Joyce Murray

[Business of Supply, April 23rd, 2009]

Madam Speaker, a number of speakers have talked about the very high interest rates and whether the credit card companies and their banking partners have too much power. I think there is every indication that they do.

What is missing in this motion, from how I read it, is any concern about business and the costs on the small business community of some of the practices, such as the fees charged and the risk of debit card costs going through the roof. I think, from the earlier NDP member's comments about business and corporate elite, the NDP does not appear to have very much concern or appreciation for the difficulties that small businesses are facing. They are corporations, too. It does not mean they are bad. They are our parents, our families and our friends and therefore we need to address the concerns of the business community as well.

[Business of Supply, April 23rd, 2009]

Madam Speaker, the House is calling on the government to introduce comprehensive legislation similar to an act that was introduced in the United States. We need to be mindful that we are not the United States. We have a different situation in Canada. It is not a mild recession, which is what the finance minister, surprisingly enough, called it. One of my concerns is that the government does not seem to know whether it is a severe or mild recession. However, we cannot assume that actions taken in the United States are the right ones for Canada.

[Business of Supply, April 23rd, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Vancouver Centre.

I am joining the debate on the motion in response to concerns that have been expressed to me in my constituency of Vancouver Quadra around credit cards, credit card companies and banks, the rates, the fees and the potential increase in debit card fees that we are hearing about and about which small business is very concerned.

I will start by talking about the small business perspective. I have a letter from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business which states:

On behalf of 105,000 small- and medium-sized independent business owners that are members of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), I am asking for your help to bring greater transparency and accountability to the credit card industry and to stop Visa and MasterCard from instituting large, unjustified rate hikes on merchant fees.

I have heard from businesses in my community. Perhaps the member for Burnaby—New Westminster would consider them to be the corporate elite. He is very free with his ideological and, I think, quite divisive language. However, having come from the small- and medium-size business sector myself, these are corporations, people providing value, working hard in their communities, who are trying to make ends meet as well. Their livelihoods are being threatened, particularly if the fees on debit cards go up the way it is being projected. That could put some in the small business community out of business.

I also have a letter from the Retail Council of Canada expressing concern about the fees that are charged to businesses by the credit card companies and the banks. In Canada the fee of 2% is more than double the fees that are charged to the businesses and the retail community in the U.K., more than twice of those in Sweden, and four times what is charged in Australia. There appears to be an unaccountability in this industry. That is what the motion is intended to address.

The motion refers to tough economic times. That certainly is the challenge Canada is facing, along with other countries in the world. B.C. has lost a total of 69,000 jobs since October, and 73,000 jobs over the past 12 months. Unemployment among young people is at almost 15% now. Some 23,000 people in B.C. joined the ranks of the unemployed in March 2009. That number continues to increase.

We have a very severe economic situation in this country. Personal bankruptcies are up. These are not just terms. These are people who have invested their working lives in their small businesses and are finding that investment wiped out in this tough economic situation.

Canadians are losing their jobs, as I mentioned, and 1.4 million Canadians are waiting in the unemployment lines at this point. We do have a serious economic situation which makes me wonder why the NDP, which understood the severity of this economic situation, rejected the 2009 budget with its stimulus package before even seeing it. If the NDP is as concerned as the member was claiming, it is surprising that NDP members took a stand to slow down and block stimulus.

What is actually even more distressing is the absence of understanding of this tough economic climate by the Conservative Party, which is frequently referred to as the party of the rich elite. The Conservatives were very much asleep at the switch when it came to the economy.

Last fall, it was an absolutely woeful performance of denying that Canada would face this recession, failing to take action, encouraging Canadians to buy stocks just when they were about to take their deepest plunge and coming forward with an absolutely insulting economic update that did nothing for Canadians but instead took shots at women and civil servants. The Conservative government has a very poor record on the economy and does not appear to be taking any action on this important economic issue as well.

In response to an earlier question, the parliamentary secretary described his concerns about over-regulating Canadians. I agree that we do not want to over-regulate but using that as an excuse for inaction on this important issue is completely unacceptable.

On the other hand, the Liberals called for early action, foresaw the meltdown as early warning stages were coming, called for action and stimulus last September and have had an ongoing awareness and response to this situation, including the issue of the banks and credit cards.

We support this motion because it gets the conversation going and builds on work that the Liberal Party has already been implementing in Parliament and in Senate committees. We are supporting the intent of the motion, not the motion word for word. We believe action is needed but it must be thoughtful action. The Liberals believe that strong regulation and legislation may be needed. This motion causes us to work toward that. When to regulate is always a key issue in a situation like this. Regulation is needed in legislation when there is a market failure. When the markets are functioning well, it is not a time for government to get involved, take sides and hamper a well functioning market.

Is the market functioning properly in this situation? No, I believe there is a market failure. There are some very large players who are in a business structure that one could call a platform, where the credit card companies and banks are a platform between buyers and suppliers of goods. They facilitate that trade of goods and services. However, when one has an oligopoly structure like this, there can be too much power in the hands of the oligopoly firms. If that is not regulated properly, they can take advantage of their position.

This is a complex issue. The government is not providing leadership. It tends to focus on simplistic, politically popular issues in order to gain votes but it is not so great on tackling difficult and challenging public policy issues. This is an important one. I talked a bit about the small business sector, but the way cards are marketed to young people is another classic failure of our market system. It is a failure that is classically called information asymmetry, where the credit cards and bank purveyors of credit have a lot more information about what this will cost the young people in terms of interest rates and what will happen if they do not pay their card down fully and on time.

Shortly after my daughter came out of high school, she was sent letters offering credit cards. Young people, who may be 17, 18 or 19, do not have the information as to what it might cost them in the long term and how it may make them dependent on this culture of borrowing to buy what we want. That is not useful for our society and it is certainly worth taking a strong look at.

Elected representatives need to work together on this. The Conservative government, which is on probation so that it can be more effective and accountable, has been taking no apparent action on this issue. It should get with the program and support this motion.

[Human Pathogens and Toxins Act, April 22nd, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I have concerns about exemptions for the minister.

One of the premises that was put to committee was that the bill itself is not very detailed. The lowest level of toxic products, pathogens that may be found in soil, in a laundry basket, or even normally found on the human body, would not be subject to some of the very onerous and necessary restrictions and governance procedures for the highly toxic. That is the kind of thing that was really not addressed properly in the bill. We were assured it would be addressed in the regulations.

As the bill goes forward, we will be looking closely at any exemptions because creating a bill with improper consultation and inadequate attention to some of the matters that I raised earlier means that we really need to have parliamentary scrutiny as it goes forward to the regulations.

[Human Pathogens and Toxins Act, April 22nd, 2009]

Madam Speaker, this was a different situation from the ones that have been in the media where, unfortunately, the absence of proper inspection and the deregulation and the pulling back of inspection caused Canadian fatalities. The Conservative government needs to take responsibility for those errors. This was the other situation where there was a duplication and an over-abundance of regulation and inspection in facilities, many of which were being adequately regulated already not only by the institution, perhaps a university, but also by the province whose laws governed those institutions already.

We were attempting to make sure there was no duplication of the inspection and compliance as opposed to what was happening in the listeria situation where the government fell down on the job.

[Human Pathogens and Toxins Act, April 22nd, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to make comments on Bill C-11, having been part of the committee and the process of reviewing the bill, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of it and taking action, as my Liberal colleagues and other committee members did, in what was, in the end, a very co-operative process.

Everyone in the committee was in accord about the importance of ensuring that the handling of pathogens and toxins in laboratory work and transportation of these goods protect the individual safety and public safety.

We did ascertain that there were risks with some of those products, greater risks with some than with others, and that the public good was best served by laws addressing that. Therefore, there was a common view that this was the right thing and a good thing to do.

My experience as a legislator tells me that the public good is sometimes served by laws addressing a problem, but government always needs to be very aware that there are risks arising from possible unintended consequences of the legislation being proposed.

Pretty classic risks of unintended consequences include things as: stepping into the jurisdiction of another level of government; duplicating existing work and licensing and processes already in place to protect the public; placing a regulatory burden that would be onerous given the benefits; the impacts on the delivery of a public good that we are trying to promote may reduce the delivery of that public good; stepping into information privacy terrain and risking the disclosure of personal and private information that is inappropriate or against the law; or even using, in effect, a sledgehammer to crush a flea by having very onerous provisions and penalties in situations where they are simply not warranted.

Those are classic potential downsides or pitfalls to making laws. I think all legislators would agree that we need to be mindful that we are not over-regulating and we are not creating more problems than we are solving just for the pure joy of addressing problems and making laws.

When the bill was first presented to the committee, there were very severe concerns and, in fact, those concerns fit into that whole range of unintended negative consequences, which I outlined as theoretical ones. They were in fact present in Bill C-11.

Why was a bill, which had so many problems, being pushed through for fast approval at committee? What was clear was the consultation the government should have done with respect to writing the bill to address the risks around the handling of toxins and pathogens had been completely inadequate. Although the committee members were assured that there had been extensive and adequate consultation, when the list of those activities was reviewed, it was clear that there was minimal consultation with the decision-makers in the province of British Columbia. I know some of the other provincial health officers had the same concerns.

A letter from the minister of healthy living and sport in British Columbia, for example, had very strong language of concern about Bill C-11 as it was first presented to the committee, words such as, “The schedules are over-reaching”, “The administrative burden of regulation is felt to be onerous”, and “it is our strong preference that a new bill be considered which is collaboratively developed through consultations with the provinces and territories”.

This is a strong indication that adequate consultation did not occur. The absolute foundation of good legislation, legislation that previews and corrects unintended consequences, is to talk to the very organizations and individuals affected by it. This has been consistent problem with the Conservative government.

I was very involved when Bill C-51 on natural products was brought forward last year. It infuriated organizations because they had been completely left out of the consultation process. Had they been involved, they would have made very constructive representations as to how to improve the bill. The bill was killed when the House, when the Conservative government called an election last September. We will see whether the necessary improvements have been made.

With Bill C-11, several provincial governments felt it was completely inappropriate to step into their jurisdiction, clearly duplicating activities that were already taking place in many of the provincially regulated laboratories, which are already under a very constructive and thorough system of regulation and licensing.

On the regulatory burden, the committee heard from some of the university labs and others. They said that this regulatory burden would be very costly and that there were no provisions to assist with those costs. In fact, we heard that similar legislation in the United States had caused research to stop at some university research facilities. This is an unintended consequence that we do not want in Canada. We know how important primary basic research is. We know the important research these laboratories do on pathogens and toxins. Shutting down a source of research is definitely counterproductive to the goals of the bill.

Concerns were expressed by information and privacy commissioners. There were major concerns with the penalties and the criminalization of what could be an inadvertent misstep on the part of a laboratory staff person, resulting in an action that under that bill could have called for criminal penalties. There were serious concerns about the bill. Opposition members argued very vigorously that the government should take the bill back and redo it, make the necessary amendments and bring it back to the committee with the key concerns solved. At first we were being asked to accept a “trust us” message, that these things would be corrected in committee later in the process. We were not willing to do that, notwithstanding the importance of the issues and the risk that the bill was attempting to address.

After having given that context to the situation, I am pleased to say the committee members from all parties worked very constructively together. The government and the agency that was the author of the bill had the wisdom to make amendments to address some of the grave concerns raised, and those amendments were outlined in some detail by the previous speaker.

The bill that came back to the committee addressed some of those concerns, but not all of them. That is why further amendments were proposed to ensure the regulations would go to Parliament and that an advisory committee would be brought into the process of regulation making. Those were absolutely necessary amendments. I am pleased to say they are part of the bill as it goes forward. This was an occasion where the unintended consequences were serious, but they were addressed. The committee did its work. I want to congratulate all the committee members for the work on this occasion. I look forward to seeing the bill in its next iteration.

[Excise Tax Act, April 22nd, 2009]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-364, An Act to amend the Excise Tax Act (no GST on bicycles, adult tricycles and related goods and services).

Madam Speaker, I rise today, on Earth Day, to reintroduce a bill, An Act to amend the Excise Tax Act (no GST on bicycles, adult tricycles and related goods and services).

A powerful way to encourage a shift in behaviour is to provide incentive. By removing the GST on bicycles and bicycle-related goods, accessories and services, cycling will become more affordable. This encourages biking as one of the most environmentally sound, healthy and affordable forms of transportation and recreation.

Earth Day is a day to reflect on the challenges that face our planet and our society. Promoting healthy and environmentally sound choices for Canadians through financial incentives is a small but important step. The climate change crisis requires government leadership, but also personal action. We much each implement our own measures to address climate change.

As someone who has personally experienced the many benefits of bicycling to work regularly, I am proud to introduce this bill. I hope my hon. colleagues will join me in supporting it.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Earth Day, April 22nd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, April 22 marks the anniversary of the first Earth Day in 1970, a milestone in the environmental movement and born from the frustration that our basic, life-sustaining and critical needs, such as clean air and water, biodiversity of plant and animal species, the health of our oceans, and freedom from exposure to toxic substances, were being ignored.

Today's challenges are greater still as people annually consume more than the world can renew. In the near term, we are faced with the global economic crisis, but it remains urgent to make progress now on our long-term environmental challenges, especially the climate change crisis.

Therefore, let Earth Day 2009 be a clarion call for a climate-change solution that is scientifically credible, economically viable and equitable.

Let us heed the wisdom of 12-year-old Severn Suzuki at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, who was fighting for her future and who challenged us to fight for the future of all generations.

[Forestry Industry, April 21st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, thousands of forestry workers in B.C. have lost their jobs, while this minister is delivering a lot of words. The industry has been ignored by the Conservatives. Worse, they killed the 2005 Liberal plan to allocate $1.5 billion to this vital industry. This included over $300 million for innovation that would have helped to sustain forestry jobs.

The Conservatives are failing to support laid off workers and hard hit forestry communities. Why is the government helping some sectors but completely abandoning forestry?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Return, April 20th, 2009]

What is the total amount of government funding, since fiscal year 2004-2005 up to and including the current fiscal year, allocated within the constituency of Vancouver Quadra, listing each department or agency, initiative, and amount?