Hon. James S. Cowan (Leader of the Opposition):

Honourable senators, on behalf of the official opposition in the Senate, I want to begin by extending our very best wishes to His Excellency the Governor General on his inaugural Speech from the Throne.

I would also like to extend our warm congratulations to you, Your Honour, as you continue to serve as presiding officer of this chamber. One of the side benefits of occasions such as this is the opportunity to say publicly how much we appreciate your service to the chamber. Your knowledge and deep respect for the rules and proud traditions of this place are what we rely on — on both sides of this Chamber. As always, your patience and a good humour are welcome.

Our congratulations go to Senator LeBreton as well, who enters her sixth year as Leader of the Government in the Senate. I do not know whether she considers that to be a long or a short time.

I also want to express my thanks and those of my colleagues on this side to Senators Comeau and Di Nino for their service as Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate and as Government Whip. We have had our differences, of course — this is a political chamber, after all — but they were always addressed in the traditional spirit of this place, that is, with genuine respect for one another and for the Senate.

To Senators Carignan and Marshall, we extend our congratulations on your new leadership roles. We look forward to working with both of you in the best interests of the Senate.

On my own side, let me say publicly how delighted I am that Senator Tardif has agreed to continue to serve as our deputy leader, and Senators Munson and Hubley as Opposition Whip and Deputy Opposition Whip. As we well know, and those of you who have served in opposition will know, holding those positions of responsibility in the opposition is not always an easy task and I thank them for their service.

Finally, I want to commend the mover and seconder for their speeches in support of the Speech from the Throne.

Honourable senators, in the recent election the Prime Minister asked Canadians for a stable Conservative majority government. He got what he wanted. As a result, the government no longer has reason to fear an imminent election and, if it respects its own election date law, it has four years to advance its legislative agenda.

Canadians are looking to their government to provide strong leadership and take decisive action on the issues that are important to them. They are tired of wedge politics and endless debates about issues that are on the periphery of their lives or are, as some would say, phony issues for easy-sell "solutions" — politics dictating policy, instead of politics in service of good policy.

Churchill once said, "We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us."

That aptly sums up the opportunity and the challenge before this government — and indeed, before all parliamentarians. There are major, serious issues facing Canada. How we address them will shape this nation for years to come — both the substantive policies that are put in place, but also how those policies are developed.

I expect and indeed look forward to vigorous debate. That debate — the exchange of thoughtful arguments, parliamentarians each seeking to persuade each other of the merits of their position — along with serious committee study, where all the issues are thoroughly explored and interested Canadians heard — these are fundamental, time-tested parts of this "dwelling" called Parliament. The Canada it has shaped is strong, resilient, compassionate and just.

We are a minority in this House, and a smaller minority in the other place, but this chamber was established in part precisely to represent the minority view — the political minority. This founding role of the Senate is something colleagues may recall I discussed in my speech in the last session on my inquiry on parliamentary reform. This government has received its long-sought majority, and I respect that. Part of our job is to represent the views of the 60 per cent of Canadians who voted for a different result and we intend to do our best to discharge that responsibility.

Let me repeat words I have spoken in each of the several replies to a Speech from the Throne I have delivered since becoming Leader of the Opposition here.

We will do our best to fulfill our constitutional role as members of an active, thoughtful, dedicated opposition, exercising our mandated role of sober second thought.

We intend to carefully scrutinize the government's legislative program and will propose legislative measures of our own.

Where we find fault with legislation, we will propose amendments to improve it.

If on the other hand, we find favour with the government's proposals, we will support them.

Always, our guide will be the public good.

Let me begin today with some remarks about the government's plan as set out in last week's Speech from the Throne.

Honourable senators, there were only two references to the government providing leadership in the speech. The word "leadership" only appeared twice: Once was with respect to stewardship of northern lands and waters, and the other was with respect to democratic reform, especially reform of the Senate — a subject I will return to later in my address.

I was disappointed to see that the government did not stand up and take a leadership role with respect to poverty reduction or with respect to the future of health care.

The Health Accord negotiated by the government of Prime Minister Paul Martin in 2004 is coming up for renewal in 2014 — a very short time away. Canadians are worried about their health care system. Indeed, according to a recent poll, health care has now surpassed the economy in the ranking of national issues of concern.

There are Canadian families who do not fill prescriptions for medicines. They cannot afford to. Tommy Douglas, the father of medicare, used to say you should not have to sell your family farm to afford medical care. Well, today there are families who face the prospect of losing their family home to pay for critical drugs for their loved ones. More than 3.5 million Canadians have no prescription drug coverage or are under-insured. According to the Canadian Medical Association, a standard course of treatment for cancer can cost $50,000 — and each of us has heard of Canadians who have been presented with even larger bills.

Cancer and other diseases do not discriminate. They strike without regard to whether or not the victim has a drug plan.

In many provinces, a patient who receives chemotherapy in a hospital has the cost covered, but the same patient, with the same cancer, who takes the same treatment at home, must pay from his own pocket. We all know about the overcrowding in our hospitals. Canadians know this does not make sense. There is a deep cruelty when a Canadian in one part of the country has no affordable access to medicines that another Canadian elsewhere in the country can obtain.

That is just one glaring example where we need to take a hard look at our system and find ways it can be improved. It was designed in a time when health care delivery typically involved a doctor and a hospital. Long-term care services were pretty much unheard of, so they were not even part of the Canada Health Act. Again, this does not make sense in the 21st century; not with the pressures on our hospitals, that cannot admit patients or are forced to set up beds in the hospital's Tim Hortons because there are too many long-term care patients occupying hospital beds.

This is an issue that calls for national leadership. So far, this government has been content to be a follower and has shied away from showing leadership on health care. This must change.

Let us be clear about this. This is not only a provincial and territorial issue. The federal government is actually the sixth-largest health care provider in this country.

I am concerned when I hear reports that the government may opt for a series of one-off deals with the provinces rather than a pan-Canadian accord. What does this say about Canadian values?

I worry when I hear reports that this government is backing off its tobacco control measures — an area in which we were once a world leader. According to the Canadian Cancer Society, quitting smoking is the single-best thing a Canadian can do for his or her health. It is estimated that smoking is responsible for 30 per cent of cancer deaths. In other words, our policies about tobacco impact directly on the health and well-being of Canadians, to say nothing of the costs and burdens on our health care system.

As I said before, I am happy to give the government credit where credit is due, and I wholeheartedly support its decision late in the last Parliament to ask our Social Affairs, Science and Technology Committee to conduct a review of the health care accords. That committee, under the leadership of our former colleagues Senator Kirby and Senator Keon, prepared what has become a landmark report on the health care system in Canada. However, that was almost 10 years ago. It is right and proper to ask this committee to return to this issue that is so critical to Canadians. I know that it will do an equally in-depth, thoughtful piece of work that will contribute significantly to shaping the health care system so that it can respond to Canadians' needs now and in the future. I assume and hope that this chamber will renew its request to this committee so it will be able to continue its work.

One area that requires urgent attention relates to the health and well-being of Aboriginal Canadians, a subject addressed earlier this afternoon by our colleague Senator St. Germain. A recent report by Statistics Canada found that First Nations adults are about two and a half times as likely as non-Aboriginal adults to die prematurely. Injuries and increasingly chronic diseases are the leading causes of this. The study confirmed what many of us suspected, namely, that socio-economic factors — education, income, housing and labour-force status — were important contributors to this shocking disparity.

Auditor General Sheila Fraser repeatedly drew attention to the deplorable situation of Aboriginal Canadians, including in her final statement as Auditor General. I am disappointed that Aboriginal Affairs Minister Duncan responded in the way that was typical of the last Harper government, namely, to blame the previous Liberal government. This is really getting tiresome. Prime Minister Harper has been in office for over five years. Regrettably, one of his first acts was to tear up the Kelowna Accord, a historic agreement reached by the federal government, provincial and territorial governments, and Aboriginal leaders. For the first time, all parties agreed on an action plan to take concrete steps to improve education, housing, economic development, health and water services. It was a five-year, $5-billion plan. Imagine, honourable senators, how much could have been accomplished by now. Five years later, instead of looking to build on the accomplishments of that accord, this government says its plan is to "work with Aboriginal communities, provinces and territories" to meet the challenges of the barriers to social and economic participation that many Aboriginal Canadians face.

That is right. Five years later it is now beginning the process that the Liberal Government of Prime Minister Paul Martin had successfully completed, a comprehensive agreement to begin to address the problems in a systematic way. This government — perhaps out of hubris, perhaps because it preferred to attack anything from a previous Liberal government than to acknowledge its achievements — tore up those agreements. The problem is, honourable senators, the victims were Aboriginal Canadians.

Hubris — political vitriol — has no place when it comes to the development of serious public policy. Too much is at stake. I hope that now that this government has its long-sought majority, it can leave such behaviour behind. However, we have lost five years, and the time has come for real action and real leadership by this government.

The challenges faced by Aboriginal Canadians are serious. We all know the statistics. I quoted some discouraging ones on health and life expectancy. Safe, clean water is essential. Auditor General Fraser noted that more than half the drinking water systems on reserves pose a health threat. We need serious action, not the government's simplistic proposals to take power away from some groups and give it to others. Power grabs will not bring clean drinking water to First Nations communities. That is politics; that is not policy.

Education is listed by the Public Health Agency of Canada as one of the top determinants of health. Only 41 per cent of students on reserves graduate from high school, compared with 77 per cent of students in the rest of the country. Again, this was one of the issues addressed by the Kelowna Accord.

Another issue under Kelowna that the government did not mention in the Speech from the Throne is housing. Where is the government on this crucial issue, so critical to the health of Aboriginal Canadians? What is its plan? Is there a plan? Again, precious time has been lost. Instead of a plan, my leader, the Honourable Bob Rae, has pointed out that this government has actually cut funding for Aboriginal housing by $127 million. Honourable senators, this is shameful. Do not just take my word for it. Read the scathing indictment contained in the Auditor General's report released earlier today.

This leads me directly to another issue, namely, the so-called law and order agenda.

Here are some facts. Aboriginal Canadians make up 3 per cent of Canada's population, but 21 per cent of the prison population. The statistics for Aboriginal women are even worse. Aboriginal women represent 32.6 per cent of all incarcerated women. That is one third of the women in prison in Canada. In Saskatchewan, Aboriginal Canadians comprise 11 per cent of the population but 81 per cent of new admissions to prison. Those are staggering facts.

According to statistics from Correctional Service Canada, Aboriginal offenders are much more likely to be incarcerated for an offence — 70 per cent — than non-Aboriginal offenders — 58.8 per cent — and they are more likely to be classified as medium security risk in prison than low risk.

One final statistic: The average age of Aboriginal offenders admitted to federal prison is lower than that of non-Aboriginal offenders. In other words, we have a population that is being locked up younger than the rest of the Canadian population and in vastly greater numbers. As Shawn Atleo said recently, right now, an Aboriginal person is more apt to end up in jail than to graduate from high school.

Honourable senators, I have real concern about a government that tears up the Kelowna Accord, that could have helped to improve outcomes for Aboriginal Canadians, and focuses instead on passing more and more laws with mandatory minimum penalties aimed at locking up more and more Canadians.

Mandatory minimums mean that our judges have no discretion. They cannot look at the individual standing in front of them and say that there are better ways than prison to get this man or this woman away from a life of crime.

In fact, colleagues, we know — and since the government is well-advised, they know it, too — that increasing the time someone spends in prison may actually heighten the threat to long-term public safety. As an RCMP chief superintendent told a committee in the other place in the last Parliament: "The threat to the community is eliminated through his lack of access," — that is, while he is in prison — "but he may be a greater threat upon his release. Prison allows him to learn his craft better and provides him the opportunity to increase his network."

Alex Himelfarb, the former Clerk of the Privy Council, spent a very significant part of his distinguished public service career in the justice sector, working in the Ministry of the Solicitor General, now Public Safety, the Justice Department and the National Parole Board. He said: "In all the time I worked on these issues, I never met an official, elected or unelected, who was 'soft on crime', not ever, not once."

With respect to the government's proposed omnibus bill, Mr. Himelfarb said, first, that unquestionably some offenders belong in prison. Justice demands it, and some people need to be there as they pose a continuing danger. However, he pointed out that Canada already uses prison as a punishment far more than, for example, our European counterparts.

He continued:

But we have also learned — from the evidence and from our experience — that prison can harden those who would have been better diverted from the system in the first instance and that overlong sentences can lose those who might otherwise have been successfully integrated into their communities as law-abiding citizens. We have learned that a preoccupation with punishment can easily divert us from doing what actually makes us safer.

I will repeat that:

We have learned that a preoccupation with punishment can easily divert us from doing what actually makes us safer.

Surely that ought to be our objective: making our communities safer.

He concludes:

And, in its way most troubling, these policies make for a meaner Canada.

As Churchill said:

We shape our dwellings and afterwards our dwellings shape us.

Mr. Himelfarb understands better than most that governing is about making choices. Particularly when a government has run up a large deficit, choices are necessary to bring our public finances back in control. He had this to say about the criminal justice policies:

. . . these policies cost money, lots of money. Imprisonment is expensive. And that means less money for those things that might have made us truly safer — prevention, education, rehabilitation.

Honourable senators, I was pleased to read recently that Public Safety Minister Toews said it is time to stop using prisons as a parallel health care system for the mentally ill. That is an issue I know that Senator Runciman also feels strongly about.

Some experts have suggested that close to 35 per cent of inmates in federal penitentiaries suffer from a mental illness that requires treatment. Among women in our prisons, the statistics are even worse: 40 to 45 per cent of female offenders apparently suffer from mental illness. Some would suggest that even that number is too low.

These are not people who belong in our prison system — they belong in health care.

I welcome Minister Toews' decision to do something about the large number of mentally ill people in our prison system. I look forward to the measures he will announce to deal with this and with the disproportionate representation of Aboriginals and poor Canadians in our prisons.

In the last Parliament I quoted Kim Pate of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, who pointed out that 82 per cent of women in prison are there for poverty-related offences. Is "tough on crime" the answer for those women? I think not.

As Mr. Himelfarb wrote:

Getting tough on crime often means getting tough on the poor, the troubled, and the excluded.

I was disappointed that the Speech from the Throne made no mention of those Canadians being left behind — those Canadians struggling in poverty. The words "poor" and "poverty" were not mentioned once in the entire speech.

The disparity between rich and poor is growing in Canada. Experience tells us that this is a problem that demands attention — both for the sake of those who are struggling and also, frankly, for the country as a whole.

I believe in evidence-based policy-making. I believe our role as parliamentarians is to dispassionately study an issue, to look at all the facts and as many implications as possible, to look at the experiences of other jurisdictions, to learn what has worked and — even more importantly — what has failed, to listen to experts who have themselves studied the issue in depth and then, together, craft the best legislation we can for the benefit of all Canadians.

That has not been the approach of this government on the crime issue. Statements by former senior advisers to Prime Minister Harper have confirmed what I suspected — that politics usually trumps evidence-based policy-making in this area.

My hope, honourable senators, is that we are now entering a new era. I know the seriousness with which many of my colleagues opposite take our role here. I know the commitment of all of us to try to do the best that we can for Canadians. I hope that we can work constructively and collaboratively on the bills brought before us, including the omnibus crime bill. That is what Canadians expect and that is what Canadians deserve.

I was not reassured to hear Justice Minister Nicholson say in an interview last weekend that Bill S-10, which dealt with drug offences, is, as he described it, "very specific — it targets drug traffickers." He then went on to say:

These are individuals who are involved with organized crime. And in fact, there is quite a bit of violence attached to it.

That is certainly true of some drug traffickers, and I would welcome a bill that actually does target those criminals. The problem is that the definition of "trafficking" under the law is much, much broader. It includes, as we heard in the last Parliament, an 18-year-old student who offers to share a drug with a friend at a party. Simply offering — whether or not the person accepts and whether or not there was money involved — is swept up in the definition of "trafficking." Should the same mandatory minimum penalty apply to that teenager as would apply to a member of an organized crime gang who is actively selling large quantities of drugs?

We will, I hope, have an opportunity to debate these issues when the omnibus crime bill comes to us, but I hope the minister refrains from continuing to mislead Canadians as to the nature of his bills. If that is what he wants his bill to say, we would happily help by proposing amendments that will achieve what he says he is targeting. In fact, however, if he wants the bill's scope to be that broad, I would hope he will admit it to Canadians and stand and explain why he believes that this broad-brush approach is the right way to go.

Honourable senators, I noted with some surprise another glaring omission from the government's plan. The government has made much of its plans to celebrate milestones. The Speech from the Throne said:

Anniversaries are an important part of how a society marks its collective progress and defines its goals for the future.

I agree. This government plans to celebrate the bicentennial of the War of 1812, the one hundredth anniversary of the Calgary Stampede and the one hundredth anniversary of the Grey Cup, which are all excellent milestones. Even as it is planning significant cutbacks, the government is budgeting millions of taxpayer dollars for each celebration.

However, the government has been silent about the upcoming thirtieth anniversary of the signing of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Like health care, the Charter is a part of the Canadian identity. I hope that the government does not plan to allow this anniversary to pass unmarked. I hope that it does not reflect any reluctance by this government to celebrate this important milestone in Canada's history.

There is another area where Canadians expect the federal government to take decisive action, and sadly it was not even mentioned in the Speech from the Throne; that is, climate change. Does this government acknowledge that climate change is a serious issue? Many would say it is one of the most serious issues facing the world today. Judging from the Speech from the Throne, it would appear the answer is no. There is no leadership role here, unless it is the leading head-in-the-sand role.

Recently, Canadians learned that the federal government deliberately excluded data from a 567-page report on climate change that it was required to submit to the United Nations. What data was excluded? Data indicating that in 2009 there was a 20-per-cent increase in annual pollution from Canada's oil sands industry.

These are critical numbers that the government did see fit to include in previous years. As a nation, we need to know this information. We also have a responsibility to the international community not to play fast and loose with our statistics, particularly on a global problem like climate change.

This is not a local problem or even a national one — it is already impacting the entire world. Last Sunday, The New York Times had a cover story entitled, "A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself," in which it detailed the looming global food shortages — and political crises — attributable at least in part to human-induced climate change.

The Globe and Mail reported on Tuesday that 42 million people were forced to flee their homes last year because of natural disasters around the world — more than twice the number than in 2009.

Human-induced climate change is identified as one of the probable causes. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has called the issue of climate change displacements "the defining challenge of our times." He sharply criticized the international community for lacking the political will to reduce the pace of climate change.

Honourable senators, our international responsibility does not begin and end with sending troops to regions of the world that are in crisis. We have a responsibility to work to prevent crises from developing in the first place. Food shortages, water shortages, the devastation caused by "climate shocks" such as flash floods and drought — it is just not enough to send aid after the fact. As an oil-producing country, we have a particular responsibility to ourselves and to the world to take action to combat climate change. Instead of the leadership role Canada should be taking, our government refuses to even acknowledge that the issue exists and then admits to actually leaving out critical data in its reporting to the international community.

Let me read to you from the Postmedia News article on May 30:

Critics have suggested the Harper government is deliberately trying to delay international action to fight climate change, following revelations, reported last fall by Postmedia News, that it had set up a partnership with the Alberta government, industry and several federal departments to fight pollution-reduction policies from other countries that target the oilsands through lobbying and public relations.

Environment Minister Peter Kent has said the federal government is committed to reducing Canada's greenhouse gas emissions and will introduce its plan to regulate pollution from the oilsands within months. But he has also acknowledged that existing federal and provincial policies would still result in an increase in emissions over the next decade.

Although the report was due in April, during the last election campaign, Canada was the last country to file its submission. Environment Canada even filed its submission after earthquake-stricken Japan, and was unable to explain why its report was late.

This does not give me any confidence that this government plans to turn over a new leaf and begin to adopt evidence-based policies. How can it, when it actually omits critical data from the reports that form the basis of those policies?

Honourable senators, human-induced climate change is real. Fudging reports — deliberately omitting critical data — will not make the problem disappear. We need to act now. No more misleading reports, no more refusing to disclose critical information.

There are, of course, many issues that I could address, but in the interest of time I will only briefly touch on one more, and that is an issue dear to the heart of my friend Senator Brown: Senate reform.

As I mentioned early on, this was only one of two instances in the Speech from the Throne when the word "leadership" was used. I find it passing strange that on so many issues, this government refuses to take a leadership role, saying it must defer to the provinces; yet on this issue on which the provinces both should have a role and in large numbers have said they must have a role, the federal government insists on barrelling forward, imposing its own desired result and refusing even to convene a first ministers' meeting on the subject.

Let us be clear about this: We on this side are not opposed to Senate reform. We welcome a proposal to improve the Senate, as we do to any institution of Parliament, but it must be serious and it must be done right; that is, in accordance with the Constitution.

It is simply not good enough to say it would be too difficult to open up the Constitution. You cannot amend the Constitution except in accordance with the Constitution. I appreciate that this Prime Minister has a certain vision for the Senate. However, under the Constitution, his provision does not prevail over all others. Contrary to his belief, the notwithstanding clause does not refer to the personal beliefs of the Prime Minister.

Back in June 2007, four years ago, this chamber decided not to proceed with the Senate term limits bill placed before it, saying either that the federal government should engage with the provinces or it should refer the bill to the Supreme Court of Canada to determine whether it could proceed unilaterally with its proposed term limits. The government, in its wisdom, chose to do neither and, instead, has retabled its proposals over and over, trying first one chamber and then the other. None passed either house.

Does the government now have the numbers to pass its legislation? Yes, it does. Is it the right thing to do? No, it is not. I cannot accept that one can enhance democracy by refusing to listen to dissenting voices. It is especially wrong here in the Senate, which was established precisely to represent regional interests. Constitutions are not meant to be circumvented.

Honourable senators, I look forward to this new Parliament. Do I wish that the election results had been different? Of course I do. However, I accept the results, and I believe that the real message that Canadians were sending was that they want this Parliament to work, not in the interests of one political party or another — they are tired of partisan politics — but, rather, in the best interests of all Canadians. We on this side intend to do our part to fulfill those expectations.

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