Rick Laliberte

[Supply, February 9th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the hon. member to clarify the term riparian rights. Dealing with the common law that has accumulated in Canada over a number of years, riparian rights have been misinterpreted as water rights. Riparian being derived from the French language, the member may have an insight into the difference between riparian rights and water rights.

[Energy Efficiency Strategy, February 5th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak in support of Motion No. 300. We highlight job creation in the motion. That is a basic belief of the hon. member who placed this before us.

If this country takes the leading edge in addressing its federal responsibilities we would be creating development into high tech expertise. This expertise could be exported to federal buildings throughout the world.

We have a similar climate to European countries, circumpolar countries and countries with boreal forests. The high tech expertise we would practice and use under the federal buildings program could generate opportunities in long term employment and investment back into our communities and industries.

There are about 50,000 federally owned buildings in this country. In retrofitting these buildings through the federal buildings initiation and the many departments that would be investing, my colleague from Winnipeg Centre is correct in calling on the House to recognize that this buildings initiative can work but it has to be accelerated. In about five years we have had about 100 buildings that have been addressed. We have to address 50,000 buildings. We have to accelerate this program. That is the challenge before us.

This motion is asking that the federal government undertake its responsibilities on the properties it owns and make them energy efficient and in the process address the unemployment regions, the training of the many trades that would be affected in all regions of Canada. There should be an equitable program, not just located in certain urban centres. These buildings are in all corners of Canada.

Canada's international commitment as highlighted in the Kyoto protocol was targeted at a 6% reduction from 1990. Since 1990 we have increased greenhouse gas emissions up to 13%. That is a total of 19%. Almost 20% has to be targeted now. That is almost a quarter out of all our initiatives that we have to take from here on in.

This initiative has to be taken seriously by all Canadians. We listen to members who say the federal government cannot take leadership. It cannot take leadership behind closed doors. Leadership has to be shown by example, as this motion is saying. The federal government could show example by retrofitting its own buildings and leadership by taking the question to Canadians.

We have 12 issue tables that have been formulated by the greenhouse gas and Kyoto protocol secretariat. Those are closed debates. None of these members of parliament are participating.

We represent our communities. None of the residents in my constituency are taking part in these debates. These are industry debates.

The industry is protecting its interests. It has put its foot down directly on what will impact on the Kyoto protocol but this protocol is well on its way.

The scientific reality is this target is not even adequate enough to address the economic disaster we will create for our children to come.

Aside from employment and environmental opportunities, I think what we need to do since it is a millennium project as well that could be coined is to prepare our youth.

These buildings are age old, rusting, moulding. Let us recreate the future for our children but have them do it. We have young people who are represented through visiting this House, visiting museums, visiting the many art galleries throughout the country and these buildings are going to be renewed.

We have a new building up recently, the home of the Maple Leafs, the gardens. It is the last of the old arenas from the original six. These things cannot be retrofitted to a point that they have to be rebuilt as well. They need to be completely redone. That is the challenge here as well.

The hon. member has challenged us to extend the life of these buildings by retrofitting them. It is a challenge to check out new technologies so that when we get to building the new buildings, when we build the new structures, the technologies are tried and proven.

We went to Kyoto. Members accompanied our delegation. We were shown in Japan the high tech initiatives of solar energy. Anything that faced the sun had a photovoltaic cell. It captures enough power to power all their computers when they operate. It is continuous power to generate any power need they want in this building as long as the sun is shining. Even though there are clouds it still collects the power.

If we do not capitalize on these leading edge technologies, we will be buying Japanese technology. Why can we not buy Canadian technology, invest in it now so that we can sell it worldwide?

When I was growing up there was a concept in Popular Science , geothermal energy. My vision of geothermal was that someone sticks a pipe far down into the ground to the hot rock. They could heat their water and get it up here. That was my imagination, down to the centre of the earth. It came out in a movie. Actually geothermal goes only a few feet below. It works the same way a refrigerator works. There is a heat pump. It is exchanged and then pumps can be run just below the permafrost. In the farther north, they have to go a little deeper but it is also available. It is just a few degrees. The heat can be captured and circulated in the home.

We talked about Toyota coming on the Hill just before the year was over and the Minister of Natural Resources was riding around in a hybrid car built by Toyota. I challenged the minister to bring up vehicle designed by a farmer in southern Saskatchewan. He designed his own electrical vehicle.

Why does it have to be labelled Toyota? Why can it not be Canadian made? Why can it not be made in Canada? It is. There is one in Saskatchewan. We saw it on CBC. It woke me up during the Christmas holidays. A man designed his own battery powered car.

That is the creation. That is the energy of Canada that makes our country great. We have minds that have travelled to see the world. We have technology, theoretical and academic experience in our engineering departments of universities. Why do we not challenge these as a Canadian leader since our budgets are in place for the federal departments? The budgets are filled every year to consume energy. Why not take a portion of the consumed energy and invest it for retrofitting to save energy? As long as energy is being saved there is investment into our youth to broaden their minds and experience and to create a major job experience for them into the future.

Regarding district heating I want to address a federal program that came through an initiative by a Cree community, Oujé-Bougoumou. It will be a community highlighted for the retrofitting and energy saving initiatives in northern James Bay Cree. They will be the highlight of Bonn, Germany in the next expo as a village of the future. Here is a northern community to be highlighted internationally. It was initiated by a federal department that listened to a community that wanted to address its problems of high energy costs. Let us challenge ourselves into the new millennium. I congratulate the hon. member for bringing this worthwhile cause to the House.

[Uranium Mining, February 5th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, northern Saskatchewan's abandoned Gunnar and Lorado uranium mining sites are an environmental and public safety issue.

The children of Uranium City are exposed daily to the hazardous nature of the abandoned and deteriorating properties of the former mining town. While governments continue to expand uranium mining, these abandoned sites require reclamation.

When will the Minister of Natural Resources commit to funding arrangements with Saskatchewan to decommission and reclaim these sites creating green jobs for northern residents through environmental technology, training and employment opportunities?

[Freda Ahenakew, February 5th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of all the people of Canada I would like to extend our congratulations to Dr. Freda Ahenakew. She was recognized for her devotion and commitment to the preservation of the historic and linguistic significance of the Cree language. She was awarded the Order of Canada on Wednesday, February 3, 1999.

[Military Missions Beyond The Boundaries Of Canada, February 4th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I extend my support and speak in favour of the private member's motion that has been brought forward by the hon. member for Red Deer.

The motion speaks to our democratic right as members of parliament who represent the constituents of the country. All 301 duly elected members of the House represent Canada.

My first experience was the debate on the deployment of troops to the Persian Gulf. As a young member of parliament coming to the House I was not struck by the immense responsibility I had as an individual in voting to deploy our young men and women to a war zone.

Entering a war zone is a very unique situation. A lot of us have never experienced it. We have never taken up arms. We have never sacrificed our lives or have been ready to take somebody else's life. These are the issues we are talking about.

The hon. member has highlighted active military mission. That is a confrontation where anybody's life could be taken at any time. Other missions are not active military missions. Cleaning up the storm struck regions of South America or an ice storm or a snow storm are not active military missions but can be done world-wide.

I take this responsibility further and share with members a vision of Canada that I have been generously sharing for the last while. I refer to the unity, the symbolism and the design of this democratic structure. The House was designed so that both sides were two sword lengths apart. The symbolism of war designed the architecture of this room. There is no unity in this room. We are designed to fight, the government and the opposition. Even the words are antagonistic and protagonistic.

We have a budget to renovate this room over the next 15 years. Why do we not renovate the library? The building is a circular one. We could take the books off the shelves and store them in a safe place on the Hill. If we cleared out that room we would have a circular room in which to make decisions in a non-partisan way on sending our men and women to war. We could shed our political stripes. As a member representing the people of Churchill River I could cast my vote on whether to send troops to an active military front. It would be not as a New Democrat, a Reform member or a Liberal member. We could shed that at the door. A crucial issue of calling our men and women to war should be done in a united Canadian way.

Our system of government was adopted from Britain. A symbol of the circle has been held sacred by the aboriginal people for generations on the land that we occupy now. Why can we not adopt a symbol of that unity to unify the country to collectively make a conscious decision when we send members of armed forces to active military missions?

Other decisions could be made in that room. I want to draw attention to one.

The new millennium is coming. Our young men and women, our children and the generations to come, for the youth who might take their rightful place here, let us design structures of governance that involve them without any strings or preconditions attached. We must make decisions in that way.

My support for the motion comes from our making decisions as members of parliament to send our people to war. Let us envision ourselves in our places of decision making and maybe that is a rightful place.

By using the wooden mace yesterday we acknowledged that this place burned down and only the library was left standing. It persevered a test on the Hill. For that strength of collective unity in this country, let us consider it.

[Supply, February 4th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I believe in talking especially about the aboriginal community because that was the perspective of my speech. We have to look at health care. Is it a top down initiative? Does the doctor have the power to deliver health care to any individual? I do not think so.

The issues of community, families, employment, housing, the location of water supply and the condition of the environment, land and air are at the ground level. That is where the responsibility has to be. The issues of traditional knowledge and scientific knowledge have to be balanced and recognized. The stories of the elders, their knowledge of the land, the evolution of the land and the deterioration of the land and the species, have to be taken into account.

Those decisions must come from the community. We must empower our communities and give them the resources they need to help them create a healthy future for generations to come.

[Supply, February 4th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the opportunity to speak today is very crucial because it is sort of a celebration in terms of highlighting the responsibility of health to the federal government.

When I first came to the House and when debating the health issue back in our communities it was deemed a provincial jurisdiction. Today we are in the House of Commons debating health issues and the future of health care and the responsibility of the federal government. It is a major responsibility.

I call on my colleagues to continue to support it because if we look at health care and talk about the millions of budget allocations that are needed to replenish the cutbacks that we have faced in the hospitals, home care, elderly care, maternity wards and emergency wards, all these cutbacks we have realized over the years, with a surplus in sight we have an opportunity to create a health system in the new millennium. It will be a collective effort and the federal government has to play a major role in this.

I looked at health care issues specifically in my area. There is a recent statement I highlight because there are many concerns over the state of our health care.

In my riding I have a majority of aboriginal people who live in northern Saskatchewan where we border the Northwest Territories, the boreal forest and the barren grounds. Here is what it says about the state of our health.

It says we are compared to developing countries because diseases such as tuberculosis and hepatitis A do not exist or run rampant in developed countries.

My riding in northern Saskatchewan has the highest count of tuberculosis in the country. Imagine that in 1999. We will step into the year 2000 and my constituents have the highest rate of acquiring TB right now. Let us address that issue.

How do you address that issue? What causes TB? Here is another statement: “Increased suffering from developing country diseases such as diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease”. Diabetes is a major issue.

A few years ago I had an opportunity to work with a colleague of mine, an Inuit lady from Inukjuak. She was sharing stories about her people when we talked about our homes. Jokingly she said her people in northern Quebec were addicted to Coca-Cola.

The next day the Globe and Mail printed a headline saying they had to fly in a load of Coca-Cola to their communities because the winter supply to be delivered by ship could not make it before spring break-up. It was an emergency that they had to fly in sweetened soda pop. Our people's diets that are causing health problems are a major cause of concern.

What is the status of our environment, the state of our air and water, doing to our health? There is a study dealing with the toxicology of contaminants and its relationship to neurological disorders, reproductive effects, immunosuppression and cancer. PCBs were a part of that study.

A study of Inuit boys in Canada showed that their birth weights were a lot lower if the mothers had high levels of PCBs in their breast milk. These studies were conducted in our own neighbourhood. This was a very recent study and recently the federal government cut the study program on northern contaminants. This did not go beyond the water and air flows in the immediate Arctic region. This study needs to be expanded into the lower boreal forest as well, into the Cree and Dene regions.

Not only Inuit live off the traditional lands. Contaminants are impacting all our northern communities. This is a national program because the northern half of all provinces feel the impact of transboundary pollutants.

The industries in northern Alberta all spew their pollutants into northern Saskatchewan and carry on to northern Manitoba. The industries from Ontario and Quebec carry on to the Atlantic provinces and our northern regions. The Arctic polar regions get theirs from Europe and Asia. It is circulating all over the north and into our regions of Canada.

This is having an impact on our health. I have another health statistic which is a predominate number. Of our northern population 37% is under 15 years of age. Almost 50% of our population consists of children. They will be middle aged, seeking employment, housing and family support in their communities. They are not moving out. They are not moving away from the northern communities because that is home.

The development of the north is very crucial to this. We share this all the way from British Columbia to Labrador. That is where the intrajurisdictional issue of federal responsibility is very important.

Our situation in the north was highlighted by the United Nations recently. Examples of death rates, infant deaths, premature deaths, low birth rates, cancer, teen pregnancy and diabetes are of international concern. Canada is a major highlight.

We just talked about the social union and health accord gathering that took place. The aboriginal people were missing from there. They did not have a chance to be heard. Provincial jurisdictions are providing services to those communities but the federal responsibility is crucial. The medical services branch has a role with the treaty obligations with the treaty Indians.

Our communities are mixed. There are not only treaty obligations but there are non-treaty obligations. Then there are Metis obligations and the Inuit obligations. These obligations of health jurisdictions between the federal government and provincial governments is very crucial. I applaud our members today who have brought that responsibility back to the federal government.

Health is crucial. It needs national leadership. It needs provincial leadership. It needs community leadership. But the federal government has to be accountable because it inflicted the cutbacks in transfers to the provinces and inflicted the cutbacks in the environmental departments for analysis of the impacts of our health.

The other situation which is a major crisis in health in this jurisdiction is accessibility of doctors. In my community we have a group of doctors who came from South Africa because the jurisdiction of other countries cannot readily access employment in this country. But the South African doctors found employment and were readily recruited by our communities because we need a stable supply of doctors. Because of immigration they have to get their working visas authorized outside Canada.

I want to raise this in terms of a doctor's story. We want them in our clinics and in our hospitals. When they visit their families on holidays, let us say Easter or Christmas break, some of our immigration offices or embassies are closed during the holidays. They cannot get their working visas to come back into Canada to serve the clinics and serve the patients in our communities. It was an atrocity to see that. They had to backtrack and call people for five days before this specific process was completed.

On the whole issue of doctors and the training of doctors in terms of the north we need northern doctors. We need access to community health and good home care. Not everyone can come to the large urban centres for major care. So health care and budgeting of home care units throughout the country and to supply our remote and rural communities is in dire need.

I applaud the federal leadership that is taking place and the provinces which are committed to working together. Finally health care is on the federal agenda.

[Fisheries, December 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker,

A major industry surrounding our freshwater lakes and rivers is the inland freshwater fisheries. The inland fisheries have been a dignified and honourable way of life. There has been a growing dichotomy between the northern freshwater fishers and the marketing board arrangements.

Will the minister of fisheries confirm and clarify his statement that if any new arrangements are to be considered, they must clearly show benefits and have the support of the fishers and the provincial governments?

[Indian Act, November 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise today to discuss an issue that is overall a very crucial issue at this time in Canada's history with respect to our relationship with aboriginal people.

I want to pick up on a statement made by the hon. member who moved this motion. He said “all politics are local”. In his statements dealing with Bill C-402 he referred to hours and hours of work in preparing this consultation with Indian affairs officials and Indian Act experts. However, I beg to hear from him whether there were any consultations with first nations people. Were there consultations with the first nations people of Canada?

When one is dealing with this act, it is of national scope. It goes from coast to coast to coast. If there is a local issue which is impacting on the national perspective, it is time to open the books and look at a major overhaul of an act that may be archaic.

As the hon. member for the Bloc mentioned, I believe the royal commission on Canada's aboriginal peoples tried to address the need to modernize our relationship with aboriginal peoples.

At this time I would have to say that I am opposed to the bill, but would welcome a new dialogue for us to start a new relationship with the first nations of this country. They are waiting for this. They have been calling on the government and on all Canadians for this dialogue.

I must highlight the fact that a nation to nation treaty was written with Canada's aboriginal nations. It was not the first nations which allowed anybody to take hold of this land for whatever reason.

When the treaty was written it was in the context of the British nation on behalf of the crown seeking to use and occupy lands to build a new nation, but the first nations held obligations to the federal government.

Provincial jurisdiction is very suspect when it comes to first nations people because the fiduciary responsibilities fall under the nation to nation treaty with the federal government. The hon. member is on the right track in asking the House to change these laws.

The royal commission also considered creating a provincial jurisdiction across this nation, a chequerboard province of all first nations, so that they could govern themselves. There could have been a model for self-governance. This is something that was not brought out in the recommendations, but the dialogue was there.

As well, territorial governments have not been taken into account. Nunavut will be created on April 1, 1999. The Northwest Territories will reissue itself and reorganize its governance, as will Yukon. Someday these territories might have full provincial jurisdiction.

Where are the present landlord and tenant issues concerning the territories? I believe they fall with the northern affairs minister. I beg to see some response to that in the northern jurisdictions because we have to look at this as a national issue.

A major change happened recently with Bill C-49. Fourteen first nations were included, in a very consultative manner, to deal with land management. However, the bill did not consider the issue of residential, agricultural or business leases in these first nations.

First nations governments are saying that they should be able to address tribunals, that they should have a means for dealing with and appealing decisions on jurisdictional issues, such as a business jurisdiction being changed to residential, especially for the people who presently hold leases. This whole topic opens up a major concern.

At this time I have to tell the hon. member that I cannot support his motion, although I acknowledge that the House of Commons needs to address the Indian Act in consultation with all first nations of this country.

The new millennium would be a fine opportunity for us to provide a good example to the world. There is a human rights conference being celebrated right now in Edmonton. A lot of aboriginal people feel that their human rights have been infringed through the development of this country, with respect to land use and their education, cultural and spiritual life. All of these things have infringed on their way of life. Let us address these issues in an open way, with open and respectful dialogue. Then we can build a nation that will be good for our children and for future generations.

[Agriculture, November 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the government has to provide leadership in our time of crisis.

The government's impotent efforts to protect our farmers from the trade wars are a national shame.

The misguided suggestion by the Reform Party and its advisers for tax relief but no new expenditures is a crying shame.

Farmers need help now. The federal government must take responsibility.

When will the minister accept advice from farmers who are asking for an immediate and long term national disaster relief program?