Catherine Bell

[The Environment, April 8th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian Medical Association Journal shows there are 1,760 boil water advisories in effect across the country. This is not over one year or even two years. This is 1,760 boil water advisories in effect across Canada and affecting Canadians today, including 530 in British Columbia and a whopping 679 in Ontario.

The government committed to a clean water strategy in the throne speech, but since then we have seen nothing. How much longer will Canadian families have to wait for this government to make a water law with real teeth?

[Status of Women, April 2nd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, Canadian women are tired of being treated like afterthoughts by the Conservative government.

Half the population paying over $42 billion in taxes should have warranted more than a few words in the Conservative budget, and its promise to draft an action plan sometime next year to improve women's economic and social conditions is another slap in the face.

I guess the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages does not know that such a document already exists, and has since 1995, and can be found on the Status of Women website.

This promise to draft a plan and the Conservative budget do virtually nothing for Canadian women struggling to balance work and family life, and its “tax cuts are the answer” to a potential economic downturn means that women must wait even longer for the government to even consider their real and urgent needs.

Women benefit most from investments in vital services such as affordable child care, housing and tuition, but none of these appeared in the budget, despite the availability of huge surpluses.

Instead, the budget hammers home the government's key priorities: tax cuts and debt reduction. However, the bigger question is this: what happened to the surplus?

[Fisheries, March 13th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative government is in treaty negotiations with the United States over Pacific salmon rights. Reports that American pollock fishers accidentally caught 130,000 chinook, a full half of those fish from Canadian waters, is unacceptable. Canada's chinook catch is at an all-time low. Working families in fishing communities are struggling to make ends meet.

Does the minister intend to raise the issue of so-called accidental fishing during negotiations and will he start enforcing Canada's territorial waters and fine the American fishermen who illegally took our fish?

[Heritage Lighthouse Protection Act, March 11th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, last year I spoke to a predecessor of the current bill, Bill S-220. I am honoured to once again stand to talk about the importance of lighthouses.

It has been, as others have said, almost 10 years since the original bill was introduced. I would like to recognize the work of Senator Michael Forrestall and acknowledge also the work of Senator Pat Carney, as others have done. Without those people before us, ensuring that the importance of this was laid out, we might not be here today.

In speaking to the bill previously, I mentioned what a lot of people conjure up in their minds when we speak the word “lighthouse”, images of seafarers past and present who ply our coasts in trade or commerce, or just for pleasure. Our lighthouses have long been a part of our coastal history and our coastal heritage from sea to sea to sea.

I mentioned that it was a rare thing for a private member's bill or motion, if passed, to be enacted. A few bills have not been enacted such as the seniors charter or the veterans first motion, which were passed by a majority of the House. It seems to be a broken promise on the part of the Prime Minister who said he would honour the will of Parliament.

If this bill passes, I hope it is enacted. It also needs to have the funding attached to ensure the upkeep and maintenance of these treasures is a reality. Since the bill has been debated for many years, it must finally pass and be enacted.

Another vision springs to mind when one says the word lighthouse, especially in these times of increasing activity and changing weather patterns on our B.C. coast. One not so romantic is the stark reality that many thousands of people who live on our coast rely on the ocean for their livelihoods. They rely on our lighthouses for information, guidance and assistance. These are not the unstaffed lighthouses or lighthouses that will soon be turned into museums, but staffed lighthouses that employ thousands of people, workers who are on call 24 hours a days, 7 days a week to provide ears and eyes on our coast as well as assistance in times of need.

These gems of the Pacific coast, our light stations, are part of a living and working history. Canadians recognize these sites as historical icons with an important and continuing role in safety of mariners and aviators who ply our marine highways, transporting workers and coastal products that we need.

Our citizens have again and again demanded to keep these sites funded and staffed. Our 27 staffed light stations are strategically located to provide many services to the mariners, aviators, coastal communities and isolated inhabitants of coastal British Columbia.

Weather information is passed to Canadian Coast Guard radio stations on a schedule, seven times daily. Special weathers are submitted on significant changes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Lightkeepers also give updated weather reports on request, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This information is vital to aviators and mariners, as they move up and down the coast, in order to track weather systems and to find windows of opportunity for safe journeys.

The coastal economy also relies on our staffed light stations. Dependable weather information is vital to coastal communities. From Campbell River, one airline alone, Vancouver Island Air, flies 14,000 float plane passengers a year up this coast, delivering mail, workers and supplies. Lightkeepers provide meteorological services. Canada utilizes light station weather reports for forecasting weather warnings and continued tracking of climate data that will provide such necessary correlations as climate change occurs.

Because of their strategic location and federal presence, light stations are able to provide coastal security and testify to sovereignty. On many occasions, lightkeepers liaise with other departments such as the Department of National Defence, the RCMP, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and provincial wildlife and forestry departments, and provide them with any information and assistance upon request.

Many forest fires have been spotted by lightkeepers and they take an active role in the RCMP's coast watch program. Keepers act as first responders on many incidents and work closely with coastal search and rescue units in B.C. Light stations also act as staging grounds for medivacs.

There are many people working and staffing the 27 light stations along our B.C. coast. One such couple is Steve and Alice Bergh. They staff the Chatham Point light station in my riding of Vancouver Island North. Steve and Alice have been at Chatham Point light station since their arrival in 1989. Since then, they have saved numerous boats from sinking and have assisted many mariners.

The list of major incidents is quite long, says Steve:

--we have rescued divers, provided first aid to seriously injured victims, attended to a drowning victim, provided shelter to a lost hypothermic logger in an open boat in a blizzard who without our foghorn to guide him to our station would have suffered a serious fate....

I have quite a large file of letters and articles from mariners and boaters who have found assistance there in their hour of need.

Chatham Point is not the only station to provide this kind of assistance. They all do. The dedication of the lightkeepers all over the coast is well documented. Those saved are many.

I would like to read for the House an excerpt from a letter in the Western Mariner journal of January 2007. Mr. Ross Campbell writes a harrowing story:

It was howling outside, storm-force in fact, and the slack tide was allowing unusually large seas to roll into our small bay, making the boats heave at their lines. I was up, on-and-off, all night, checking and fretting and, of course, listening to the local weathers on WX2. Chatham Point, our nearest manned lighthouse, provided a special report at 02:20 hrs: visibility three miles; winds from the southeast at 40 knots and gusting; seas five feet, 'moderate'. The next regular report had the wind at southeast 55 and gusting.

All the light-keepers give 100% for the travellers on this coast but after listening to the 'local weathers' over the years, I get the impression that the keepers at Chatham Point never sleep! They often supply the kind of up-to-the-minute, useful-to-the-mariner information that no automated system can ever duplicate such as the observation of the different sea-states in the various channels visible from Chatham Point. But it's the special reports in the worst conditions, at the darkest times of night, and the speedy and capable response to any need in their area, that I so much respect.

I believe every mariner and aviator on the BC coast appreciates the dedication to safety that these light-keepers demonstrate. I say, “Bravo!” and a heart-felt “Thank-you!”.

I have to concur with Mr. Campbell of the MV Columbia III from Sonora Island, B.C.

Another light keeper at Cape Beale was recently recognized for spotting four mariners clinging to an overturned vessel. He was able to direct the search and rescue vessels out of Bamfield to assist. He then walked down to the beach to find a fifth man and give him aid.

Light stations are important investments in the prevention of marine casualties.

Lightkeepers provide such a variety of services, including the maintenance and protection of the light stations. Sites that have been de-staffed are in notoriously bad repair with no on site protections in place.

This is another reason why the preservation on site of historically significant working heritage light stations is important. Staffing these heritage and non-heritage sites is imperative.

Moneys and legal protections should be made available to preserve those heritage sites that need repair, such as Pachena Point's lantern dome. The tower at Pachena is suffering due to the ravages of the weather and without major work soon may not be savable. It is the sole remaining wooden light tower on the west coast. It is one of only two first order fresnel lenses on the west coast and the only dual bull's eye first order fresnel lens anywhere. The tower was 100 years old last year and was built by hand after the wreck of the Valencia.

Pachena Point light station is on the West Coast Trail and sees between 6,000 and 10,000 hikers a year, thousands of weekend campers and hundreds of day hikers, all of whom come to see the tower. Without fail they ask two main questions: can we see the inside and does it still work? The answer to both of these questions is no. Thousands of people come to see our light stations. On the west coast, this one is probably the most photographed site on Vancouver Island. It is currently depicted on a Canadian stamp.

I have highlighted only a few of the 27 staffed light stations, not to mention the other 29 decommissioned or automated stations, for a total of 56 on the B.C. coast.

What we need is a commitment to keep the buildings and structures at light stations staffed and maintained for the safety, security and benefit of our coastal communities, and for workers, for travel and for the historical and current education and benefit of every Canadian.

[The Budget, March 11th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the government has failed hard-working Canadians. I want to share the story of Jennifer McPhee, who lives in my riding.

This young mother has done everything right. She got training and became an LPN. She works in a hospital, has a second part time job and volunteers in her community, and yet she and her family are struggling in so many ways.

She writes:

I am not very politically savvy, but am fully aware of how hard it seems for the average person to get by.

I get called continuously from work at the hospital, begging me to work more...when I have looked into furthering my education so that I can help out with our nursing shortage by becoming an RN, there is no access to funding.

It feels...like this government is trying to make sure the young adults of this world don't ever succeed.

I have relied on my friends to take care of my children...as I am over the allowable threshold for child care subsidy and of course my children were born before the date that would give me access to that extra $100.00 a month.

If we weren't thrifty and creative...we would have lost our home shortly after we purchased it.

It is families like Jennifer's who were left out of the Conservatives' 2008 budget. The lack of support the government has shown for hundreds of thousands--

[The Budget, March 4th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the tax-free savings account is sadly inadequate and does nothing to help ordinary Canadians be able to save money. Individuals' savings in this country according to Statistics Canada have gone down, not because people did not want to save money, but because they could not afford to. Ordinary families cannot afford things like the cost of prescription drugs, the cost of housing, the cost of fuel to heat their homes, the cost of child care, the cost of health care and the user fees that are going to be imposed on them when everything is done under public private partnerships.

This centrepiece for the Conservatives' budget is sad. Unfortunately, it will do nothing to help individuals save money in my riding of Vancouver Island North.

[The Budget, March 4th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the member raised that issue. I thought I would not have enough time to get everything in and that was one of the things I wanted to address because what the government forgot to tell people in its budget speech was that it cut the eco-auto program, something that was actually working for individuals.

Now we see that the Conservatives put $250 million into the ground in the member's riding in a pilot project. Sadly, that money is not going to help pay for alternative energy development. It is not going to help ordinary families deal with the skyrocketing prices of fuel to heat their homes. It will not do anything to help the woefully inadequate eco-energy program that ordinary Canadians are having a hard time accessing as they try to do the right thing and make sure that their homes are environmentally sustainable.

I have to disagree with my hon. colleague that this pilot project to dump it into the ground is a good use of $250 million. It is an unproven technology.

What the Conservatives should be doing to cut greenhouse gas emissions from his province is to slow down the development of the oil sands, which is one of the largest polluters in this country, and make sure that the polluters are paying. Instead, the Conservatives gave big polluters another $250 million.

[The Budget, March 4th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Acadie—Bathurst.

This budget is about making choices. This is the third budget from the Conservative government that steers Canada in the wrong direction. This budget is a continuation of an agenda that is failing hard-working Canadians, seniors and children, students, first nations and the environment. But there is one segment of society that is looking at this budget and thanking the government and it is the big banks and big polluters.

If we look closely at this budget we see a lot of re-announcements. When we watched the finance minister deliver this budget speech it was like watching reruns of a very bad serial. In an effort to fool Canadians into thinking that the Conservatives are putting more money into programs and services, the government has listed money from previous budgets, but what the government did not list was all the money it gave to big banks and big polluters in its fall economic statement. I guess the Conservatives do not want Canadians to remember that.

Let me remind Canadians what those huge giveaways were and maybe talk a little about how the Conservative government is spending Canadians' tax dollars on their friends. Over $12 billion will be given away annually by 2011 in corporate tax cuts as announced last fall, amounting to approximately $60 billion by 2013, only five short years from now.

For every $1 in new spending, $6 will go to corporate tax giveaways. No wonder the government did not list those figures. It does not want Canadians to know how much of their money is going into corporate pockets.

Another thing the government did not mention is that ordinary taxpayers are now paying the bulk of the taxes, almost three times more than corporate tax, and yet individuals are not getting their fair share of the returns. Most people understand that taxes are the price we pay to take care of one another. We want our taxes to pay for schools, hospitals, infrastructure, child care and a host of other services that help us through our daily lives.

The Conservatives, supported by the Liberals, have spent our tax dollars. They have blown the federal surplus. Now they tell us that we have to be prudent.

The headlines today are predicting a grim economic outlook. We had a surplus that could have been used to support programs that would help ordinary Canadians weather this storm. We in the NDP have been calling on the government to invest in our communities, in the services that ordinary hard-working Canadians need and depend on to help make ends meet, especially for those tough economic times to come.

The Conservative government chose not to invest in those things. The Conservatives made a choice in this budget and their choice was clear. They chose to favour big banks and polluters instead of hard-working Canadians.

In my riding of Vancouver Island North I have been calling for some assistance for the forestry industry. Earlier this year the government announced a billion dollars for struggling resource communities to help with economic development and retraining, but with the magnitude of the crisis in the forestry sector alone, a billion dollars Canada-wide and for all sectors will not go very far.

The Elk Falls sawmill in Campbell River is on the brink of closing. It is just one of the 112 mills closed in this country that has put over 30,000 people out of their jobs in resource dependent communities. The workers of that mill want to know how much of that billion dollars will come to them.

The forestry industry is at a crossroads and is looking to the government for assistance. The money in this budget for advertising a sustainable and innovative sector will not be worth much if there is no innovative and sustainable sector to advertise.

Canada is in a good position to be a world leader in forest products, and our forest resources can be an environmental and economic asset for generations to come. The government has a role to play and it must recognize it before we lose any more opportunities to another country.

There were also several glaring omissions from this budget. I looked for new money for fish habitat restoration, management and enforcement and fish stock enhancement, but there was no new money. This is another industry in B.C. that is in crisis.

There was no mention of anything to assist commercial and recreational fishermen. Wild salmon stocks are perilously low. If any species is classified under the Species at Risk Act, it can have a devastating impact on the economy of British Columbia.

We know that fish habitat is being negatively impacted by industrial development and global warming, but we do not know all the factors that are impacting our wild salmon when they go to sea, and it is even more important to increase research spending so that we can find out.

Local volunteer groups like the Puntledge River and Tsolum River restoration societies are working hard to rebuild salmon populations in those two rivers, but they are getting fed up with the lack of support from the government.

First nations in Vancouver Island North depend on wild salmon for their food, and for social and ceremonial purposes. The federal government has a legal obligation to first nations when it comes to fish. For them, for commercial fishermen, for sport fishermen, for environmental groups, for tourism in Vancouver Island North, sadly, the government did not choose to invest increased funding for measures that would help rebuild the west coast fishery. Are we to see our fishery go the way of the east coast fishery? I hope not.

The Conservative government chose once again not to help Canadians across this country with an affordable housing program. Sadly, there are too many people living in substandard and unsafe housing. Some of it cannot even be called housing. In Courtenay there are over 200 people who do not have a home. They live at the local campsite or in their cars, if they have one, or maybe they are couch surfing, and yes, some of them live on the streets. I have been visiting our local service providers in Courtenay and Campbell River lately and when I ask what the number one issue for local people accessing their services is, they tell me it is poverty and homelessness.

The NDP called on the government to invest in affordable and social housing and a strategy to reduce homelessness. Instead, the government has chosen to do five pilot projects related to homelessness and mental illness. While that in and of itself is a start, it does not go nearly far enough to address the staggering crisis of homelessness in this country for people with mental illness or not.

The Conservatives' record on the environment is also dismal. Their biggest new spending was for nuclear development. I guess they have to invest in nuclear if that is their idea of clean energy and a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Instead of implementing a cap and trade system that would make the big polluters pay and then use that money to invest in alternative energy sources like wind and solar power, the government chose to study it. At a time when the environment is the single most important issue for everyone in Canada, the government is doing nothing.

Ordinary Canadians want their country to lead the way. They are way ahead of the government in the little things like recycling and using more environmentally friendly products, changing their habits and their lives, but for the bigger ticket items like heat pumps, solar panels or hybrid vehicles, the government needs to step up to the plate. The eco-energy program is woefully inadequate and does little to help working families change their windows or heating systems. Instead of building on the eco-auto program, the government scrapped it. Our grandchildren deserve better.

As I said earlier, a budget is about making choices. It is obvious where the Conservative heart is and it is obvious who those members favour. In all the choices that they have made in this budget, in their previous economic statement, and in budgets 2006 and 2007, they have chosen to help the people who need it the least.

At a time of enormous federal surplus, when we could have afforded to take care of the most vulnerable, the most disadvantaged, and ordinary hard-working Canadians who need a little help, seniors, students, children, struggling industries and the environment, the Conservative government has chosen to look the other way.

[Petitions, February 25th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased today to present a petition from almost 200 people in my riding. The 250 people who attended a seminar on the Security and Prosperity Partnership were concerned that the implementation of the SPP will further advance NAFTA's goal of continental economic integration and push Canada closer to deep integration with the U.S.

The petitioners are also concerned about the hearings proceeding further away from public scrutiny, with no democratic mandate. They call upon Parliament to have a full legislative review, including the work, recommendations and reports of all the SPP working groups, and a full debate and vote in Parliament.

[Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, February 25th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the plot thickens in the AECL affair. We know that the Conservatives want to privatize AECL and they are removing, step by step, the blockages to a foreign sale of AECL.

The regulator gave AECL a pre-approval for its Candu ACR-100 for Ontario, but Linda Keen cancelled it in 2006 because the CNSC did not have the resources to do the job. Less than a month after Ms. Keen was fired, AECL has the Candu ACR-100 pre-approval back.

Is this why Ms. Keen was fired as Canada's top nuclear safety officer? So that AECL could be sold off to the highest foreign bidder?