Pat Martin

[Manitoba Claim Settlements Implementation Act, November 16th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to get involved in the last bit of the debate that is going back and forth.

I have some personal knowledge of the hydro dams in northern Manitoba. I worked on them as a carpenter. It was a good source of work for me but I was also quite sympathetic with what was being done in the outlying areas. I visited some of the communities prior to their being flooded and then again after they were flooded.

To help shed some light on the questions raised by the member for Wetaskiwin, I think that in 1977 when the northern flood agreement was finally negotiated it was actually about seven years after the main damage of flooding was done.

When the first big wave of flooding happened, the Notigi diversion from the Churchill River into the Nelson River, nobody really understood just how devastating that would be. They actually thought raw land could be flooded without clearing any of the trees first. They were flooding whole forests. They did not realize that mercury and other stuff leeching out of the soil after years would kill off the fish stocks. A mumbo-jumbo of trees fell to the point where the lakes were not navigable, even if people did want to fish.

In and around 1970 it was an NDP government that orchestrated a lot of the original flooding. It completely underestimated the damage from what it was doing. The government thought it could simply take people from one community, transplant them and flood the old land and they would still be able to use the lake and land in the same way. It just was not true.

When the northern flood agreement was negotiated, it was clear that far more compensation would be needed and far more impact studies would have to be done before any real package could be arrived at.

Happily we are now at the point where a lot of this stuff is being remedied. A lot of measures are being taken to try to put these people's lives back in order.

Somebody mentioned that $76 million is involved in the Norway House case. It is a lot of money, but the net profit to Manitoba from selling hydroelectricity is $250 million to $300 million per year. It is a huge revenue producer. Manitobans also get the lowest hydroelectricity costs anywhere in the country, two and a half cents per kilowatt which is about one-third of those in many other places.

[Marine Conservation Areas Act, November 16th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to stand today on behalf of our critic in this area and express the position of the NDP caucus on Bill C-48.

We are glad to say that we can support Bill C-48 in principle. We look forward to further debate on this matter because there are reservations we have that we would like to share with the House today.

In terms of background we recognize the bill provides legislation to establish and manage a system of national marine conservation areas representative of 29 marine areas in Canada.

The 29 NMCAs represent unique biological and oceanographic features and include both fresh and salt water areas. A Parks Canada system approach has identified the 29 national marine conservation areas within Canada's Great Lakes and the territorial sea and exclusive economic zones, the EEZ 200 mile limit zones.

NMCAs are not parks as such in the usual definition. They are conservation and stewardship areas. These NMCAs are fundamentally different from what we would term terrestrial parks. Terrestrial parks are usually associated with a semi-closed ecosystem and are essentially fixed in space and time and are subject to change over relatively long periods of time. We would argue this type of ecosystem would require a completely different style of management as compared to the national marine conservation areas.

Marine protected areas are associated with an open ecosystem and are large and dynamic. The very nature of their oceanographic base is dynamic, moving, fluid and where rates of change to the ecosystem can occur over a relatively short time span.

Pollution impacts have to be have special consideration when we are dealing with so sensitive an ecosystem that is vulnerable to these quick changes. Over-exploitation of our resources is another huge concern, in layman's terms overfishing. These are examples of why national marine conservation areas need special attention above and beyond that which we give our other parks system.

Another key difference between terrestrial parks and marine areas is the science and knowledge gap between the two.

We know relatively little about our oceans and the ecosystems of our marine areas. This came to light for me when I built a house for a marine biologist and we were talking about what he did for a living. He said he worked full time, year round, studying the aging of groundfish. I thought this was remarkable because he was studying when the best time to harvest groundfish would be and when did they reach their maximum size and when did they reproduce.

What really shocked me when talking to this mathematician was we did not know that type of thing. We were in the mid-1970s and we were just starting to study the ageing of groundfish which is a key primary industry.

A difference between the current parks system or terrestrial parks system and the national marine conservation areas is that we know very little about this ecosystem. It takes a great deal of sensitivity if we are to learn from these areas and their natural habitat without interference and development getting in the way of that knowledge.

The process to establish these national marine conservation areas began in 1986 with ministerial approval to establish national marine parks.

This decision lead to a 1987 agreement with Ontario to establish Fathom Five in Georgian Bay and further to a 1988 agreement with British Columbia for a marine park in South Moresby in the Queen Charlotte Islands, the Gwaii Haanas marine conservation reserve, and with Quebec to examine the feasibility of a federal-provincial marine park at the confluence of the Saguenay fiord and the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Saguenay—St. Lawrence marine park. Bill C-7 entertained this creation which received NDP support and royal assent in 1987. The act came into force on June 8, 1998.

In 1995 Canada and British Columbia signed a memorandum of understanding for a shared Pacific marine heritage legacy. In early 1997 a federal-provincial memorandum of understanding was signed initiating feasibility studies for marine conservation areas in the Buena Vista—Notre Dame Bay areas of Newfoundland and the Thunder Cape of the Slate Islands area of western Lake Superior.

Similar to the successful Saguenay—St. Lawrence project public consultations in local communities in both regions are progressing and public advisory committees are being established.

On completion of the feasibility and the consultation studies leading to established agreements, a total of four marine conservation areas and reserves would be established and six of the twenty-nine marine regions would be represented.

At the international level efforts to develop national and global representative systems of marine protected areas have been underway since the fourth world wilderness congress of 1987.

In 1992 the international union for the conservation of nature, the UCN, tabled detailed guidelines on marine protected areas at the fourth world congress of national parks and protected areas. The Prime Minister committed to new marine conservation areas legislation at the IUCN world conservation congress of October 1996.

We have mixed feelings about the details regarding the legislation and this is why our support at this time is limited or rather guarded. We are pleased that Bill C-48 will provide the powers, authorities and procedures required to establish and administer a system of marine conservation areas and that protection and conservation are fundamental specific stipulations on management and used to ensure ecosystems remain intact. There is clear reference to the ecosystem and precautionary approach which has been a key NDP concern in previous bills and acts.

There are many aspects to Bill C-48 that we find beneficial, many of which are written in such a way that they are very hard to share. We do have some reservations and concerns, however, with Bill C-48.

One of these concerns is that the department of fisheries will have the exclusive jurisdiction on fisheries management concerns. We feel that with the creation of these national marine conservation areas we need a special consideration of the resources that ply these waters and we wish it were other than DFO that had input into how these ecosystems are studied and managed.

The minimum protection standards have been expanded to include prohibition of fin fish aquaculture, bottom trawling, ballast water dumping, intentional introduction of alien species, outfalls, waste discharge, recreational artificial reefs and dredging provisions. We would have liked to see all these things limited with more specific limitations on them in Bill C-48. If we have a national marine conservation area, all these things will have an impact on the ecosystem and will limit our ability to benefit from the intelligence we can glean from studying these areas.

The allocation of sufficient resources for scientific study is not dealt with firmly in Bill C-48. We wish it were much more binding and that it contemplated stable funding for the study of the ecosystems we will be looking after within these conservation areas. I made reference to a scientist I knew who worked at the Nanaimo biological research station off the west coast of British Columbia.

Very little of the important research that needs to be done in order that we may really know our ecosystem and our fisheries is being done in the retail commercial market of fisheries under DFO. We feel that having these national marine conservation areas would be a huge benefit in terms of having protected areas free of industrial development and hopefully as free as possible from industrial waste. It is an ideal opportunity to truly study issues like the ageing of groundfish and the impact of species, et cetera, in the wonderful ecosystem we would have as our laboratory.

There has been extremely slow progress in establishing the NMCAs. We encourage government to move swiftly in this for the 29 identified areas.

[First Nations Land Management Act, November 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am very interested in some of the comments and remarks which the hon. member made. Certainly toward the end of his speech he mentioned the inherent right to self-government as being one of the key goals and objectives that we are seeking, to ensure it is recognized.

As we know, some of us think it was a missed opportunity when the Charlottetown deal fell through because that would have promoted or guaranteed that inherent right. I would like the member to comment on that.

There is another issue I would like the hon. member to comment on. In recent months we have been hearing speaker after speaker from the Reform Party challenging, denouncing and condemning native leaders and communities, implying that there is widespread, rampant corruption, almost an irresponsibility in terms of handling financial matters, as if they are not capable or not ready to take control of their own destiny with true self-government.

Upon hearing these things over the last few months, one cannot help but think of similar charges which were made about the leadership of the civil rights movement in the southern United States. As those people started to get very close to the prospect of true social justice, critics in the southern United States, from groups like the Reform Party, felt that the easiest way to challenge this kind of evolution in terms of human rights and civil rights was to denounce the leadership, to take potshots at the leadership, to criticise them and to try to convince people that that group of people was not ready to take their first struggling steps toward true participation.

I would like to hear the member's comments on both of those things: first, the failure of the Charlottetown deal, which might have taken some steps toward self-government for aboriginal people and, second, the obvious connection between other civil rights movements and the extreme right wing in those areas taking shots at the leadership of those movements to try to discredit them.

[Columbia, November 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, since the civil service strike in Columbia started on October 7, nine more trade union leaders have been murdered, bringing the total to 2,700 trade union activists and organizers killed since 1987.

The death toll alone in the past three weeks includes Hortensia Alfaro Banderas, the president of the nurses union; Macario Barrera Villota, the president of the teachers union; and Jairo Cruz, the president of the local branch of the United Workers Centre. Others include Hector Fajardo Abril, Hernando Hernandez, Gabriel Alvis, Jésus Baldivino, Jésus Bernal and Jorge Luis Ortega Garcia. Nine more martyrs for the national trade union movement, nine more murders for the international right wingers of the world who would rather kill than share their hoarded wealth.

It is only tyrants who fear the labour movement. Canada should condemn Columbia in the strongest terms possible for failing to protect the right to organize and the right to free collective bargaining.

[Pearson International Airport, October 30th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the busiest airport in the country is operating at bare minimum safety standards because of a lengthy work stoppage there.

First there was a near collision between a 747 and a Dash 8 and then the accident between an aircraft and a food services truck. Now for the second time landing lighting systems have broken down. It is only a matter of time before we have a major disaster at Pearson airport.

Will the Minister of Labour act now and fix the broken mediation process, assign a senior mediator to these talks and put the strike to an end before somebody gets killed?

[Petitions, October 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the many Canadian citizens who have signed this petition are lobbying the government to recognize that the Islamic republic of Iran is witnessing a worsening in human rights practices, and yet the Government of Canada considers it a safe country and still deports people to Iran. The people who have signed this petition feel strongly that Iran should lose its status as a safe country and that the Government of Canada should not be deporting people to that country.

[Petitions, October 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I join many of my colleagues and submit a petition presented by a number of residents from British Columbia who are very concerned that the MAI is not completely dead. These petitioners would like to drive a stake through its heart to try to make sure it actually stays dead because they point out what sheer folly it would be to enter into any kind of liberalized trade agreement that would bind us for 20 years and have such obviously detrimental effects.

[Supply, October 26th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, in reaction to the comments made by the member, he is being critical of the Reform Party for failing to vote in favour of this motion. Frankly the motion as I pointed out really does not go to the heart of the issue. Perhaps that is the reservation some of the members of the Reform Party have with the motion.

I wish it went much further in calling for substantial EI reform. I wish the Progressive Conservatives had taken the opportunity with this opposition day motion to call for an independent fund. Then I think they would get unanimity on the opposition side.

[Supply, October 26th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his remarks. He is quite right.

I was very disappointed to hear the Minister of Human Resources Development try to trivialize this argument by taking a cheap shot, questioning the motives and the sincerity of the speakers from the Bloc Quebecois. Frankly the minister of HRD represents a riding that has one of the highest unemployment and poverty rates in the country. Representing unemployed people in the province of Quebec should be a huge priority for him. He certainly should not question the sincerity of other representatives from the province of Quebec who are sincerely concerned about the failure of the EI system.

The hon. member raised another interesting point which I wish I had time to comment on. He is quite right that all four opposition parties joined together in their demand for an independent fund. We want the EI fund to be unique and fully separate from general revenues. This is the only way we can be sure that future finance ministers are not tempted to put their hand in the cookie jar and grab money that clearly is not theirs to use it for purposes not designated by the fund. It is something on which we should keep the pressure. The general public understands why this is necessary. Business, labour and all four opposition parties will continue to call for that.

[Supply, October 26th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the opposition day motion put forward by the Progressive Conservatives. Our caucus is pleased to support the motion for a variety of reasons. We are critical that the motion does not go nearly far enough. We would much rather debate the EI Act and argue for its reform. It is clearly dysfunctional and broken.

The EI system is supposed to provide income maintenance for unemployed workers. It is pretty straightforward. That is the deal. That is the pact most working people understand. When they have something deducted from their paycheques for a specific reason, there is a reasonable expectation that they should be allowed to collect income maintenance should they find themselves unfortunate enough to become unemployed.

We approve of other designated uses. We find there is merit to the motion. We believe the small weeks pilot project was necessary and that it had to take place. Obviously too many people were being penalized by the divisor rule which was put in place with the Liberal amendments to the EI system.

The divisor rule is patently unfair in that it brings down the benefit for the unemployed worker by averaging all the weeks leading up to the layoff and not just the weeks in which they worked. In other words, dead weeks or small earning weeks were being folded into the package which brought down the average. Not only do less than 40% of unemployed people qualify for any benefit at all, but those who are lucky enough to qualify for some benefit get less money and for a shorter period of time.

The hon. Minister for Human Resources Development tried to argue that those figures were not accurate. He referred to an analysis on employment insurance benefit coverage recently commissioned and released by HRDC. Holding the report as proof he made the argument that 78% of all unemployed workers actually qualified for EI. Nobody believes that. The media do not believe it. Recent editorials do not believe it. It simply is not true.

The minister made the allegation that opposition critics in this area were reading the report too selectively, misquoting and taking things out of context. In actual fact the minister is taking things out of context. The report clearly states as a summary of the study that the regular EI beneficiaries to unemployment ratio or the BU ratio—some people call it the BS ratio—had declined by almost 50% in the 1990s, falling from a level of 83% in 1989 to 42% in 1997.

That is the figure we hear most commonly quoted in the media and in our own criticisms. Critics from labour and all different groups say that approximately 40% of unemployed workers qualify for EI. Clearly the system is dysfunctional and broken. It is no wonder there is a huge surplus. It is not hard to develop a surplus when nobody qualifies any more and the few people who do qualify are getting reduced benefits and for a shorter period of time.

With that huge surplus—and I am glad other speakers raised it as an issue—we are hearing all kinds of creative ideas on how to spend money that clearly is not theirs to spend. Some people argue we should be spending it on health and social programs. Some of the premiers of the provinces are even saying that. Some people say we should use it for deficit reduction, which is what the Minister of Finance has used the surplus for. Almost unbelievably the Business Council on National Issues is calling for tax cuts.

In some sort of perverse version of Sherwood Forest we have the BCNI advocating that we rob from the poor to give the rich yet another tax cut. It is almost incomprehensible. Shear perversity is what I call it. Fortunately that idea has not caught on in any meaningful way.

Then we have people advocating that we should be cutting premiums with the surplus. A common theme in the business community is that it should be returned to business and employees through premium cuts.

Except for my caucus no one seems to be raising the issue of increasing the benefits and lowering the bar for eligibility so that more people qualify. What could be more simple? The money is deducted from our paycheques every week. To use it for anything but income maintenance would be a breach of trust at the very least and out and out theft in the worst case scenario. To take money from a person's cheque for a specific purpose and to use it for something completely different is fundamentally wrong.

As we talk about the $20 billion surplus, an almost inconceivable amount of money in most people's minds, obviously it should be used to provide income maintenance. It should be put it in the pockets of working people when they find themselves unfortunate enough to be unemployed. They will spend the money in the community. It has the multiplier effect and residual benefits.

Another point has not come up. Many of the changes to EI were quite insignificant when we look at the bigger picture of how few people qualify. One of the changes that went by almost unnoticed was that of people serving their apprenticeship training in a community college. There is now a two week waiting period.

As a journeyman carpenter I served my time as an apprentice. When I went to community college there was no waiting period for the EI to kick in. Now people are laid off from their job to go to school for eight weeks, six weeks or whatever their trade dictates, and there is a two week period where they do not get any income at all. The result has been that many apprentices are simply choosing not to take their in-school component. They are not going to school because they cannot go for two weeks without earnings.

The total savings to the EI system for reinstating this waiting period for students was $10 million per year. The fund is showing a surplus of $500 million per month and the apprenticeship system has been gutted for the sake of $10 million per year. That kind of logic simply was not thought out well and should be reversed immediately.

Actually the building trades unions making this argument have a variety of good recommendations for how we can fix the EI system. One of the things they point to is that all the changes have not even kicked in yet. It will actually get worse in the next year. I guess in the government's mind it will get better because the surplus will be even bigger. One of the changes that will kick in next year is the clawback or the threshold people reach before their EI benefits are clawed back. It used to be $63,000 a year. Those making more than $63,000 a year would start losing their benefits. They would be clawed back. Everybody agreed that was fair, that anyone making $60,000 a year should not be collecting EI and should be able to put some money away.

With this set of changes it was reduced to $48,750. I guess we could argue whether or not that is fair. As of next year it will be $39,000. People making more than $39,000 will have their EI benefits clawed back.

I come from the building trades. A journey person might make $20 or $25 an hour. If they are lucky to get eight or nine months of work in, they might make $39,000 a year. Hopefully they will. However they still have three months without earnings. That $39,000 a year is not a huge amount of money. They are in a very high tax bracket. They do not get to keep the whole $39,000.

I argue that they should not penalized for collecting what is rightfully theirs for the three or four months they need it to span that period of unemployment. It is to everybody's benefit if we can keep people in those occupations during slow times so that they are available when the industry needs them the next spring. Otherwise they will find some other kind of work, leave town or move. It is as simple as that.

My main criticism of the opposition day motion is that I wish it went a lot further so that we could have a substantial debate about EI reform. I can only think the reason it was limited to such a narrow scope was that perhaps they were snookered by the government. Maybe there was some optimism that the Minister of Human Resources Development would see the logic in what they were saying and would announce today that the small weeks program is a good idea, is necessary, and that they should be maintaining it after November 15. Maybe that was the optimism which motivated the people who moved the opposition day motion.

In actual fact I think they have been hoodwinked. The Minister of Human Resources Development just stood and said that they were not interested in extending the small weeks program. He was not interested in jeopardizing the windfall of $7 billion a year that they pull out of the EI program.