Brian Masse

[Committees of the House, November 1st, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt that report number 10 comes from the department of redundancy. It is an important one, but it is something that we should not move forward. I have been pushing the issues over cybersecurity, especially as an opportunity through the Ukraine trade agreement, to be something that would also create Canadian jobs and Ukrainian jobs and protect Ukrainians and us. I wonder if there is something else that the member has as a priority.

[National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act, October 26th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, this is an excellent question as well, and I will tell members why.

The small and medium-sized businesses that the member references often get out of the discussion points, but they are also some of the start-ups, the other ones we are trying to incentivize to get to the next level, from small to medium to growing. Then what happens is they are gobbled up. I would be open to looking at that.

I think the member brings up an excellent point that gets really lost. We are spending a lot of time, money and energy in proponents to help venture capitalism and grow Canadian companies, companies in Quebec as well. The member brings up an excellent point. Sometimes we do those investments, as I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, and then they get gobbled up later and that is at a discount for those foreign nationals.

[National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act, October 26th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I was perplexed by that.

I want to thank the member, who actually came to the committee. The committee is known to try to work together to improve the bill.

There are several amendments in here, and I want to commend the member for working through a process where one of his amendments that was supposed to go through, was sabotaged.

People should know that the member brought forth a compromise, a specific related amendment that really should be in his name. I want to say publicly that I appreciated that approach.

I do not know why they would have these mandatory things not necessarily part of it right now, especially because there has been growing consensus.

I referenced China Minmetals in the past, but now we have come to a point where people understand that the national security clause is a paramount part of what we do.

[National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act, October 26th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has been on this committee and others as well. His question is a really good one, and I really appreciate it.

We can look at national security and a number of different things through the lens of Stelco in Hamilton, which was bought up by U.S. Steel. It actually moved some of the operations to Zug Island in Detroit, where its operations caused what was then called the Windsor hum, even though it came from Detroit. The operations there made vibrations and problems.

I will conclude by saying it is a great example, because we gave up the capacity to grow and expand our steel and aluminum industry, and then the company pulled it out because they wanted less competition. The end result was that we had a painful exercise with workers who lost pensions, jobs and so forth.

That is why I appreciate this question, because it is about national security, and it is also about personal security for our workers who are actually in these sectors.

[National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act, October 26th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-34, as well as to the amendments being proposed today, amendments that are actually pretty important to consider. I will be considering them, as will the NDP.

The amendments pertain to the independence of the minister, in particular where the minister could have ultimate authority with less cabinet oversight. As industry critic for about 17 of my 21 years here, I can think of some deals that were not even looked at by certain ministers. I am not sure whether this would solve it, because I know they actually brought some of these things to the cabinet table in successive Conservative and Liberal governments and they were allowed to be taken over.

The reason I asked my previous question about natural resources, and I want to touch a little on that, is that the companies in the mining industry that are now owned by foreign conglomerates used to be Canadian champions. Now, the battery supply and different minerals necessary for electrification of vehicles in our corner of the world are very much affected by that. It is the same with the independence. What is also important and has not been taken much into account by either of these two parties in the last number of years is the number of tax subsidies, reductions and investments that those companies have gotten from Liberals and Conservatives that let them actually go out the door.

I want to talk about a more recent case, and then I want to get to natural resources. The most recent one is Nemak in Windsor, which is the Mexican-based company that got a series of investments. It was bought out, previous to that. It got a series of subsidies from the federal and provincial governments of the day, a federal Liberal government and a provincial Conservative government. There were no conditions on the investment of those subsidies. They went towards a new transmission update, a new motor update and other types of innovation. They then took that and put it in Mexico, and closed the Windsor plant down. We had to fight to get the workers' wages back. Our bankruptcy and solvency laws are actually very much against workers right now. We lost this opportunity, but we funded the loss of our opportunity after we let the company be taken over.

The reason I talk a little about the auto sector is that we had to have some foresight. Successive Conservative and Liberal governments have never had that. Some Canadians might remember Inco, Alcan, Falconbridge and Stelco. They are all gone. All were Canadian giants in natural resources, and the industry is now owned by Vale, Rio Tinto, Xstrata, and U. S. Steel. Some have even changed since then. All were foreign interventions in the Canadian system of natural resources.

Who owns the natural resources? We do, as Canadians. It is a privilege to be able to mine those resources. We are the ones who actually have the asset. It is no different actually from the spectrum that we have for our telecommunications industry, where successive Conservative and Liberal governments have taken in $21 billion from taxpayers and allowed companies like Shaw, Telus, Bell and others to charge some of the highest rates. From the year 2000 to this past year, we actually took in, under successive Conservative and Liberal government, $21 billion in spectrum auction of the airwaves above us that Canadians own. Then we let them charge us some of the highest prices in the world, with some of the worst practices.

That is important, because natural resources are at a premium now, especially when we are looking at lithium ion and different types of minerals related to the new economy and the emerging auto industry in electrification. It actually goes further than that. There was a big loss with respect to getting the next chips and innovation related to the electronics industry. The shortages were high. The U.S. is spending billions of dollars in investment. In microchips, we were actually a leader at one time, in Mississauga. We let that be bought out, closed down and shipped over to Taiwan. All of it was approved under Liberal and Conservative governments in the past, after policies of reducing corporate taxes and giving subsidies with no conditions and terms. Companies were bought up, closed down and, with less competition, moved out of the country.

Finally, and I have raised this in the past, when China Minmetals was on the lookout to buy Canadian natural resources in the oil patch, what is interesting about that is at that time, back in, I think, 2004, there was no national security review screening, and that was okay, if members can believe it. Paul Martin was the finance minister at the time, and he later became Prime Minister. It was okay with the Conservatives and Liberals for China's national industries to own Canadian natural resources, but it was not okay for Canadians to own Petro-Canada, so we sold off our shares in Petro-Canada. We took a bath on it because six months later, the prices skyrocketed, at a time when it was okay for China to invest. All the records are here. All the documents are here. At the same time, we could not have a national champion like Petro-Canada, heaven forbid, but at the same time we brought in investments from China. Now the Liberals are talking about concerns and reservations, but we do not have those resources under control anymore.

We are looking at the same thing with competition right now. If we look at the frustrations in the grocery industry and all the different consumer industries, they are of concern. There is a pattern here. All these industries I have talked about had to be approved by the minister and cabinet, so I am empathetic to the Conservatives' amendment here for a cabinet review, but when we have a party that is destined ideologically to sell off Canada, it does not matter if it is one person or 12 in the room making the decision to sell off those jobs and those investments. That is the problem.

When we look at some of the most historic ones, such as Lowe's buying Rona, how well did that work out? Now it is going back to the Rona brand, because people trusted it because it was a Canadian company. What did we do? We allowed Lowe's and basically Home Depot to be the competitors, and we eliminated the Canadian competitor by allowing it to be bought up. What Rona got as a condition and term was a supposed corporate office, I cannot remember if it was going to be in Quebec City or Montreal, but in one of those two places. We know that was a facade.

At the same time, we saw it in the retail sector, which is just as important, with electronics. We used to have Future Shop. It is gone. Now we have Best Buy, and that is it. It only had a limited market to begin with, but on top of that, Best Buy said it would sell off the Canadian component as well so that it would have no competition. If we wonder why we have less competition, it is because ministers and multiple cabinets are ideologically driven, not from a business sense, by competition or all the other things that are important to the consumer society. The United States has laws preventing that from happening. What we have are ideologically driven governments that want to sell off Canada and say it is okay because that is the way of doing business. However, it is not the way of doing business anywhere else but Canada. The United States has anti-competitive laws for those things that break up companies like Microsoft and others when they have gone too far. We do not have any of that stuff here.

There are so many cases it is unbelievable, but another one I want to note is Zellers and Target. It is one of the most eye-popping ones. During the retail market struggles when companies were losing money, Zellers was still making a profit, even with a union that provided benefits for its employees. What did we do? We opened the floodgates. We let Target come right in and take over Zellers and close some of them down. A few months after that, Target realized that maybe it was not so hot for the Canadian market, and after about a year it ended up closing those stores. The workers were gone. The pensions were gone. The benefits were gone. The stores were gone. Zellers is trying to make a return now, but what does it matter when we had a minister, cabinet ministers and parties in power who were ideologically driven to basically give Canada and the investments away?

It is not the same free market as in the United States. I live close to the U.S., and I know it has much stronger laws that protect consumers than in Canada. It is about time we got them here.

[National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act, October 26th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague brought up excellent points. I wonder what he thinks about the fact that, in natural resources, we have had Vale, Rio Tinto, Xstrata and United States Steel take over the Canadian companies Inco, Alcan, Falconbridge and Stelco. What happened? We gave up all of our natural resources to foreign companies.

[National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act, October 26th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague works really hard at committee and comes well prepared.

I understand the amendment the member is putting forth right now with regard to the consolidation of the minister's powers and not having secondary support from cabinet. Maybe the member wants to elaborate more on that. Is this because of the previous Conservative industry minister, Maxime Bernier? Is that what this amendment is about? Is it a Maxime Bernier amendment?

[National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act, October 26th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, it is good to see you in the chair.

I have a specific question for the parliamentary secretary. The former minister of industry, who was a Liberal, allowed the takeover of Zellers by the American conglomerate Target. Subsequently, we saw the loss of all the Zellers stores across Canada, which included union jobs and benefits, and they actually had a small profit. Target then closed all shops in Canada. Does he regret the minister's decision at that time to allow the takeover to take place?

[Canadian Aviation Regulations, October 25th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today on motion M-96. It is a motion that the House recognize that an assessment of the International Association of Fire Fighters concluded significant regulatory shortfalls.

Basically, the shortfalls are failing to specify rescue as a required function of airport firefighters and requiring only that firefighters must reach the midpoint of the furthest runway in three minutes, rather than all points of operational runways within that time period. Another part of the motion seeks to give firefighters at major Canadian airports the mandate and resources that are necessary and specify that the required function of firefighters must be rescuing passengers.

I do not want to go through the whole motion here. I want to talk a bit about process and how it relates to our airports and the holes we have in the services there. I know that the Speaker is flying tomorrow, and we do have a very good record in aviation, but we still have some improvements that need to be made. Sadly, this problem has been around this place longer than I have. I find interesting that it is a regulatory change that any minister can do at any point in time, so there really is not the requirement for this to go through as a motion.

A motion is not binding. It would not mean that the government has to follow the motion that is passed. That is one of the reasons we might want to look at regulation through the minister as a quicker more direct process, or we could have legislation that would bind the government once it passes this chamber and the Senate.

I think the motion is good for public awareness. I commend the member for bringing this forward, but the government, if it wanted to, could act on this really quickly. There is not really much of an obstacle, because it has the support of the rest of this chamber here. It is good that the member brought this through to discuss it, because maybe his government and the minister will listen to what is taking place here today and act on it even before the motion takes place. Perhaps, in the best scenario, the minister would actually act on the regulations and let the member have a victory lap.

That would be awesome, because the intent of the motion, in terms of fire safety at airports, is critically important, and he needs to be clear that there is support in the chamber for that.

I do want to also acknowledge that our critic on this, who has done a lot of work, is the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley. He is our transport critic, but he is also a former mayor. We look at airports in municipalities. I was on the City of Windsor city council when things were offloaded to municipalities. Local taxpayers had to pick up, basically, from deregulation, which we have seen Conservatives and Liberals do on a number of different things, including airline safety. They tried to get a safety management system employed there. We were able to stop that.

We face a number of things that have been deregulated. This was downloading onto the municipalities, so municipalities like Windsor and others have had to pick up the slack for fire safety.

There are some really good things here in this motion, as discussed. A good one one is regarding persons with disabilities. In the case of accidents, there is very little direction about how we would help get passengers, especially those who are disabled, off planes.

The government was very lackluster when it came to Nav Canada, which was responsible for airport towers. It was looking at closing several across this country and studying them, and they included the Windsor one in that, despite the fact that we have five air zones in the Windsor district area.

We are on the border, so our air zones are not just domestic, but they are international, and they overlap. I was fortunate to be invited by Mr. Chris Kenney, the central regional vice-president who requested a meeting with CATCA with regard to touring my airport tower just recently. I want to thank everybody who was there for the education they also gave me, which confirmed that saving our airport tower was important.

When Nav Canada was looking at this, they basically wanted to close it down so they would not have people in the airport tower. If members can imagine it, we not only have domestic flights, but we also have other services like coast guard and the U.S. air services and so forth that overlap in our region. That would have been detrimental. Losing that, especially as we are growing the airline industry, would have been wrong.

The first response from the government on this, by our local Liberal MP, was that it could not do anything about. It was Nav Canada, so it could study this. All heck broke loose.

I started working with a number of different people, because it came to me. I want to thank the flight instructors at that time: Dante Albano, Ryan Lee, Patrick Li and Craig Borowski. They are international airport pilots and are involved in the issue with the Windsor Flying Club. I also thank Karan D'Souza, Mayor Dilkens and Rakesh Naidu from the Windsor chamber of commerce.

We pushed back at the fact that Nav Canada was doing this, and it became a significant incident. We went from the government saying originally that it could not do anything about it to it saying the minister does not have the legal authority for it to get done. What I did was drafted legislation for the minister and tabled it here in this chamber so he could act. The heavens opened up and the light was on this issue after the government said it could not act. We prepared and tabled the way the minister could do it. Thank goodness that at that time, soon after we tabled the legislation for the minister, the issue was resolved. Nav Canada backed off, and we saved the airport tower.

It was a good story to tell in the sense of activism, but it also showed the vulnerabilities of municipalities in the deregulation that can take place. I mentioned the safety management systems with regard to the airport issue, because in the past, it has been the NDP that stopped the safety management systems from being in the airline industry. That is a system members might have heard about in the rail systems. The rail systems have safety management systems in place.

People are wondering what the heck a safety management system is. Basically, at the end of the day, an employee is supposed to report any of the problems they have on a daily basis about safety to their employer. Imagine that. The employee has to be a whistle-blower in their job to prevent some things from taking place. We saw Lac-Mégantic and other types of rail problems.

A rail study done independently talked about CP and CN having a culture of fear and intimidation over their workers. We were expecting, and we still expect, the workers to report those problems to the people who employ them and control their futures as employees. That system has failed quite significantly, and it does not empower workers. We have seen other whistle-blower problems in this chamber, even more recently in some of the departments.

I point back to this because it is why we have to make sure the government never brings in that system for the airline industry. That has been attempted in the past, but we used what was called a “hoist motion” to end debate at the time, creating a stalling tactic. Another election took place in between, and no government has come back since that point in time to bring in that legislation.

To come back to this motion again, I think there has been a lot of work going on. In fact, our critic, the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, rightly pointed to Senate and other types of studies in the past about this issue, going back to the 1990s. That is important. He has done his due diligence, and we do think there is a lot of value in this.

I always encourage there to be discussions among government members that could get the minister to move right away, especially if we can get this in the chamber and have some consensus. With unanimous consent, we could get that regulatory process going.

In all sincerity, I want to again thank the member for bringing this up, because it is an important issue. We will support it, but we do not want to see that be a reason not to do it now with the regulatory changes that could be done. It should also come with resources for municipalities. Local taxpayers should not be paying for federal responsibilities. One would think that fire and other safety issues would be under a federally regulated industry that is required to have different types of security and support systems.

We will see where this goes. The time in this place is always shorter than we think. That is why I am hoping this regulatory process will come into effect sooner rather than later.

[Canadian Aviation Regulations, October 25th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, why go through a motion when this is really a regulatory process that the member could see the minister about? That would be the quickest way to get an effect, especially when they have their own caucus.