that another person had indeed murdered her son and disposed of his body. She had to go to the court case, day in and day out, and listen to that. By the way, that individual was convicted, went to prison and he killed another man in prison.

Aside from that, there was the turmoil and anguish this mother was living through when her son was missing. There was the terror of his never coming home. We had annual gatherings, candlelight vigils, where we hoped that Billy would return home.

People are living with that on one side and then on the other side they are living with the fact of their financial burden. Then the police finally come and say, “By the way, Mrs. Dixon, we have some answers for you. We have the perpetrator. There is going to be a trial.”

I believe she works in a daycare centre, but she is going to have spend all of that time going to the trial. As a mother she wants to see the evidence and the trial, to have closure. However, there is again the financial cost.

Oftentimes we hear great stories about all the legal bills someone has to pay when they get into a situation, but we forget about the level lower aspects of these things where a person is facing a loss of income. If they have other children, there are expenses around daycare and so many other things to be considered.

When it comes to employment insurance in this country, the government should reach across the aisle to us because, right now, major mistakes have been made with employment insurance. The government should reach across the aisle and we should come together and discuss what we can do to make employment insurance work for Canadians and protect them in times like these, or in times of catastrophic illness, like we had with my son. We could find a better way to do this.

I say this because it is not all about money; it is about dignity. I went on a little tour this summer to the south shore of Nova Scotia. I went to Cape Sable Island, Port Mouton Bay, and Bridgewater. I also went to Charlottetown, and then to Fredericton and Saint John, New Brunswick. I listened to the people there who had many concerns about the changes that are taking place with EI.

These people are hard-working Canadians, who were saying that they did not have anything else to go to when the fishery closes down. Then there are people on the other side of it, those who have small businesses. They were saying that the changes to EI were liable to force a lot of people out of the communities, so that when next season came around they would not have people for the job. They want to know what they are going to do.

There is a certain expertise that comes even from collecting crops or working in the fishery, or whatever someone is doing. The expertise that is developed over time will be lost. In that area, the government has made critical mistakes that will have an impact.

The government is saying that after a certain period of time, people will have to accept a job for 80% of their salary. Well, they accept that job and then they are out of work the next year. The next time comes around and they again accept a job at 80%, and then again. Is that not going to encourage some employers to say, “If I keep hiring different people, I can pay them less and less”? Will that not depress wages?

That is just an example of a conversation we could have had across this aisle before the government legislated and made changes. There is a feeling in this place that we are segmented, that we do not come together at those times when we should.

Some of the committees of the House work reasonably well at times. However, the purpose of our committees in this place is to take a piece of legislation and make it better, not to take a piece of legislation and destroy it. Both sides have to have confidence in one another to make that work.

The last time the government was planning significant changes to EI was back in the 1990s when the Liberals destroyed unemployment insurance and made it into employment insurance and started segmenting our country in an unbelievable way. Workers could not quality. My friend from Nickel Belt is acknowledging that.

We can and should do better in this place. We should be working together.

I have been pleased to talk a little bit about our views on employment insurance. It would have been nice to hear more from the government side on it.

[Helping Families In Need Act, September 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is not often that we are in agreement with the government side but this happens to be one of those times.

However, I find it very ironic that, while the NDP is finding itself in the position of trying to explain the bill, we are not hearing a lot of input from the Conservative side of the House.

There is a side to the bill that needs some clarification. We are talking about federal jurisdiction here. Is the member aware of any process, procedure or any investigation of whether the provinces will be like-minded and move on this? It is important because of that jurisdiction.

[Children's Rights, September 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Canadian government was hauled on the carpet by a UN committee for its poor record on child rights.

The committee found too many children in Canada were falling through the cracks. Poverty amongst aboriginal, immigrant and disabled children is not just significant but is growing.

The UN is challenging Canada, as one of the top economies in the world, to rise to the occasion. When will the government step up to that challenge? What will it take for the Canadian government to make Canadian children a true priority?

[Children's Rights, September 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, according to yesterday's Canadian Press story, the Canadian government was “hauled on the carpet” by the United Nations for its poor record on child rights.

It is a shame that things have come to this as Canada once was considered a leader on child rights, but not anymore, not with the Conservatives.

According to the OECD, Canada ranks very low in terms of access, quality and funding of early childhood development and care. On average developed countries spend twice what Canada does in these same areas. In Canada, 50% of children with disabilities lack access to the aids they need simply because they cannot afford them. Finally, out of 30 countries, Canada has been ranked 20th in terms of child poverty.

How can the government stand up in the House, as it often does, declaring to the Canadian people that it adequately cares for our most vulnerable children when the actual record so clearly demonstrates otherwise?