Wayne Marston

[Black History Month, February 1st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, this year during Black History Month we mark the anniversary of the act that abolished the slave trade in the British Empire. Canadians played a critical role within the British Empire beginning in 1793 by passing laws that began the abolition of slavery in Upper Canada, helping to establish the Underground Railroad.

This month is a time to reflect on the contributions that black Canadians have made at the forefront of Canada's successes as a nation in so many fields at home and abroad.

In the past weeks we have seen a unique and long overdue celebration of a man from my native province of New Brunswick, Willie O'Ree, the first black man to play in the NHL.

Willie dropped the puck at the all star game this past weekend. The Boston Bruins honoured him in January at a celebration marking 50 years since his first NHL game. He was recently honoured in his hometown of Fredericton, New Brunswick, with its newest arena being named Willie O'Ree Place.

I will be celebrating Black History Month in Hamilton at the John C. Holland awards in honour of the Hamilton man by the same name who was the first African Canadian to win an award for his humanitarian work.

[Death Penalty, January 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by reading the motion moved by the member for York West. I think it is important because we have just heard the government talk around this motion and allude to things that are not contained in it. For the benefit of the Canadian people I would like to read it:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should reaffirm that: (a) there is no death penalty in Canada; (b) it is the policy of the government to seek clemency, on humanitarian grounds, for Canadians sentenced to death in foreign countries; and (c) Canada will continue in its leadership role in promoting the abolition of the death penalty internationally.

There is not one single word in the motion about bringing anybody back to Canada. If anybody has been getting that message from the government, it is the wrong message.

When I decided to run for this place I considered what I had to offer. As with many people here, it comes from personal life experience. I made a commitment to the people of my riding of Hamilton East—Stoney Creek that I would bring their message, the average person's message, to this place instead of bringing the government's message to them. I have worked hard to do that.

Mr. Speaker, you are going to find in my remarks some very personal things. I am going to pause for a second. This may sound strange, but I say to my sister Audrey in Alberta, sit down, Audrey, you will understand in a moment.

Oftentimes, in fact most times when we rise in this place, we talk about the privilege that it is to stand and speak to an issue and the pleasure at times it is to speak to an issue. I cannot say that about Motion No. 411. I can speak to its intent, but I am deeply troubled that we find ourselves in a position of having to debate a matter that was supposedly put to rest some 32 years ago in an off-handed fashion.

This House decided at that time that it did not support the right of the state to put one of its citizens to death. Let us not talk death penalty; you are killing somebody; you are putting them to death. That ended capital punishment in Canada. As others have stated, it put us at the forefront working for the abolition of capital punishment around the world, our rightful position.

Logically, following the decision, the government of Canada adopted as policy that it would seek clemency on humanitarian grounds, as in the motion, for Canadians condemned to death in other countries. That was the right position and it remains the right position today. It is also consistent with the views of most Canadians.

Personally, I feel it is an affront to Parliament that the Conservative government has taken upon itself to start a change that is so diametrically opposite to what Canadians believe and what Canadians want.

On a regular basis, as other speakers have said, DNA evidence and other evidence have thrown conviction after conviction out of court and returned people to the streets after six, eight, ten years in prison, and some of them had been on death row. How can we look at something like that and not respond? Often the only reason these people were in jail in the first place was that they were poor. I alluded to that in a debate earlier today.

I am going to go to that place that I just warned my sister Audrey about and I am going to get emotional. In 1949 my sister was strangled to death. My father was accused of the murder of that child. Over a period of investigation it became clear that another member of our family, who was mentally ill, had committed that crime. Our family never quite recovered from that in many ways. My father died an alcoholic at 51 years of age as the result of living with the system. He was poor. He was a labourer on the railway, and he did the best he could for his family. Simply because he happened to be the last person to go in to say goodbye to that child in the morning, and she was covered to her eyes, he was accused that crime.

I want to put the timeframe in perspective. As I grew to be a child of about 10 years of age, it was during the time of Steven Truscott, a young man who was taken away and, at first, sentenced to death. At my age of 10 or 11, of course it was a frightening thing to hear. Coincidentally, my father had been picked up for impaired driving and was in our local jail in Perth-Andover, which is close to Plaster Rock, where I am from.

I went with some people to post bail. It was a small-town jail. There were a couple of cells in the place. The person who was maintaining that jail offered me the opportunity to see a jail cell. Just a year before, I had learned what happened to my sister. It had been hidden from me for a number of years. When I walked into the jail cell, I looked up and saw a ring in the ceiling. I was standing on a trap door. The person, not knowing the family history, said that this was where they dropped a person through to hang them. It struck me to the heart, to the bone and to my very soul. That was the door my father would have dropped through had the system failed him.

We have to step back from all the rhetoric. We have to step back from where the government is trying to take us and understand the humanity of what we are doing. We have to understand that in the prisons there are many people who are totally innocent of the crimes. Many times they are there simply because they cannot afford a defence.

My notes have kind of gone out the window here, but let me say that there is a built-in discrimination in our society and even more particularly south of the border. Let us look at the fact that those who are on death row are more often than not poor and even more often than not black. If we look at the correlation that happens between who it is that commits crimes, we see that the black race and the white race commit crimes fairly equally, but when there is a white victim, more often people are put to death.

I am not going to bother with statistics, as I am a little bit emotionally past the point where I could deliver them anyway.

In the U.S., though, an important point is that 53 people were executed in 2006. That makes for a total of just over 1,000 since 1977, but what is happening even in the U.S. is that people are starting to take another look at this. They are starting to understand more clearly, because of DNA evidence, a system of computers and better investigative processes, that more people can disprove the charges against them. Thank God. Many of them have spent years on death row and many will be freed.

However, even so, called into question today in the southern states and many states where lethal injections are used is the failure of that mechanism to work properly. When we start talking about hanging, the method that was used in this country, we need to do some reading about its effects.

I am very close to concluding my remarks. I will say only that Canada has been a leader on many fronts and I do not believe that there is anything more fundamental than the protection of human life and having the grace to say that we are not going to take that life.

I have no sympathy for a criminal who kills. I have no sympathy for a person who commits rape or harms children in any way. However, I still do not believe it is the right of the state to take a life. We can put them away and lock them up. Again, I want to stress that nobody was talking about bringing them back to Canada.

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, January 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly take the hon. member at his word for the process he was talking about and the information that was provided. I agree with him that the certificate has been around for 30 years, but its intent has been misdirected. That certificate was never intended to be used in cases of terrorist activity.

Our party is very clear. We still believe that within the Criminal Code of this country there are mechanisms and resources that we can turn to to deal with this.

Individuals are not being told what the evidence is against them. The question of facing their accusers and national security could be addressed in another manner. Very clearly, it is important that people and their legal representatives be allowed to see the evidence and that they be allowed the opportunity to access the most fundamental aspect of justice, and that is to face their accusers and to defend themselves against what may well be false allegations.

There are many times that people in the U.S. have been rendered to other countries. We know that in the justice system in the U.S., many times people are imprisoned because they are poor and they cannot afford proper representation. As I alluded to in my remarks earlier, my family faced such a thing. It leaves a mark.

I will not call into question the motivation of any member of the House. I am sure members are giving their best judgment. I just ask them to err on the side of caution and the side of justice.

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, January 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by making a statement, which is that suspicion is not guilt.

This past summer I had the occasion to travel to Edmonton to speak to some new Canadians and then some well-established Canadians from the Muslim community.

I was sitting with a gentleman who had been in Canada for 30 years. He had been a contributing member to the society in Edmonton for 30 years and was well respected in his community and in the broader community. He was telling me how, following 9/11, investigative officers from CSIS would drop by and speak to him about all the money that he was sending home, the money he had been sending home for 30 years to raise the standard of living for his family in his homeland, a commitment that we would all do.

In fact, I myself celebrated an anniversary recently of 40 years moving from New Brunswick to Ontario. In some people's minds that is like coming to a new world, at least it was in the sixties. Some of the good Canadians from the east coast would send some of their money back home in the same way. I was never questioned but perhaps I was fortunate that it was a different time or that I had different colour skin than the other gentleman.

What is happening to us as a country is a tragedy. It is an affront to our democratic processes that has occurred in the reaction that has followed 9/11. It has followed the Americans' approach to 9/11 and the Americans' fight on terrorism.

I rise to speak on security certificates, but I wish to heaven I would never have to do this again. I believe, along with the rest of the NDP caucus, that Bill C-3 continues to fail Canada and Canadians.

Canadians are not more free because of Bill C-3 and they certainly are not feeling any more secure. Furthermore, the NDP opposes Bill C-3 because, as we have heard repeatedly in this place, there are already measures in our Criminal Code to deal with the activities, to deal with crimes against Canada and crimes against Canadians. Security certificates themselves fail Canadians in a grand fashion.

A security certificate does not allow the presentation of evidence that would support the accusations against a person who is accused or suspected of terrorist activity. Instead, the security certificate simply removes the individual from Canada and in doing so, in my opinion and as expressed earlier by the member for Trinity—Spadina, it fails Canadians. If the individual is actually guilty, then a process should be enacted in this country to deal with that guilt.

A security certificate does not offer or support justice for either the accused or for Canadians. In fact, security certificates in themselves are an affront to Canada's national sense of what justice is. If the accused is guilty, the person should be charged and tried under our Criminal Code and the appropriate penalties applied and then the person should be deported, but not held in detention without the opportunity to face his or her accusers or see the evidence against him or her.

There is another side to this. The people in detention who proclaim their innocence and have not had a chance to speak to it in a court of law, the day comes when they are found to be innocent. If they had gone through our Criminal Code procedures, our courts, our justice system, they would have had a right to return to Canadian life, to pick up where they had left off, pick up the pieces. But they have spent years upon years in detention and again they have not been able to see the evidence against them, to refute the evidence, the most fundamental tenets of our justice system. That has put a chill through our country.

I alluded to the individual in Edmonton, Alberta, but there are more cases than that individual. Talk to Mr. Almalki who was detained in a cell which was more like a coffin for three months. We all know the case of Maher Arar. We all know when we fail, and we are setting ourselves up for failure again.

I am pausing because I tend sometimes to get a little emotional. I was raised to take great pride in our justice system, the fact that people can face their accusers and walk away. I am going to be speaking later today about a family incident and I will give a small piece of it here to make the point of what I understand is our justice system.

My sister was strangled to death as a 10-year-old child. My father was mistakenly accused of that crime. We were a poor family. A great fear went through us that we would not be able to save my father from those accusations. Later he was proved to be innocent and there was a mentally disturbed person in the family who was dealt with and spent time in an appropriate hospital following that. Let us consider for a moment the place we are putting people, where they cannot face their accusers and they cannot refute the evidence, and how terrible that is.

From time to time I will do my best to take a breath, but it is so crucially important to the sense of justice that all Canadians have that the people in this place pause, stop the rhetoric and think about the deterioration of our justice system if we gerrymander process, to put in place a process like this that is so ugly and disgusting. I cannot understand how anybody in this place could support it.

Our Criminal Code is among the best. Our justice system is among the best in the world. Canada will send people to other parts of the world to teach them our justice system. We should keep that pride. One of the few ways we can keep that pride is to ensure individual rights and the rights for people to face their accusers and the evidence against them.

For the NDP, the security certificate is an affront to civil liberties. There is a sense in my gut of how wrong this is that I just cannot put it aside.

We understand with Bill C-3 that the Conservative federal government is trying to address a flaw in the process that was pointed out by the Supreme Court. It is far more than a flaw. What it is trying to do today is move around something that was a violation of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

We should think about rights and freedoms for a moment. We should think about the fact that there are individuals detained in our country. Their freedom has been taken away and they have no rights. We have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Imagine the setting aside of well respected, fundamental terms of justice and how that was so cavalierly done. The detainees have not seen any of the critical evidence against them. Their legal representation has not seen the evidence against them.

Let us just say that tomorrow, for whatever reason, it is deemed acceptable that they return to Canadian society, that there had been an error. They will always be besmirched by the fact that they have been detained. They will always live beside neighbours who doubt them. If they returned to their country of origin, many of the countries those folks would return to are countries where we know torture is committed. It is time for our country to take a strong stand for the liberty, for the human rights of our citizens and guests in our country, as well.

[Questions on the Order Paper, January 28th, 2008]

With respect to the creation and implementation of a national, searchable DNA Human Remains Index and a DNA Missing Persons databank: (a) what is the government’s position on a DNA Human Remains Index and a DNA Missing Persons databank; (b) does the government have a timeline to implement a DNA Human Remains Index and a DNA Missing Persons databank and, if so, when; (c) does the government plan to bring the issue before Parliament or any of its committees and, (i) if so, when, and to which committees, (ii) if not, why not; (d) what studies and evaluations about a DNA Human Remains Index and a DNA Missing Persons databank have been undertaken, requested or commissioned by the government; and (e) if studies have been undertaken, (i) what individuals, departments or organizations undertook these studies, (ii) what is the cost of these studies and (iii) what are the findings and recommendations of these studies?

[Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, December 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I was interested to hear the member for Parkdale--High Park talk about high interest rates and their impact.

In my community of Hamilton, and in Hamilton East particularly, I have been talking to people regarding the impact on companies. I had the owner of one company say that by December he would be finished, which would mean 276 jobs lost and that was unless the dollar dropped by 15%.

I presume the same impact is happening in Toronto.

[Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, December 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the question goes to the heart, I think, of one of the significant reasons for poverty in Canada. When a person has had the good fortune, the luck--because it is not due to the rules any more--to actually make it onto employment insurance, the number of weeks have been cut back. The end result is that those people who are unable to move on at some point wind up on welfare. They end up on social service assistance programs.

One of the reasons it is not spoken about that often is that the change was part of the offloading. The Liberal plan was to offload responsibilities for certain services. This was done to move the burden from the income tax base and put the load on the property tax base. As a result, we see the municipalities bearing the burden.

However, those people who are on social assistance do not count toward the unemployment figures because they are not looking for work. In the scheme of things, if we were to really look at the unemployment numbers of our country, we would see that they are at least three times higher because of those who are not measured.

[Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, December 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, that lights a spark, because that member with that plan had a plan for Kyoto too and that did not work out so well for our country. That was the government across the way, which for 13 years practically destroyed the Canada health and social transfer system.

The Liberal government destroyed EI. It was changed from unemployment insurance that people could count on, whereby 85% of the workers who were laid off and lost their jobs could count on something to help them. Now we are at a point where that is at 40% nationally. In Hamilton, we are running at 22%. That is a disgraceful record.

I anticipate the same failure the Liberals had with Kyoto.

[Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, December 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would be glad to comment on the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. When we are talking about the realm of investment, it is not investment from this federal government, sad to say. The owner, Mr. Young, has made a significant investment in the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and we look forward to the Grey Cup coming our way soon.

[Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007, December 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, prior to answering the direct question, I would like to speak about my community for a moment. Hamilton itself has an infrastructure deficit of $4 billion. We have a very old sewer system that is in significant trouble and is causing us huge problems each and every year.

However, let us take a look at the deficit in sport, whether it is in the physical structures, where we could invest in and build those facilities to encourage youth to come back and take part in day to day activities, the kinds of structures that help our athletes when they are planning their goals. We have the Beijing Olympics before us and the Winter Olympics are coming up. There is so much investment needed for the actual athletes themselves in their preparation.

As for those programs that we draw from and in which we develop those athletes to give them that opportunity to represent Canada on the world stage, all of that has gone by the way. The fiscal capacity has been reduced to the point where, if we are not investing in our sports facilities and our sports individuals at this time, the crisis that is going to happen will push this even further down the list. It is a tragedy to see the loss of that fiscal capacity.