Charles Caccia

[Mining Industry, September 19th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the organization MiningWatch Canada reports human rights violations and environmental damage in developing countries where Canadian mining companies operate. For example, residents of Western Guyana are suing Cambior, a Canadian gold mining company, for $2 billion in damages over a massive spill of cyanide tainted waste into a major river.

The suit, filed on behalf of 23,000 people living along the Essequibo River, charges Omai Gold Mines Ltd., owned by Cambior, with negligence in the collapse of a dam resulting in the discharge of millions of cubic metres of cyanide tainted slurry into the river. The spill lasted five days, killing fish and other marine life, and drinking water had to be trucked in for hundreds of villages.

I call on the government to ensure Canadian mining activities have no negative ecological, economic and social impacts, at home and abroad.

[Foreign Affairs, September 18th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, given the fact that the Department of Foreign Affairs has just announced the opening of seven consulates in the United States, could the Minister of Foreign Affairs inform the House as to when a consulate is likely to be opened in Strasbourg, France.

Strasbourg is the seat of the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, the European Court of Human Rights, the International Human Rights Institute and the Assembly of European Regions.

[Agriculture, September 16th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Agriculture and it concerns the United Nations biosafety protocol.

Given that 57 nations have ratified the biosafety protocol, given the fact that it has entered into force and given that Canada is host to the UN Secretariat on Biodiversity, when will the minister be in a position to give the green light so that the government can ratify this important protocol?

[Agriculture, September 15th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, my question is addressed to the minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board.

According to Ken Ritter, the chair of the Canadian Wheat Board, 82% of the board's customers say they do not want to use genetically engineered wheat.

Does the minister agree with the position taken by the Wheat Board's customers and the board's opposition to Monsanto's application to cultivate and market genetically engineered wheat in Canada?

[Energy, September 15th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the energy blackout in Ontario had many repercussions, including an economic impact across the country, so serious it required the setting up of an international task force appointed by the Prime Minister and the U.S. President.

Blackouts could occur again. To prevent them the government should take several steps, including: first, facilitating the establishment of an east-west national electrical transmission system; second, making energy conservation a permanent feature in the behaviour of Canadians at home and at work; third, offering programs to advance renewable energy generating systems; and fourth, improving existing tax measures to encourage the production of green power.

Energy must be used carefully to prevent blackouts and achieve the Kyoto targets. I urge the government to give strong leadership in energy conservation to individuals, retailers, industries and the public at large.

[Free Trade Agreements, June 9th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Joliette ought to be congratulated for his motion, which deserves to be supported fully. In light of what has been said so far, it is necessary and worthwhile to put on record some facts as to how this chapter has affected in reality the three countries involved.

Fact number one: the case of Ethyl Corporation has affected Canada. The amount claimed by Ethyl Corporation was $250 million. The settlement, which was paid by the taxpayers of Canada, was $18 million, with an apology on the part of the Government of Canada for having passed the legislation which was intended to protect the health of Canadians by banning manganese from gasoline as an additive.

Second, S.D. Myers Inc., an other American corporation, has claimed an amount under NAFTA of $20 million. It was awarded $5 million plus interest and damages.

Third, Sun Belt Water Inc. is an American water firm that is challenging British Columbia's water protection legislation and its moratorium on the export of bulk water. How much is it asking? It is asking for $10.5 billion under NAFTA. Imagine that. This matter is still undecided, thank God.

The next item is from Pope & Talbot Inc., a U.S. lumber company. It claimed the amount of $508 million. The tribunal ruled that Canada violated the NAFTA article, and Canada was ordered to pay $460,000 U.S. plus damages, plus interest, plus legal costs, for a total of $915,000.

These are the effects, and I am glad to see that the member for Etobicoke Centre, for whom I have the greatest respect, is listening to this because a few moments ago he said that so far it was damaging all three partners. That is not so. It has damaged Canada and Mexico but it has not yet damaged the U.S. Is that not strange?

What are we facing here with these facts? What is the situation? What is the reality? The treatment of foreign investors, under NAFTA, has to be better than our national investors. In other words, we have to give special treatment. We have a promotion of corporate rights which do not really make any sense.

It is claimed by previous speakers, including the parliamentary secretary in the last debate, that the NAFTA and this whole approach is for the promotion of prosperity, so is big business seeing the promotion of prosperity? There is no evidence to the fact that NAFTA has promoted prosperity in terms of reducing the gap between rich and poor, for instance.

A study by the Environment Commission in Montreal recently on this very subject came to the conclusion that there was been no impact one way or the other 10 years after NAFTA. In other words, it has had no impact on improving the condition of the lower incomes in relation to the higher incomes. It is neutral, so to say, and it is a document which is a public document available to everybody. This damages not only the Canadians and the Mexicans by virtue of the figures I mentioned earlier, but it also damages the significance of Parliament.

Some of us at least have been asking for some time for an interpretive statement to improve or to modify the way this chapter is interpreted. We have been told by the earlier negotiators that it has not been intended to be interpreted the way it has been interpreted in recent times.

We do not seem to be getting anywhere despite the assurance given by the former parliamentary secretary when he spoke in the House on the adjournment proceeding a couple of months ago.

The fact is that the NAFTA tribunals are not open to the public. The tribunals conduct their proceedings in secret. They grant investors a powerful new set of rights in their business dealings when they go abroad. However, they assign no new responsibilities. The net result is that NAFTA increases the powers of the corporate side and it diminishes the powers of government. We see democratically elected governments becoming less relevant and losing power to corporations. Is that what we want? I certainly do not think that we want that.

The signing of international trade agreements should not lead to a reduction of the state role in protecting the public good. This is what is happening at the moment. Imagine the case that I mentioned earlier by Sun Belt Water suing the government of British Columbia for $10.5 billion. God knows what it will be given in the settlement and imagine the impact.

There is plenty of evidence that this particular chapter needs to be interpreted in a new manner. However, that does not seem to get anywhere because we need the consent of all three international trade ministers to do that. If one disagrees, then the matter is not put on the agenda.

When we put this in other terms, what NAFTA does here is it allows corporations to make profits which corporations would not be able to make under national laws. However, under international laws, namely NAFTA, they can make a profit as Ethyl did. It claimed $250 million. Imagine the nerve of claiming $250 million because of a piece of legislation passed by the House of Commons and supported by the federal government. This was in 1999 and as I mentioned earlier, the company received $18 million in compensation in the end as a result of a piece of legislation passed by Parliament.

It is a perverse reversal of democratically adopted rules by a tribunal which acts in secrecy, is not democratically chosen, and acts on on the strength of an international agreement about which we ourselves have profound doubts. However, we do not seem to be able to do anything about it. That is the essence of this issue.

I wish to compliment and salute the member for Joliette for bringing the motion forward. It deserves the support of anyone who believes that foreign investors should have access only to the complaint mechanisms that domestic investors have, unlike the Canadian Council of Chief Executives of course, which produced these two pages of nonsense. That would be the right approach and I submit it for your consideration.

[Foreign Affairs, June 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Given the ratification of the United Nations convention on the law of the sea, a promise made in the 1993 election, and given the importance of this convention and the fact that two former ministers of foreign affairs had expressed, in recent years, their intent to ratify, could the minister indicate when Canadians can expect the ratification of the law of the sea to take place?

[Committees of the House, June 5th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the second report of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development entitled “Sustainable Development and Environmental Assessment: Beyond Bill C-9”.

It might be worthwhile to note that this report is for Parliamentarians, policy-makers, policy advisers and anyone interested in environmental assessment. Its aim is to give a clear sense of direction for environmental assessment through its recommendations.

The report was made possible by the valuable testimony of witnesses on Bill C-9 before the committee, consultations with knowledgeable people in the field of environmental assessment and, in particular, by Stephen Hazell. The technical and practical experience provided by him and numerous witnesses was considerable and provided the substance of the recommendations contained in this document.

This report is triggered by Bill C-9, an act to amend the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. Within the rules of procedure, it was possible to make some 76 amendments to Bill C-9 at the committee stage.

In conclusion, something was needed for the next review of the act scheduled to take place around the year 2010. It is our hope that officials in the Privy Council Office, Environment Canada, the Canadian Environmental Agency and interested parliamentarians will examine this report and its recommendations before drafting the next bill.

[Supply, May 29th, 2003]

It is ludicrous, as the member for York North has suggested.

Then we come to another reason that we should be very careful with this kind of business. It is the one that was raised, and quite rightly, by the member for York Centre when he said that we should not be engaged in any activity that would lead to the weaponization of space. That is a very important consideration.

We already had this debate in the House a couple of weeks ago. If the Minister of National Defence were asked whether there was the possibility of a weaponization of space, he in all honesty would not be able to deny that eventually there could be a weaponization of space once we enter a missile system. There will be considerable pressure eventually. This is a possibility that we ought to be taking very seriously, as we all do.

Something I learned about this a couple of days ago has troubled me enormously and I believe it was raised in the debate earlier today. It has to do with a decision made by the senate armed services committee in Washington. There is a decision to repeal a ban against developing smaller, more usable nuclear warheads, and the senate armed services committee already has voted in favour of a total repeal of the prohibition which was passed 10 years ago. The prohibition is gone. We have learned from media reports that the Bush administration and many Republicans in Congress have said that the law should be repealed because in a world of dangerous new threats, the United States needs a new generation of low-yield weapons for pinpoint strikes, et cetera. The language always has to be translated into plain English. Low-yield weapons mean having warheads with a force of five kilotons. That is about a third of the force of the warheads used in bombing Hiroshima in 1945 which caused the deaths of 140,000 civilians.

Someone may wonder what the connection is between that and the missile system. It is possible that these kinds of signals of re-armament, these kinds of initiatives which are coming out of Washington eventually will find their way into the weaponization of space. Once we move in that direction in a general policy sense, there is no limit to how far we will go when under pressure in terms of potential threats.

There is a third reason. The first was that Norad is no longer relevant. The second was that there is no enemy of Canada. The third is that the threats are not threats of weapons by some of these states that are in desperate economic shape, including North Korea, but the threats come from other sources. I have indicated many and the ones that I think are particularly important are the gross economic inequalities, the poverty, the hunger and the environmental degradation. To me these are the real threats with which we should be coping.

I was interested in an observation made by my colleague from Medicine Hat, for whom I have a great deal of respect. He said that he was nervous in the knowledge that a certain country has nuclear weapons. I agree with him. We should be nervous about the possession of nuclear weapons by any country. We have to come to grips with deciding who is ethically entitled to be the possessor of weapons of mass destruction. That is a debate which has not even started yet, but the member for Medicine Hat is right to be nervous. We are all nervous but not because it is just one nation in Asia. There are many nations that are in possession of weapons of mass destruction.

[Supply, May 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that this motion is ill conceived, out of sync and motivated by threat.

It is historically out of sync because, as everyone knows, the Berlin wall came down in 1989 and Norad, which is the main focus of this motion, was created in order to protect Canada when there were two superpowers. Today there are no longer two superpowers. Canada is no longer sandwiched between the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union. There is no threat coming from the north and therefore, Norad is moribund, if not dead, in its purpose. Therefore, I am saying that this motion is out of sync with history.

Second, the motion is motivated by fear. I am challenging every member in the House, particularly those in the official opposition, to indicate in this debate who is the enemy of Canada. Tell us, who is the enemy of this country? Whom are we to be afraid of? Then this motion will have a minimum of relevance and significance.

Canada has no enemy in the world. The official opposition is creating an atmosphere of fear and an unfounded sense of insecurity caused by policies that emanate, as we all know, mostly from the White House, which are bellicose in nature and create a tremendous amount of disequilibrium in the world.

What is fuelling the threats in the world today? Everyone should ask themselves that question. What is fuelling the threats in the world today? It is poverty. It is hunger. It is ignorance. It is a lack of democratic institutions. It is civil strife. It is environmental degradation, a lack of water, desertification. Just name it. It is pandemic diseases and gross economic inequalities. Those issues are causing the tensions in the world today. It is not the existence of rogue states, which is the terminology the official opposition has bought from the White House.

Libya is mentioned. Imagine Libya sending missiles to North America. It is ridiculous. It is absolutely absurd what the official opposition is coming up with in this debate. Those members ought to be ashamed of themselves because they are creating the impression outside the House that there are enemies of Canada. Name them. Where are they? Who are they?

There is this other little notion being put forward by the opposition that we must be under the tent, that we must be at the table with Norad under the illusion that by being at the table we will have a say. Does anyone really think we could have an influence in the determination of a missile defence system if we were to follow it? Does anyone think we would have any weight in Washington? This is not our agenda. We are not going to pay a penny for that system. It is the piper that plays the tune, is it not? Canada will be listened to politely, but we will have no weight. This notion that it is important to be part of the discussions under the tent, at the table is so naive it almost makes one cry.