James Moore

[Supply, May 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, we routinely hear calls from the left in Canada denouncing NAFTA's chapter 11, the World Trade Organization and free trade in general. Unfortunately their pedestrian understanding of trade matters undermines the rights of union workers whose interests they claim to represent.

Had the NDP view prevailed during the FTA debate in 1988, auto workers would have been in deep trouble when the WTO struck down the longstanding Canada-U.S. auto pact. That decision alone could have wiped out union jobs in towns like Windsor, Oakville, Oshawa and Sainte-Therese.

However the FTA agreement, an agreement the left so strongly denounces, protected those jobs and established free market rules that allowed auto exports to the U.S. to grow by 15%. That has increased the opportunities, wealth and living standards of thousands of Canadian auto workers.

If members of the radical left in Canada want to be taken seriously and not labelled hypocrites, they should adopt the same standards of openness, democracy and transparency they demand from others. If they want open door free-for-alls when Canada negotiates bilateral or multilateral trade deals they should be willing to live by the same standards.

In fact they should lead by example. They should demonstrate to Canadians how their nirvana of openness would work in practice. They should open up all future union-management contract negotiations to public scrutiny. They should answer questions from citizens who are concerned about the impact of proposed labour deals on the environment, culture, the economy and society at large. They should discuss the impact of such deals on the cost of labour, on post-secondary education and on the way we all feel about one another. The media would of course be invited to these free-for-alls.

Fortunately no serious economist, social scientist, commentator or politician believes such a system could work. More important, no serious unionists or business leaders would impose such a regime of unreasonable checks on their own behaviour. They understand that there is a place for consultation and closed door negotiations and then a place for the rank and file to vote on a final agreement. That is the approach that the Canadian Alliance and I support, and that is exactly what needs to happen.

When I hear that the fourth party is opposed to the investor state provisions in NAFTA's chapter 11, I cannot help but wonder what they stand for and, more important, where they have been for the past few years. Consider the following paragraph:

The investor affected shall have a right, under the law of the Contracting Party making the expropriation, to prompt review, by a judicial or other independent authority of that Party, of its case and of the valuation of its investment or returns in accordance with the principles set out in this Article.

The text I just read is not from NAFTA's chapter 11. It is article 8, paragraph 2 of the Canada-Egypt foreign investment protection agreement. It is also article 8, paragraph 2 of the Canada-Philippines foreign investment protection agreement and article 8, paragraph 2 of the Canada-Venezuela foreign investment protection Agreement.

It could also have been taken from similar foreign investment protection agreements, or FIPAs, that Canada is negotiating with a growing list of countries from Armenia to Uruguay. It could just as easily have been taken from article 8, paragraph 2 of the Canada-Croatia foreign investment protection agreement. That agreement went into effect on January 30 of this year and the NDP does not even appear to have noticed. It is still fighting battles from 1988.

The NDP seems unconcerned that all these agreements have clauses allowing investors to submit disputes with signatory states to arbitration by the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, an international ad hoc arbitration tribunal established under the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law.

Let me say that again. A foreign investment protection agreement with Croatia, which features investor state provisions virtually identical to NAFTA's chapter 11, went into effect on January 30 of this year and the far left has said nothing. It seems the radical left follows trade issues about as carefully as New Zealanders follow hockey.

I used to play hockey. If I am in a bar and people with a New Zealand accent tell me it is great that the Canadian team scored three touchdowns against Italy at the world hockey championships, I will thank them for their support but will likely not take their advice on next year's hockey pool. So it is with the fourth party in the House when it comes to trade policy. Its members seem to know as much about world trade as I do about yodelling.

The NDP's principal argument against chapter 11 is that it limits the government's ability to protect our environment and sovereignty in the same way that the charter of rights initially compelled Canadian police forces to adapt to the country's newly enshrined citizens rights.

Canada's international trade agreements will require governments to think smarter and more consistently in making public policy decisions. Chapter 11 of NAFTA is based on five basic principles. The first is transparency. Investors have a right to know what the law is and governments cannot capriciously change rules midstream.

The second is national treatment. We must treat investors from other countries the same way we treat Canadian investors, provided they do the same for us. In other words, we cannot stop Wal-Mart from building a big box store unless we are prepared to apply the same rules to Zellers, Canadian Tire or Rona.

The third is protection of investors. We cannot take property without offering compensation, and a property owner has the right to ask an independent body to determine if the compensation is fair.

The fourth is quick and fair settlement of disputes. Parties should get a quick and impartial decision.

The fifth is reciprocity. Canadian companies doing business abroad should be treated the same way we treat foreign companies here.

People may why ask they did not hear about investor state rights until recently. It is likely because the five principles I just listed are so basic to Canada and to our major trading partners that there was never any need to write them down.

It should come as no surprise that we are not negotiating foreign investment protection agreements with the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Taiwan or Australia. Those countries have long respected the five principles and thus there is no need for a formal agreement.

Every case in which we have included NAFTA chapter 11 type language has extended Canada's notion of an independent judiciary to less progressive states in regions like eastern Europe and Latin America.

Most lawyers will say that for foreign companies doing business in Canada NAFTA chapter 11 changes almost nothing. The left jumps up and down hysterically about the Ethyl Corporation case yet fails to point out that Canada's supreme court would probably have reached the same decision regardless of chapter 11.

Let us consider point 13 from the Ethyl Corporation's statement of claim. The MMT act does not prohibit the manufacture or use of MMT in Canada. It merely requires that all MMT sold in Canadian unleaded gasoline is 100% Canadian. A domestic manufacturer of MMT can manufacture and distribute MMT for use in unleaded gasoline entirely within a province and not violate the MMT act.

If the Ethyl Corporation wanted to maintain its presence in the Canadian octane enhancement market it would be required to build an MMT manufacturing, blending and storage facility in each province.

The left would have us believe that the Ethyl case proves that chapter 11 prevents us from protecting the environment. That is not so. If the federal government had banned outright the use of MMT in Canada, regardless of where it was made, the Ethyl Corporation would not have been able to use the discrimination clause which was so central to its case.

Let us think about this. Let us suppose the city of Ottawa decided that pizza contained a cancer causing ingredient and then used those health concerns to support a law prohibiting anyone from bringing pizza to Ottawa from Hull. If the city of Ottawa did not force its own pizza restaurants and vendors to close, the supreme court would probably find discrimination and force it to back down, repeal the law, award compensation and find another mechanism for banning the dangerous food. However it would not deny it the capacity to ban what is dangerous. It is the same with MMT.

NAFTA chapter 11 is nothing more or less than what has been the status quo in Canada since we adopted the British legal system before Confederation. By putting such language into NAFTA and into foreign investment protection agreements, we are simply asking other countries to give our companies and investors the same respect we have long given companies and investors, both Canadian and foreign, here in Canada.

[Elections, April 30th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, on Saturday, B.C. Liberal leader Gordon Campbell promised that if he were elected premier in B.C.'s election, the next election in B.C. would be on May 17, 2005. Knowing when the election will be allows enhanced accountability and avoids wasting millions of dollars like the government chose to do.

Why is the idea of fixed election dates so difficult for the Prime Minister to understand when his B.C. Liberal colleagues get it perfectly well?

[Elections, April 30th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, today's Ottawa Citizen informs us that the Prime Minister's decision to call an early election last year right in the middle of a scheduled team Canada trip to China cost Canadian taxpayers $4.1 million in cancellation fees.

In addition to needlessly wasting taxpayer money, a clear message was sent both to China and to Canada's business community that a campaign to keep the Liberals in power on a campaign about nothing was more important than exports to China.

Both of Canada's NAFTA partners have fixed election dates and avoid these types of problems. Why will the Liberals not implement the same policy here?

[Tobacco Tax Amendments Act, 2001, April 27th, 2001]

The point is taken, Madam Speaker. However the member knows that in the United States, just as in Canada, the lion's share of cigarette costs is taxation. In the United States, therefore, as we see with as Michigan, New York, North Dakota and Washington, cigarette prices vary from state to state. This puts an increased obligation on Canada to keep smuggling out of the country, and we must fulfil that responsibility.

As the member knows, in places like Akwesasne we have a tremendously complex border with differing police jurisdictions and the government must make sure it sufficiently guards that border.

I will also note that one cause of cigarette smuggling is the increase in price that results from aggressive taxation policies designed to discourage smoking.

In Great Britain, for example, the government has decided to implement, on an interim basis and with a sunset clause, a 5% increase in cigarettes taxes each year. The U.K. government argues that it is best if such increases are done cyclically, as seen with Canada's increase of 1993, its drop of 1994, its increases of 1996 and 1998, and its expected increase of 2001. If such tax increases are too great or too sudden they will cause a surge in the black market.

The government in Westminster has implemented a gradual increase in taxation. There is no instant spurring of the cost of cigarettes and therefore no spurring of black market or smuggling activity. That is the sort of legislation the Canadian government should keep in mind if it is to continue down the path of increasing cigarette taxes to reduce consumption.

[Tobacco Tax Amendments Act, 2001, April 27th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, in 1919 at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, a doctor summoned some medical students to an autopsy saying that the patient's disease was so rare that most of the students would never see it again. It was lung cancer.

This story is from a December 1992 article by Dr. John Meyers entitled “Cigarette Century” from Time magazine. It illuminates like a lightning flash this fact: much, probably most, of our hideously costly health care crisis is caused by unwise behaviour associated with drugs, eating, driving recklessly, sex, alcohol, violence, insufficient exercise and especially smoking.

Focusing on wellness, on preventing rather than causing illness, will reduce the waste inherent in disease oriented hospital centred high tech medicine. The history of the connection between cigarettes and lung cancer illustrates the fallacy of associating health with the delivery of medicine.

One of those 1919 medical students later wrote that he did not see another case of lung cancer until 1936. Then, in six months, he saw nine cases. By the 1930s advances in immunology and public health measures such as sanitation, the handling of food and so on, were reducing the incidence of infectious diseases. However we were about to experience an epidemic in behaviourally driven disease.

The lung cancer epidemic can be said to have sprung from the 1881 invention of a cigarette making machine. Prior to that commercial manufacturing of cigarettes was largely a cottage industry. However by 1888 North Carolina's James Buchanan Duke, whose wealth brought Duke University to life, was selling nearly a billion cigarettes annually throughout North America. Between 1910 and 1919, cigarette production increased by 633%. The U.S. national cigarette service committee distributed cigarettes free to soldiers in France during World War I.

In 1930 the lung cancer death rate among men was less than five per 100,000 per year. By the 1950s, after another war in which cigarettes were sold for a nickel a pack, were distributed free in forward areas and were included with K-rations to soldiers, the lung cancer death rate among men had quadrupled to more than 20 per 100,000. Today it is more than 70 per 100,000. Women's lung cancer rates are soaring and lung cancer is far and away the leading cause of cancer deaths.

According to the World Health Organization, about half of all long term smokers die from tobacco related illnesses and half of those die in middle age, losing 20 to 25 years of productive life.

We have come a long way from the early days of television when sponsor-anchorman John Cameron Swayze's The Camel News Caravan required him to have a lit cigarette constantly visible to the audience.

The social disaster of smoking addiction illustrates why behaviour modification, especially education, is the key to containing health costs.

To that end, legislation such as the bill we are debating today, the tobacco excise tax act, can serve the public good. However the government must address concerns about the increased smuggling that may result from a spike in tobacco costs and the difficulty of policing our vast borders.

We must not forget that when combating smoking, drugs, foul language and other mischievous activities, especially among the young, social stigma has its place, as the member for Elk Island put it. Information campaigns about the public health dangers of smoking have a role to play as well.

The addictive qualities of tobacco and the craving for the product at the lowest possible price could spur a dramatic increase in cigarette smuggling. On January 27, 1994, the member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, the current government House leader, recognized these concerns when he told the House:

Our country is faced with a serious smuggling problem. As a non-smoker, I am generally in favour of high taxes on tobacco to help discourage young people from smoking. However, the reality in Canada today is completely different. Because of the smuggling problem in our country, almost any young Canadian can buy cigarettes cheaply, even illegally...We have no choice, Mr. Speaker. We must put an end to this illegal activity by reducing, however temporarily, taxes on tobacco. We have to work together to enforce the laws of our country.

This was followed by an ambitious crackdown on cigarette smugglers. The government told MPs it would dedicate 700 RCMP officers to anti-smuggling operations and that anyone participating in the tobacco smuggling trade in any capacity would be subject to the full range of sanctions and penalties under the law.

Presumably enthused by the new found enforcement of our laws, on October 20, 1994, the hon. member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca called on the government to restore the tax on tobacco to the level that existed on January 1 of that year and to put the increased revenue into health care financing. His call was opposed by the current government House leader who told members the smuggling situation persisted and that the Minister of Health had tabled a report two months earlier which had showed the reduction in taxes had not resulted in an increase in smoking.

The government House leader was wrong. From 1979 to 1991 the real price of cigarettes in Canada increased by 159% and teenage smoking fell from 42% to 16%. In 1994 Canada's reduced tobacco taxes, which were in response to concerns about smuggling, caused the real price of cigarettes to fall by one-third. As a result, teenage smoking increased from 16% to 20% and total tobacco consumption began increasing, especially among young Canadians.

From a health point of view this was a clear and significant failure. Revenue losses were equally acute. The February 1994 tax cuts resulted in a combined federal and provincial revenue loss of over $1.2 billion for the fiscal year 1994-95. The federal loss was $656 million, more than twice what the government had predicted.

In 1998 the government increased cigarette prices to try to reduce consumption. On April 20 of that year the member for Charlesbourg—Jacques-Cartier rose in the House to inform his colleagues that the morning's papers showed that the increase had brought back cigarette smuggling with a vengeance to southern Quebec and Ontario.

The government has dropped the ball on this file in the past, both on the taxation side and the smuggling side. The government's batting average has been far from good.

On May 9, 2000, during a debate of Bill C-24, the so-called sales tax and excise tax amendment act, the member for North Vancouver reminded the House that up to that point, despite the government's dedication of over 700 RCMP officers to the cause, not one person had been charged with cigarette smuggling.

During that same day's debate the member for Elk Island told the House:

It was about three, four or five years ago that cigarette smuggling was a huge issue, so the government decided to reduce the taxes on cigarettes to make the price differential between smuggled cigarettes and those purchased at the store less so there would be less demand for the black market, thereby reducing smuggling. The government tells us that this has had some effect.

Bill C-24 will once again increase cigarette taxes...However, I have to ask the question: If high taxes were part of the reason for developing the smuggling industry in the first place, would it not be possible that by increasing these taxes, as Bill C-24 will do, the problem will return?

I was not a member of the House when those comments were made and yet today we are considering the same question with Bill C-26.

Having worked in Ottawa in 1997 and 1998 and travelled to and from British Columbia extensively at the time, I can tell my colleagues that straight prices for cigarettes in Ottawa were roughly the same as duty free prices for cigarettes at Vancouver International Airport.

At that time federal cigarette taxes were high in Vancouver but dramatically reduced in the Ottawa area in an attempt to reduce smuggling in this part of the country. If taxes are to have the universal benefit of reducing smoking they must be applied at the same level in every part of the country. There cannot be a gap in the cost of cigarettes across Canada. This has been a failure in the past.

As a person who is interested in discouraging smoking from coast to coast, I remind the government that unless it deals effectively with smugglers and enforces the laws of our country, the problems that have plagued past efforts to reduce smoking will return to haunt the government.

Upon passage of the bill it is important that the government carefully and aggressively establish a plan to fight an impending surge of smuggling. If it does not, the good intentions behind the bill will fail to produce what most Canadians want: a healthier country inhabited by fewer smokers.

[Immigration, April 27th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Rat Naval was ordered deported from Canada on April 5 and is now comfortable in his home in Markham.

As the minister makes weak excuses, public safety is being jeopardized by the government. Why is the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration not doing her job? Why is she allowing known terrorists and assassins to make Canada their safe haven from justice?

[Immigration, April 27th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the RCMP has testified in court of a known terrorist, murderer and gangster living in Canada.

Instead of carrying though with his deportation, Mr. Rat Naval was allowed to stay in Canada because he caused a fuss during deportation when he was boarding a plane.

Why is he still in Canada? Do Canadians not deserve a better standard of public safety from the government than what we are seeing?

[Summit Of The Americas, April 24th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, at this weekend's summit of the Americas, antagonists of disorder were frequently heard saying that all they want is democracy. This is an odd refrain to hear uttered from the oddities that did so.

It is odd indeed for union bosses to say that all they want is democracy and openness when most of them do not allow secret balloting within their own organizations and they conduct their negotiations behind closed doors.

It is also odd for members of the fourth party in the House to claim that all it wants is more democracy. If that is so, then why has it been so consistently advocating on behalf of the least democratic nation in this hemisphere, which is floating off the coast of Florida?

It is also odd for people to claim to be advocating for democracy when they march shoulder to shoulder with thugs sporting scarves emblazoned with the hammer and sickle insignia of one of the most murderous and totalitarian regimes in the history of civilization.

Democracy is among the greatest of man's implemented inventions. Its spokesmen should be only those who adhere to its tenets, not poseurs and pretenders.

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 2000, April 5th, 2001]

Because she does not.

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 2000, April 5th, 2001]

The hon. member says to name one. The Secretary of State for Multiculturalism deserves a smaller budget. There is one.