Petitions  Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I have the pleasure to present a petition signed by over 150 people from my riding of Etobicoke Centre. The petitioners urge the government to remedy the recent budget by making the physical activity tax credit fairer and more inclusive by including cultural activities such as dance and ballet.

Petitions  Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I have the pleasure to present a petition signed by over 100 constituents from my riding of Etobicoke Centre. The petitioners demand that Parliament pass Motion No. 19 calling for the lifting of visitor visas for the following seven EU member states: Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

Petitions  Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition calling on the government to adopt private member's Motion No. 99 which would lift visitor visa requirements for Croatian nationals visiting Canada for business trips and family visits such as weddings and funerals. Adopting Motion No. 99 would bring our visitor visa regime in line with that of the United Kingdom which lifted visitor visa restrictions for Croatia back in March.

Foreign Affairs  Mr. Speaker, last week Canada was missing in action at a UN contact group emergency meeting on the crisis in Somalia, which did not meet about the drought but about the looming civil war. The Somali transitional government has 17 ministers and parliamentarians with Canadian passports and hundreds of Somali Canadians are volunteering on the ground.

Foreign Affairs  Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. Do we want a radical fundamentalist takeover in Somalia? Does the Prime Minister need to see images on our front pages of human carnage and children with distended bellies to act? In February, Canadian parliamentarians sent an appeal to the Prime Minister to call an international donors conference for Somalia to organize a rapid reconstruction team.

Aboriginal Affairs  Mr. Speaker, we are not buying those glass beads. With the slash and burn of Kelowna, the Conservatives showed their true faces. The member for Saskatoon—Wanuskewin blamed natives, who died of exposure when dumped outside of city boundaries. Now the member for Prince Albert shows what Conservatives take for sarcastic humour with his “Marxist paradise” and “you can't scalp me, I haven't much hair” comments.

Aboriginal Affairs  Mr. Speaker, after trying to dismiss the Kelowna accord as a fiction during the public accounts committee meeting yesterday, the member for Prince Albert insinuated that the first nations' quality of life was not an issue of resources or in his words “money”. First nations' problems were that they were living in some sort of “Marxist paradise”.

George Hull Centre  Mr. Speaker, more than six million, or one in five Canadians, is affected by mental illness. It is even more devastating when the person affected is a child. The George Hull Centre for Children and Families in my riding of Etobicoke Centre has earned a distinguished reputation for its exemplary spectrum of children's mental health services and support systems for their families for the past 20 years.

Education Benefits Act  moved for leave to introduce Bill C-264, an Act respecting education benefits for spouses and children of certain deceased federal enforcement officers. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to introduce a private member's bill entitled an act respecting educational benefits for spouses and children of certain deceased law enforcement officers.

Citizenship and Immigration  Mr. Speaker, last week it was the use of law enforcement officers to grab kids in schools as ransom for parents. Today it is trying to force the same children to choose at deportation hearings who gets to stay, father or mother, tearing families apart. The government said that children would not be used as pawns.

Somalia  Mr. Speaker, a famine's death march does not wait. Over the past months, the 100,000 strong Somali Canadian community has been in anguish. In southern Somalia, surface water has disappeared, boreholes have dried up and over 80% of livestock has died. The UN reports that only 20% of an emergency $426 million appeal has been raised and that eight million people are in immediate danger.

Criminal Code  moved for leave to introduce Bill C-254, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (hate propaganda). Mr. Speaker, I want to table, for a second time, my private member's bill, an act to amend the Criminal Code regarding hate propaganda. The purpose of the bill is to expand the definition of an identifiable group under the hate propaganda provisions of the Criminal Code to include any section of the public distinguished by its gender.

Darfur  Mr. Chair, we do not like to see a UN peace making force, but should such a force not be sent, will the government commit to at least minimally continue with the enabling military resources we have provided to the African Union AMIS mission to date? Having provided those resources for a transitional period and knowing and having learned the lessons of what was not going right and what we could improve on, will the government continue to provide the resources?

Darfur  Yes, Mr. Chair, I believe that we should have another plan in place in case the United Nations does not step forward expeditiously. We have shown, notwithstanding the denigration of the African Union AMIS forces that we have heard from the opposite side during the debate, that with the limited resources they had they did not fully stop the killing, but it went from 10,000 a month to perhaps 1,000 a month.

Darfur  Mr. Chair, the member opposite said he was listening quite carefully. If he were listening, he would have heard three to six years as opposed to five or six. Notwithstanding that, yes, it will take time. I am not referring to the killings. If he had listened to what I said, there are three component parts here.