John M. Cummins

[Customs Tariff, March 23rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the difficulty we are trying to point out is the lack of competitiveness of Canadian industries.

During our recent leadership campaign, one of the contenders for the leadership, Ms. Stronach, mentioned in her speeches that she had been talking recently with one of the major automotive companies, which her former firm had been supplying. This individual indicated to her that his company was sourcing offshore about $1 billion worth of automotive products this year, primarily from China. He also suggested to her that within two years his company would be sourcing from China something in the neighbourhood of $14 billion worth of goods.

That is a huge increase, from $1 billion to $14 billion worth of goods over a period of two years. The reality is, what does it mean to Canadians? It means that many of those products that will now be off-sourced in China will be products which previously would have been sourced in Canada or, at the very least, in North America, the U.S. or even Mexico.

When Canadian companies lose their competitive edge and global manufacturers begin sourcing products in places such as China, Canadian workers are put out of work. The direct effect of that brings into focus the issue that was raised previously by the member from the NDP about labour standards. The effect of off-sourcing this material in places like China is pressure is put on the existing suppliers in Canada to somehow to produce cheaper. Because these companies have failed to invest in methods of production as they should, they will feel the pressure to exert more and more effort from their workers or perhaps concessions in wages and benefits.

The government, by simply pushing along this tariff, by not considering the impact on national trade in Canada and by putting laws in place that will encourage investment in Canada, is basically undermining the very issues which have made our country profitable in the past.

To give some examples of that, this past year I was visited by people involved in the printing industry. One concern they had was that their write-off period for newly purchased pieces of equipment was in the neighbourhood of seven years. They pointed out that in today's age of computers and advancement of technology in many respects the equipment would be obsolete within a matter of two or three years. Although they had the ability to write down over seven years, the piece of equipment would be out the door within two or three years and would have to be replaced.

They also pointed out that, while a travesty in itself within our tax system and counterproductive to the profitability of their printing firms, they were competing with American companies which did allow the write-off of equipment much more quickly. Therefore, their main competition, American printing firms, had a decided advantage when it came to the tax structure, one which they could not enjoy.

Another issue of concern could be in the farm fishing area. I do not have any particular answers to this. However, we have some real concerns about this industry. We are concerned that it should be operating in an environmentally friendly fashion.

In that regard, the fisheries committee issued a report a while ago to which I attached a report as well. In that report I pointed out the government's failure to put appropriate regulations in place to govern the industry. That met with criticism in some quarters because the industry said that we wanted it to put regulations in place which would make it impossible for it to compete with imports from other countries. That tariff issue needs to be looked at.

This industry is closely tied to the marine environment and the marine ecosystem. If it operates with impunity from environmental standards in one part of the world, such as Chile, but is forced Canada to operate in an environmentally friendly fashion, is there a basis for protecting Canadian industry? Is the tariff in those instances justified?

I raise this point because the government, in trying to rush the bill through the House, has not looked at the big picture of how these tariffs impact on Canadian industry or even attempted to justify their existence, and it should.

The fact that the government has raised the bill just months before the tariffs expire brings to mind its failure to push on negotiations dealing with the softwood lumber crisis in Canada. We knew a couple of years ago that the softwood lumber agreement was due to expire. We were sitting on the sidelines wondering when the government would step up to the plate and address the issue. We wondered when we would to see some action on it. The matter kept being put off.

The agreement was to expire in a few months and there was great consternation in British Columbia and elsewhere in Canada. Finally there was a flurry of activity on the other side of the House and some effort was made to conclude an agreement. Almost two years later, we are still without an agreement. Those issues have not been addressed.

That is no way to deal with important trade issues. This is a case in point. These tariffs are due to expire in a few months. The government has brought the bill in with great haste. It wants the bill to continue through the House, and for good reason, because there has to be some certainty with the whole issue of tariffs. Nevertheless, the bill should have been brought forward months ago, if not a year or so ago, so we could look into the impact of tariffs on Canadian industry and maybe determine whether they could be raised, lowered or even eliminated.

There has to be concern about the way the nation's business is handled. We are in a highly competitive world. I indicated the softwood lumber agreement as an example and some of the barriers that have been put up against Canadian manufactured goods.

In some countries there will be a tariff against goods manufactured in Canada, but at the same time they will accept raw logs from Canada. Then what we have is a growing sector in the Canadian forest industry in British Columbia dedicated to the exportation of raw logs. What that really means is the export of good Canadian jobs.

Over the past 10 years or so, with our lowered Canadian dollar, as low as 63¢, industry came to rely on the cheap dollar to make its way. Therefore, we have essentially lost 10 years of investment in the manufacturing sector. We should have been investing in upgrading and modernizing our manufacturing firms so we could remain competitive with our international competitors, but we did not. Now we are reduced to giving life to the notion that somehow we as Canadians are simply hewers of wood and drawers of water.

In British Columbia we see large logs rafted out to a freighter and loaded onto its the deck for shipment elsewhere in the world. The logs are then remanufactured and shipped back to Canada. That has to hurt, especially when we look at the sorry state of the economy in British Columbia and when we consider the large number of people who are unemployed who would welcome the jobs those logs represent.

In closing, we will support the bill, but we are concerned it is being rushed through the House, as it is. We are certainly concerned that the issues of tariffs and the levels of tariffs were not the topic of discussion and examination by the House, and we think they should have been.

[Customs Tariff, March 23rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in the debate this morning for a variety of reasons. The first point I want to make, and the one that concerns me the most in some respects, is the haste with which the government has brought the bill forward and wants to move it through the House.

The government regards it simply as a housekeeping bill, something that can be dealt with in a morning and then we should move on to something else, and Lord knows what it might be, but something that would be equally important or maybe just something else to fill time in this place because the agenda is not stacked up very well here.

What did the bill have to be brought forward at this time? The obvious reason is that time is running out for the tariff agreement. However, why the bill had to be brought forward in this manner I find disturbing. I think that underlying the haste of the bill is concern about Canada's ability to continue to compete in the world economy.

My friend from the NDP who just spoke raised some interesting issues about labour standards. I think we are all concerned about the exploitation of labour in third world countries. It is not a very pretty sight. To a large extent, it includes the exploitation of children, the most vulnerable in our society, and women. That is something that hopefully in this country we have moved beyond. We still have a place to go to ensure that labour standards are up to what we would expect. Nevertheless, these issues seem not to be addressed.

I do not mean to move off the concern about labour standards too quickly because, as I say, it is an important issue, but there is another underlying issue that has to be of some concern. Someone mentioned the tariffs on materials and products that are no longer produced in this country, which has to be a bit of a joke. What are we protecting? If we are not producing a particular material, why is that? Maybe there is a bigger question behind it. If we were producing that particular product, why are we no longer producing it?

There is an interesting parallel to denim. About a decade ago Canada took the tariff off the importation of wool and cloth for men's suits. For some reason, and I am not really privy to all of the reasons, the manufacture of men's suits now flourishes in Canada to the point where Americans come here to buy suits produced in Canada from materials produced here. There are some happenings in the manufacturing world which may on the surface appear beyond explanation, but I think there are some rationales behind it.

Perhaps in this instance there have been some initiatives by industry to produce materials in a way which is more cost effective. There has been an investment in capital so that the industry is allowed to flourish.

As I have said, the bill wants to continue with the tariffs that are already in place for another 10 years without any investigation of the impact they may have on Canadians or whether these kinds of laws even assist Canadian business or are a detraction from it.

I become disturbed when I look at the issue of tariffs and the government's concern about the competitiveness of Canadian industry. It would seem that for the last number of years, certainly while the Prime Minister was the finance minister, a great deal of Canada's competitiveness in the world marketplace was as a result of a Canadian dollar that just kept spiralling lower and lower.

I am sure everyone would agree that simply having a weak dollar as the bulwark of our manufacturing industries is not a recipe for long term manufacturing success but that seemed to satisfy the government. The government did not seem too concerned that somehow or another the best interests of Canadians were being undermined by that low dollar. We were certainly paying higher prices for the goods we imported from elsewhere because of our low dollar, but it was felt the trade off of being able to export cheaper was good enough. The problem behind all that, of course, was that businesses started to rely on the low Canadian dollar and investment in the means of production declined. Canadians, in real terms, lost their competitive edge on the world market.

It seems to me that is the issue here. We have great concerns about Canadians' competitiveness in the world market. I chose to speak to the bill this morning because government does not seem to be addressing that concern. By attempting to move the bill through the House quickly, the government is showing a complete disregard for these very real concerns that we have.

I would like to give some examples of why I am concerned.

[Customs Tariff, March 23rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate the comments of my colleague and the concerns that he has expressed about the bill. I have two overriding concerns.

I am concerned about the haste with which the bill has been brought forward. This is not to suggest a lack of compassion on my part or on the part of my colleagues who have expressed concern about the bill for third world countries that rely on trade with Canada and with other developed nations as they attempt to develop their economies.

My concern lies with what I see as a growing trend by Canadian corporations to off-source supply from low wage third world countries and the attempt to try to coerce Canadian workers into accepting less than what I would think would be necessary wage and pension entitlements to survive in the society in which we live.

We can take the bill at face value, say we have been living with it for 10 years and that is all find and good, or we can look beyond that and say it is fine to continue with the bill, but what action has the government taken to address the growing offshore sourcing of products which traditionally have been manufactured in Canada.

Does my friend have any comments on that and is he also concerned by those issues that bother me?

[Customs Tariff, March 23rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am concerned about two issues. One would be the apparent conflict between the needs of the apparel industry and the textile industry when it comes to the importation of fabrics and the tariffs applied on those fabrics. The needs of the two industries are different.

The other issue is the whole notion of the ability, especially in today's world, of corporations and companies, which may be currently providing employment to Canadians, to simply move offshore to a venue where wages are cheaper, thus depriving Canadians of jobs.

In our recent leadership contest, one of the candidates, Ms. Stronach, noted that in her industry, the automotive industry, one major corporation had indicated to her that currently it was outsourcing $1 billion of goods from offshore, and that within the next couple of years it intended to be sourcing offshore something in the neighbourhood of $14 billion worth of goods. The fact is that those goods probably were supplied previously by manufacturers in North America and likely many of those jobs were Canadian jobs.

This bill has come up very quickly. We are now in rush mode. We want to get the bill through Parliament because the treaty is expiring and yet there are a lot of questions about what actions the government may or may not have taken when it comes to protecting the interests of Canadians with this. We all appreciate the need for encouraging development in third world countries, which is very important, but at the same time there is this balancing act of protecting the jobs of Canadians.

I wonder if my friend would have any comment on those issues.

[Petitions, March 23rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to present a petition this morning where almost 400 petitioners call upon Parliament to ensure that marriage remains a union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of others and should not be modified by a legislative act or a court of law.

[Question No. 12, March 22nd, 2004]

With regard to the use of the risk management of the antimalarial drug mefloquine by Health Canada and the Department of National Defence: ( a ) what antimalarial drugs have been administered to Canadian Forces personnel, giving the deployment and the number of personnel involved for each of the years 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003; ( b ) is the administration of antimalarial drug always recorded in each soldier’s medical record, (if not, indicate each time that its use was not recorded in each soldier’s medical record and why); ( c ) has any soldier ever complained that the fact he was taking an antimalarial drug was not recorded in his medical record or the manner in which it was recorded; ( d ) name the adverse events involving Canadian Forces personnel that have been reported by year and by deployment; ( e ) how does the Canadian Forces document anti-malaria prophylaxis; ( f ) how many Canadian Forces members deployed abroad have committed suicide in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003 (i) during the mission, (ii) following the mission, (iii) of these how many had been at some time administered mefloquine; ( g ) what adverse events were reported to Health Canada in each of the years 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003; ( h ) name or describe each adverse event as recorded by Health Canada in each of the years 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003; ( i ) how many of each of these adverse events were recorded by Health Canada in each of the years 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003; and ( j ) which of the adverse events reported to Health Canada in each of the years 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003 involved persons who had been administered the drug while in the Canadian Forces?

Return tabled.

[Questions on the Order Paper, February 25th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. On September 24, 2003, I put forward a question, No. 257 on the Order Paper, regarding halibut and sablefish aquaculture. Parliament prorogued and the question slid off the table. I asked the same question on February 2, 2004. It is now Question No. 13.

Through access to information, I got a number of documents. One of those documents, a December 4, 2004 memo from the Director of Policy, Office of Sustainable Aquaculture, stated that the response to my first question was completed and left their office three weeks ago. In a December 5, 2003 memo, Paul Lyon, Policy Analyst, Office of Sustainable Aquaculture, stated:

I understand the response to Mr. Cummins' Question 257 was completed and would like a copy. While I recognize the House has prorogued, and the response is no longer required the information could still be used to respond to future inquiries on the subject.

He further stated:

I suspect [Mr.] Cummins will raise it again. Having it ready to advance for final approvals might not be a bad idea.

It was six months ago that I asked the question. If we have open and transparent government, as the Prime Minister has suggested, I am wondering why that question I asked so long ago has not been answered.

[Petitions, February 25th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition that calls on Parliament to maintain the current definition of marriage and to prevent any court from overturning that definition by using the amending formula.

[Points of Order, February 18th, 2004]

Sit down.

[Points of Order, February 18th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, a point of clarification on that matter that you read from. It states “a paper dealing with a matter coming from within the administrative responsibilities of the government”. It would seem to me that may have to do with a bill or a ministerial report. The matter referred to here is a matter which was raised in question period. It does not necessarily deal with an administrative matter before the government.