Karen Kraft Sloan

[Food and Drugs Act, October 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order to support the member opposite. However there was some suggestion that the Liberals were divided on this issue and that you decided to have a pro and a con.

I have been on the list since last spring to speak in this debate. I support the member for Davenport and I want the record to show that.

[Canada-U.S. Meeting, September 20th, 2001]

Madam Chairman, on behalf of the residents of York North, I would like to offer my condolences to those who have lost loved ones in last week's tragedy.

I was comforted by the words of the Prime Minister when he rose in the House on September 17 to address the special House of Commons debate in response to the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11. It is the message of that speech I hope he delivers when he meets with the president of the United States on Monday. In his speech the Prime Minister said we should let our actions be guided by a spirit of wisdom and perseverance and we must be guided by a commitment to do what works in the long run, not by what makes us feel better in the short run.

As we journey into the difficult weeks and months ahead, we must remember to hold and check the understandable desire to immediately retaliate with full force. We first need to investigate the identity and location of the terrorists. We need to isolate them and ensure no other innocent individuals will suffer the fate of those who perished in the World Trade Center, in the Pentagon and on the four passenger jets. I hope the Prime Minister is able to deliver to the American president a message of the crucial need for calm, reasoned thinking.

I have other thoughts to offer the Prime Minister as he prepares for his meeting in the United States but first I would like to share my experiences of last week with members of the House. On September 11 I was in Washington, D.C. attending a conference on child environmental health. I listened in horror as I heard the announcement that two hijacked airplanes had been flown into the World Trade Center towers. Shortly after this devastating news, the conference participants were told a third plane had been hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon not far from the conference site. The atmosphere was chilling and surreal. My first thought was now we know how people in strife filled regions of the world must feel.

We soon learned that a fourth passenger jet had been hijacked and was 20 minutes outside Washington. Later we were told it had crash landed in Pennsylvania.

The conference had 400 participants from all around the world. Strangers from different races, countries, religions and cultures reached out as one human being to another in support of each other. The conference organizers from the Canadian Institute of Child Health, the American Child Environmental Health Network, Environment Canada, Health Canada and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency worked together as a professional, effective, compassionate team. They ensured the needs of the conference delegates were met by setting up medical attention and counselling services, providing phone service to call loved ones, finding accommodations and so on. They are to be commended. Through the efforts of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Environment Canada, two buses were sent from Canada to bring the 57 Canadians attending the conference home.

During the tense hours that followed the destruction of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I observed two things I will never forget: first, we are all interconnected; second, people seek to affirm their humanity in the midst of calamity. Strangers started up conversations as though they were long lost friends. People held one another trying to provide comfort. We talked about our families. I think the most often asked question was, “Have you contacted your family yet?”

After the attacks, I acquired a roommate who had been evacuated from her hotel. She is from Kathmandu, Nepal. Nepal is close to the heart of the proposed conflict. I wonder if she was able to get home safely to her two small children and husband. I wonder how safe she and her family will be over the coming months. I also met a doctor from Georgia who is concerned about creating good legislation to protect children's health in his country's newfound democracy. I met a researcher of Southeast Asian descent now living and teaching in Auckland, New Zealand. These are only a few of the people I shared those tense days with.

My daughter was travelling in central Australia. She said there were others in her group who were worried about the safety of relatives in New York and Washington.

A woman my daughter befriended on her trip to the outback is from Ireland. She had a sister flying out of New York on the morning of the attack on the World Trade Center. The world is such a small place.

The people of the world are interconnected. Regardless of nationality, religion or race, our humanity holds us together. It is our humanity we will continue to affirm even in the face of terrorism. This is the other message I hope the Prime Minister will deliver to the American president.

While terrorism is a disease, a pox on the face of humanity, terrorism must not make the Canadian people fearful. We must continue to assert our humanity even in the midst of barbarous acts, and as the Prime Minister has said, by reaffirming the fundamental values of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I urge all members of the House and all Canadians who are watching tonight not to let the terrorists win by allowing ourselves to fall prey to fear and intolerance.

I have received phone calls in my constituency office which trouble me. They trouble me because they demonstrate hatred toward Muslims and other minorities. I am greatly disturbed that Canadians of Muslim descent have been assaulted.

As the Prime Minister has said in the House, immigration is central to the Canadian experience and identity. We have welcomed people from all corners of the globe, all nationalities, colours and religions. We do this because as Canadians we understand that all people of the world are interconnected and because we value our common humanity.

[Petitions, June 6th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition which calls upon parliament to enact an immediate moratorium on the cosmetic use of chemical pesticides until such time as their use has been scientifically proven to be safe and the long term consequences of their application are known.

[Centres Of Excellence In Women's Health, June 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Health recently announced that Health Canada will contribute an additional $1.7 million over the next year to the national Centres of Excellence for Women's Health.

There are five of these centres across Canada: in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver. The centres use a multidisciplinary approach to address quality care in the health system, health protection, aboriginal women's health and rural women's health.

Since their establishment in 1995, the centres have played a critical role in more than 250 research projects.

I salute the world renowned work done by the Centres of Excellence in Women's Health and I look forward to the new research that will be done as a result of this funding.

[The Environment, May 18th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, next Wednesday in Stockholm, Canada will sign and will likely be the first to ratify the United Nations convention on persistent organic pollutants, also known as POPs.

The Stockholm convention will dramatically reduce or eliminate emissions of 12 toxic substances known as the dirty dozen. Canada played a central role in the development of this treaty. It has succeeded because of the tireless work of individuals like our own John Buccini, formerly with Environment Canada, who chaired the international negotiations.

I would also like to recognize the leadership of Sheila Watt-Cloutier of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference in heading a coalition of northern indigenous peoples and bringing their plight into the heart of the negotiations.

Canada was also the first country to commit specific funding, $20 million, to aid developing countries in building their capacity to deal with POPs. I congratulate Canada for signing the Stockholm convention.

[Genetically Modified Organisms, May 9th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, on Monday several members opposed to Bill C-287 quoted the recent report of the Royal Society of Canada as saying there was no need for mandatory labelling of genetically modified foods in Canada.

What the members neglected to mention was the very next sentence in the report. I quote:

The Panel wishes to emphasize, however, that these conclusions are premised upon the assumption that the other recommendations of this Report concerning the conditions for the effective assessment and management of the risks of GM organisms are fully implemented by the regulatory agencies.

We have a very long way to go before we can dismiss any need for mandatory labelling. I encourage all members to read the full report before they so disingenuously cite it.

[Canada Elections Act, May 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to be counted as voting with the government on this motion.

[Species At Risk Act, February 28th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise and speak to Bill C-5. My sentiments on the various incarnations of endangered species bills have been aired many times in this House. I will address a few particulars of this legislation, but as one who has followed this issue closely for many years, I would like to begin with some broader thought.

To set a context for my comments, I will borrow a few words from Wendell Berry, the noted farmer, poet and writer. In an essay entitled “The Conservation of Nature and the Preservation of Humanity” he tells us:

When we include ourselves as parts of belongings of the world we are trying to preserve, then obviously we can no longer think of the world as “the environment”—something out there around us. We can see that our relation to the world surpasses mere connection and verges on identity. And we can see that our right to live in this world, whose parts we are, is a right that is strictly conditioned. There is simply nothing in Creation that does not matter. Our tradition instructs us that this is so, and it is being proved to be so, every day, by our experience. We cannot be improved—in fact, we cannot help but be damaged—by our useless or greedy or merely ignorant destruction of anything.

This small quotation touches upon a number of important themes in the debate around the protection of endangered species. First, it emphasizes that we all too often and conveniently view ourselves as disparate from the natural world. What possible relationship can we have with nature, one might ask, as we hurtle along a superhighway wrapped in an SUV with our ear pressed to a cellphone? If we cannot see nature and we cannot hear it and we cannot feel it, then it becomes easy to believe that it is something that is not us, something that we engage in on our terms perhaps when driving through a national park gate.

I believe that intrinsically most of us know that this is not so. We are not so far removed from an age when we were more aware of being of nature. This awareness has been buried deep within us by the mechanism of modernity. The challenge therefore becomes one of how can we reanimate this? How can we bring ourselves to a place where the world ceases to be defined in our minds as that which we have created, to a place where the term environment is no longer a category, a compartment, a file but instead includes us as part of this broader natural world? Such a reanimation would help us to abandon the current focus on, as Berry put it, our connection with the world and lead us to an emphasis on our identical identity. Were we to identify with nature rather than objectify it, who knows what wonders we might achieve.

Second, Berry wisely asserts that because we are of this world there are conditions to our participation in it. The conditions of every other species' participation are determined by the laws of nature. We alone among species get to set many of our own rules. For example, we can kill any species, anywhere at any time. We can kill for fun. We can kill deliberately or we can kill accidentally. We can kill quickly and efficiently through direct action or we can kill a species over a long timeframe by altering the conditions that it requires for survival. We can even kill from great distances.

Surely some responsibilities come with such apparent exceptions to the rule of nature. Most fundamentally, if we are in nature and nature is in us, then the unconditional application of our authority is nothing less than its unconditional application against ourselves.

That brings me to Berry's third point, that our destruction of anything in nature, whether intentional or through ignorance, damages us. Actually, he puts it better: “We cannot be improved” through such behaviour. The superficial and immediate rewards of destruction may tempt but by other measurements we are poisoning our own larder. By way of example, let me ask the human focused critics; which of our present species of plants would prove to contain ingredients essential to future medicines, vaccines and cures? We cannot know this now, hence we must accept as a condition of our participation in the world that we not eradicate them.

When I spoke on the previous version of this bill last June, I noted that on an issue of such fundamental importance to Canadians as the environment, when those concerned with its preservation and restoration rise to speak, few are really ready to listen. Many in this place say they care and many make fine speeches themselves, but words are a poor substitute for action. All of the rhetoric in the world will not save a river, a fish, a forest, nor will it protect a child from a hazardous contaminant.

Our words will not protect species at risk; only our actions can. Discretionary authorities to act may be political deal makers but they risk becoming convenient barriers to action in the hands of those who do not recognize a duty to protect the common. When we respect nature we can begin to understand the incredible services it provides. For those who must, putting a monetary value on nature's services is difficult for many reasons. What price can be assigned to the last drop of water or the last gasp of air?

On the task at hand, Bill C-5, let me first commend the Minister of the Environment for implementing several changes to the bill since its last appearance as Bill C-33. Most notably, the decision to recognize the current COSEWIC list as a scientific list of species at risk in Canada is laudable. However, in order to trigger action, the species must be legally listed. Currently the decision for legal listing resides solely with governor in council. Canadians from all walks of life, including industries, scientists, conservationists and environmentalists are concerned that this will therefore be a political and not a scientific decision.

The political listing approach has proven to be ineffective in other jurisdictions. The proposed round table meetings every two years to discuss species at risk are a welcome addition to the bill, as are changes to what will placed in the public registry.

The safety net provisions in Bill C-5 allow the federal government to step in if a province fails to protect species. However, the safety net is also subject to cabinet discretion. In other words, even if a province fails to protect species there is no duty for the federal government to act.

While the scope of the safety net provisions in a former endangered species legislation, Bill C-65, were more narrow than in Bill C-5, they contained a mandatory requirement for the federal government to act to protect species if provinces failed to do so.

One of the things that makes the public debate around the bill vastly different from those around other so called environmental bills is that a coalition of industry, environment and conservation groups have come together and worked for years on the legislation. I cannot tell the House how unusual this is. I congratulate them for their efforts in this area. The group is known as the species at risk working group.

Along with many other Canadians, the working group has raised concerns that the bill does not go far enough to protect species. It will be the role of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development to hear from this group and from a wide range of Canadians on how we can improve the bill.

We will do nothing to protect species at risk unless the bill leaves committee as a good, effective piece of legislation. The House must support legislation that is strong, fair, effective and makes biological sense. It must be enforceable and it must be enforced.

Let me close with a few more words from Wendell Berry:

In taking care of fellow creatures, we acknowledge that they are not ours; we acknowledge that they belong to an order and a harmony of which we ourselves are parts. To answer to the perpetual crisis of our presence in this abounding and dangerous world, we have only the perpetual obligation of care.

I call on all members of the House to care about species at risk.

[Agriculture, February 21st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, a week ago the House witnessed a powerful and moving debate on the crisis facing our family farms.

I want to thank all the farmers I have met with over the past few months, especially the Chapmans, the Donors, the Holtrops and the Oldhams. They gave me the words I needed to share with the members of this House and with Canadians who watched the debate.

Last night our nation's farmers were here in Ottawa sharing the tasty fruits of their labour at a family farm food and wine celebration. This was an unprecedented event that brought members and senators from rural ridings and urban ridings together to meet with our country's agrifood producers.

Together we must continue this very important dialogue and work toward solutions that solve the problems faced on the family farm.

[Agriculture, February 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with another member.

One snowy day in January I found the parking lot of my constituency office dwarfed by giant combines and huge tractors. Inside my office a delegation of local farmers waited for me. We had a good discussion.

As each man left we shook hands. One of the last men to leave took my hand and said “Please make those people in Ottawa understand what we are going through”. He had been quiet throughout the meeting, saying nothing. The few words he left with me touched me in a very profound way.

As parliamentarians, as members of the House, the primary reason we are here is to make those people in Ottawa understand what our constituents and collectively what Canadians are going through. It is our duty to bring the stories, the concerns, the challenges, the hopes and the dreams of Canadians to Ottawa. We do this to ensure that decision making reflects the reality of Canadians' lives and that as best as is possible what we do here in this Chamber serves those who look to this place for leadership, for answers and at times for help. If we neglect to do this, the laws we make, the policies and programs we develop, will never meet the needs of Canadians. We will never solve the problems that our nation faces. We will never answer the fundamental questions we are required to address as a nation.

I am honoured to represent the riding of York North, an agriculture rich part of Ontario known for its dairy farms, its grain and cattle and the wonderful vegetables grown on our marsh farms. In fact, when I was a schoolgirl in Thunder Bay we studied the famous Holland Marsh in market gardening.

Because of its proximity to Toronto, York North has the distinction of being a bit of a hybrid riding, an agriculture basin and an important industrial region as well. We are home to many people who commute to work in Toronto, to those who live in the numerous small towns and villages in the rural countryside and to a great many who have farmed in this area for generations and who continue to do so.

Over the years our proximity to Canada's largest city has meant that York North has become increasingly urbanized. This can be said for many ridings represented in the House. A good deal of our farmland has disappeared. Despite this, the myth that the greater Toronto area does not make an important contribution to our agriculture sector can be quickly dispelled. A recent study noted that there are approximately $585 million in farm receipts in the York region alone.

Clearly, the agrifood sector remains vitally important to the economic health of the GTA and the York region. These are hardworking, resilient people who have farmed for generations. They have seen good times and tough times and now many are going through the toughest of times.

I am working closely with the agrifood producers in my riding. One of them, Mr. Don Chapman, has said to me and to the newspapers that “Farmers don't want subsidies. They don't want tax rebates. They don't want to call in crop insurance. They just want to be paid fairly for their products”. The government must listen to their need for immediate assistance and long term support. We produce some of the greatest agricultural products in the world and yet our farmers are in a dire way.

The farmers in my riding tell me Ontario farmers need an increase in the Canadian farm income program of $300 million. This program is split 60:40 with the province, which means that we need Ontario to step up to the plate to the tune of $120 million. Our agriculture sector is a shared responsibility.

The farmers in my riding also talk about longer term solutions and actions. They talk of increased funding to agricultural research and of the development of new markets. They talk of strengthening environmental programs. More important, any income assistance program should help ensure that they receive adequate returns for their investment, their input costs and their labour.

We all know debates are easy but coming up with practical long term solutions is not. Will we settle on some concrete initiatives this evening? I think not. More time is needed in the House on this matter. More time is needed to discuss the many facets of this complicated and lingering problem.

A local vegetable growers' association wrote to me recently to outline some of these facets. In addition to the serious weather pressures faced recently, they wrote that growers must contend with eroded markets due to the consolidation, increased domestic supply, increased year round global supply and free trade agreements that force growers to compete with the treasuries of the United States and the European Union.

The same vegetable growers noted that a pre-harvest survey of growers conducted in July 2000 placed crop losses to the growers of Bradford, Cookstown and East Gwillimbury at approximately 3,500 acres, or an estimated 40% of the total area grown. This is alarming.

There are other aspects to the problem as well. We need to discuss these important issues such as increasing our support for local growers. As Wendell Berry, the noted farmer, essayist and poet once wrote:

The orientation of agriculture to local needs, local possibilities and local limits is indispensable to the health of both land and people, and undoubtedly to the health of democratic liberties as well.

Why do we reach for lettuce trucked here from California instead of that grown perhaps only miles away? There is something so fundamentally wrong about that. How many of us even consider what such a simple choice does to our farmers?

That is why I urge the House and the government to initiate a national debate on food. We as Canadians from urban and rural communities need to understand how the producers of our foodstuffs live. We need to understand why mean farm incomes continue to go down and why input costs continue to rise. We need to understand why the next generation of farmers is not stepping up to take over our farms. In fact, according to some, the next generation has already decided not to. It is the generation after them that we need to woo back to the land.

The hon. member for Calgary Centre referred to this debate as one about food security. I agree with him but I would go further. I believe that this is a question of food sovereignty. If we care about good quality food in the country, and if we care that we as a nation have control over this very basic need, then we must understand that, as Wendell Berry also says “Whatever determines the fortune of the land determines also the fortune of the people.”

A vibrant, sustainable, profitable agricultural sector is part of who we are. If it is suffering, then we are suffering. More important, we become vulnerable.

I call on all members of the House to support our family farms. I call upon the government to do what is right.