CANADA-PANAMA ECONOMIC GROWTH AND PROSPERITY ACT  Mr. Speaker, the hon. member misses the point when we talk about multilateral. When we talk about multilateral agreements, the point is to involve as many nations as possible to remove artificial barriers to trade. Multilateral by its very nature means that we would attempt to wo

CANADA-PANAMA ECONOMIC GROWTH AND PROSPERITY ACT  Mr. Speaker, again, the Liberals as well as the Conservatives miss the point of multilateral agreements. Multilateral agreements tend to invite all parties in to try improve them. However, if the member is asking me to name one country that I personally think we should look at e

CANADA-PANAMA ECONOMIC GROWTH AND PROSPERITY ACT  Mr. Speaker, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster was doing very good work in trying to introduce a private member's bill to guarantee that Canadian companies would respect the same standards abroad that we would expect them to respect at home. Unfortunately, the examples I gav

Royal Canadian Mounted Police  Mr. Speaker, it is clear the RCMP detail assigned to the Prime Minister is struggling with serious problems of harassment, intimidation and discrimination. In a recently leaked internal report on the Prime Minister's 117-person security detail, the problems identified were so se

Privacy  Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister of Public Safety said he saw no problem in eavesdropping on Canadian travellers. The minister claimed that “the privacy rights of law-abiding Canadians are respected at all times”, and he compared Canadian travellers worried about privacy to th

Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act  Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak tonight to this important bill, Bill C-15, more commonly referred to as the military justice act. It is a bill that should have been dealt with Parliament long ago, but was delayed numerous times by the vagaries of the Canadian electoral system.

Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act  Mr. Speaker, there is a colleague of his on the other side who likes to start his responses by saying, “Utter nonsense”. I would like to quote that hon. member. I gave the example of the bill last fall dealing with the independence of military judges. In that instance we worked

Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act  Mr. Speaker, I am not sure I thank my colleague for that question, because I have already expanded about as much as I can. I would like to go back to what he said at the very beginning. It has been my tendency not to take the bait from the other side when they say we do not supp

Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act  Mr. Speaker, it is obviously late in the evening and late in the debate. I always like the first part of the question better than the last part, because I am not sure I can remember the last part of questions as they come to me. Perhaps it is important to make notes. I always sa

Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act  Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question, because it is the same thing I was musing about in my speech. It is hard to understand why some things are in the bill and some things are not, and what standard was used to make decisions about what should have been retained

Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act  Mr. Speaker, that is a very interesting question, because I think my colleague is onto something. The government came up with a bill to label some prisoners as vexatious and problematic and to not accept complaints on the same basis. Maybe there is something about the idea that

Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act  Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member has more to say about the new-found respect for processes and procedures that the Conservatives are professing on the other side. I notice that they made reference to the speech by the member for Burnaby—New Westminster on the budget where the

Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act  Mr. Speaker, I will have a chance in just a few minutes to state our own position on the legislation. There have been many reports suggesting reforms to accountability in the RCMP over the past six or seven years. This proposed bill does not appear to align specifically with any

Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act  Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-42. I could not agree more with the minister when he said that we should have had this legislation in the House much sooner. There is an urgency for the public in terms of confidence in the RCMP. There is an issue for the RCMP ra

Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act  Mr. Speaker, there are two further concerns in the area of sexual harassment. One of them is that the RCMP commissioner has launched a gender audit within the RCMP to determine what kinds of problems he is going to need to address. We are going ahead with the legislation in the a