Paul Calandra

[Fair Rail Freight Service Act, May 23rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if the House would give consent to allow him to continue to speak about how well Mr. Trudeau treated western Canada and the achievements of that government in helping bring down western Canadians, who had worked so hard to build such a great country. If we give him unanimous consent to continue to talk—

[Fair Rail Freight Service Act, May 23rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, every time the member speaks, he brings in the Reform Party of Canada as if it was a disease of some sort. Somehow the millions of Canadians in western Canada who voted for the Reform Party in 1993 and 1997, the Alliance Party in 2000 and 2004 and then the Conservative Party in 2006, 2008 and 2011 were not smart and their votes are meaningless. This is something that permeates the Liberal mindset. Western Canadians just are not smart enough, according to the Liberal Party of Canada. We hear that from its leader.

When we talked about liberating western Canadian grain farmers, the western Canadian grain farmer was not smart enough and the Liberal Party knew better than they did. It continues on in every single thing it does. It is an attitude that western Canadians and anybody who thinks differently from the Liberal Party must be wrong. It is why the Liberals went from here to there and now to a small corner in the House of Commons: because they are arrogant, they do not care about the people of this country and they always think they are right. It kills them that the NDP is the official opposition because they do not deserve to be there and Liberals are smarter than everybody else.

They do not know about trade. In the years they were in government in this country, did they ever sign a trade deal? No. Did they ever fix the rail service? No. They talk a good game, but when they have the opportunity, they do nothing. They do absolutely nothing.

[Fair Rail Freight Service Act, May 23rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the opposition critic for her support of the bill. As she mentioned it is an important bill and we have had a lot of consultation with respect to it.

I would also note that it is supported by Pulse Canada, the Grain Growers of Canada, the Forest Products Association of Canada, the Western Barley Growers Association, the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada, the Western Grain Elevator Association, the Fertilizer Institute, the canola growers, the western Canadian grain growers. There is a very broad level of support for this bill.

I am happy that the NDP members are supporting it. I wonder if the critic will work with her colleagues to help them understand just how important the bill is and if we can expect them to work with us to get the bill passed as soon as possible.

[Canadian Museum of History Act, May 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it is truly unbelievable what we have here. If there is a bill that is over 10 pages, it is too long for those members to read. They talk about closure and how much they want to debate and the first opportunity they get they try to close down debate and go home. It is unbelievable the hypocrisy that comes from that side. They do not want to talk about things that are important to Canadians.

I know the member has a tendency to say one thing in the House, but then another thing when she communicates to the people in her riding. For instance, I know she takes credit for the tax cuts that we have given to families. Therefore, could she give some insight as to how she will be communicating to her riding, in her householders, about how she actually really supports this, like she supports the tax cuts that we have given for Canadian families? Although she voted against it, really she supports it, so she says in her householder.

Could she give me a sneak peek of her next householder and could she explain to Canadians why the NDP members are so averse to working late at night, if they want to give back some of the $160,000 that Canadians pay us to be in—

[Canadian Museum of History Act, May 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member looks at Bill C-49, it talks about all the things that this museum is going to have to do, including organizing exhibits both in Canada and outside Canada. It helps to open up our museums, not only the national museum, but museums in communities across this country so that they can share in the collection of the national museum.

One member's constituency has a museum for Exporail, and he talked about how important that museum was to his community. I cannot think of a better way of making that museum more important and more accessible to Canadians than by becoming a part of the new museum of Canadian history. Does the museum right now have the ability to talk about Canadian history? Yes. Can it do a better job of doing that by bringing in communities across this country, by bringing in artifacts, by sharing the artifacts, but also bringing artifacts that are important in the member's community to Ottawa? Absolutely.

We can do better and that is the whole point of this. With a $25-million investment, we will make sure that all parts of this country can celebrate in their history and all the good things that have helped make this such a great country to live in.

[Canadian Museum of History Act, May 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, let me thank the leader of the Green Party for her support on the bill. As the minister said, the Museums Act guarantees curatorial independence of the museum.

One of the things I want to reference is the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage discussion of Canadian history. Part of that study was to make the debates of this place easier for Canadians to access. It is also an important part of history. Let us make the debates of our prime ministers and significant moments of debates in this place easy for Canadians to access so they do not have to search around for hours to find the debates.

I would submit that the debate tonight, although sometimes difficult back and forth, is an important debate because future generations of Canadians, if this comes up again, will want to reference what we talked about tonight. They do not want to have to go searching for hours through Hansard to figure it out. We can do that. That is one of the reasons why we brought this study to the Canadian heritage committee. But again, I thank the member for that. That is why history is so exciting. We can disagree a lot of the time on all kinds of different issues, but as long as we tell the story, we are better off for it.

[Canadian Museum of History Act, May 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, we have heard the opposition say it does not want us to make the decisions for independent organizations, so we are not going to do that. However, Library and Archives is going to be a very important partner in the new museum that we are creating here. They are going to be a very important partner in this, and that is why it is so important that we move forward with this museum.

It is not just about Library and Archives Canada. If we talk about the CBC and the National Film Board, they have amazing collections that they are making available to Canadians. I encourage all Canadians to get access to them and to look at some of the things they have preserved.

Library and Archives is going to be very important to this museum. We cannot have a museum like this without involving Library and Archives Canada.

[Canadian Museum of History Act, May 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the problem is that everything the member said is actually wrong.

As I said in my opening, this government is one of the only countries that actually increased funding to arts and culture during the economic downtown. In fact, it was the only country in the G8 to do so. We increased funding. The Canada Council had the highest level of funding in its history. Even when other governments were cutting, we were investing more.

Over $140 million in new investments has gone to our museums. This project involves another $25 million worth of investments. We are seeing other organizations digitize their collections, including the National Film Board and Library and Archives Canada. It is important to digitize their collections so that other people can have access to those collections. It is not just for those who are here in Ottawa, but people from across the country.

That is what the Conservatives are doing, and we are proud of that. The fact is that the opposition has voted against every single increase to arts and culture that we have brought in.

Despite that, we are going to continue to do it. It is not only about Canadians and helping other people understand how great this country is; it creates jobs, economic growth and activity. We will continue to do that.

[Canadian Museum of History Act, May 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, we have some disagreement with the hon. member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, but we have always had a good relationship in committee and when we have disagreed, we have been done that in a cordial way.

I am excited to speak about this legislation, but before I do I want to point out the extraordinary work of the Minister of Canadian Heritage. I have only been here since 2008, but I have had the opportunity to be a student of politics and a student of our system and I am confident and secure in saying that he is the best Minister of Canadian Heritage that our country has ever had and I will tell the House why.

What the minister understands, and what previous ministers, including those who served on this side understand, is the importance of arts and culture to not only helping people around the world understand how great our country is, but understand that arts and culture is important to the country's economic growth, that it creates jobs and economic activity.

As a result of that, even when the country was going through one of the worst global economic downturns, this government made historic investments in arts and culture. When other G7 countries were reducing their funding, this government, through the leadership of the minister, was increasing funding to the Canada Council for the Arts to its highest level ever. We invested over $140 million in our national museums and we did that for a number of reasons. It is important that Canadians have access to their history and that they have pride in the institutions that are mandated to tell the stories of Canada. This is why we have made some of these important investments.

I have also heard from members of both official parties about the motion that was brought forward at committee. I want to speak briefly to that because it ties into this a bit. They talked about it being overly prescriptive. The motion actually says that we should talk about Canada and its history before Confederation and after Confederation. It says that we should talk about the 20th century and important developments in Canadian history. It referenced some important battles of World War I and World War II.

Why should we talk about that? We should talk about that because significant anniversaries of important battles in Canadian history are coming up for one. Second, there are still people in our country who can give us first-hand accounts of what they faced in battle. This is an opportunity to bring these people before committee before it is too late, hear their stories and celebrate them. It is not meant to be something like the end of it. If members were to read the whole motion, if they do honour to this place, they would talk about the entire motion. I know we will get co-operation.

We want to talk about the people, the places, the events, the things that have helped shape our country. Sometimes those things are good. Sometimes they are things we want to celebrate, things we want to commemorate, but there are instances when things were not good, but we need to remember them all the same. We talked about the internment of Japanese Canadians. We might not be proud of that part of our history, but it is important that we remember it. That is what we are talking about at committee.

We have heard a lot of people talk about how important it is that we go forward with this project. We have heard a lot of historians talk about how happy they are that we brought this initiative forward. We have seen over the last number of years, especially as we approach Canada's 150th birthday, a reawakening of Canadians' pride in their country, in their province and in their local communities. We have heard consistently that there is no way for them to share this pride in a tangible way across the country.

I want to share a story about something in my riding. About 200 metres from my home there was a discovery made in advance of a subdivision being built in the community, which changed entirely the way we think about our first nations, and there has been a documentary on this called the Curse of the Axe. We found, 200 metres from my home, a Wendat village.

Why is this important? It is because this village had 70 long houses. It was not a community of 10 or 12 houses as was first thought, but a city of 70 long houses. Thousands of people lived in this village and it completely changed the way we thought about these people in this area.

The excavators found that in order to support a village of this size the cornfields alone would have encompassed the entire city of Toronto. They found that these people engaged in trade with other nations, again changing what we thought about the relationships between our first nations at that time. It was revolutionary in how we thought of the Wendat nation.

There are no large communities of Wendat still in Ontario. They are now in Quebec. However, we had ambassadors from the Wendat nation come to my home town of Stouffville and they talked about how significant this find was for their people. They talked about how important it was that the rest of Canada and North America understood what they were doing, how they were doing it and how sophisticated they were. They were very proud of this.

We had the team that led the excavations come to our town a number of times and had displays of the Curse of the Axe. Hundreds of people from our community have come to learn about the local heritage that we just did not know about. Our own community was making headlines across North America. In the town of Stouffville, 200 metres from my front door, there was this amazing discovery. Now we have to find a way to make sure that all Canadians understand it so that we can update what people think of the Wendat and tell them how important and exciting this is.

The minister referenced Douglas Cardinal in his remarks. He said:

I love the fact that the museum keeps evolving and growing, and people still feel that it’s a national monument that can expand and serve all of Canada.

This is important because, although it has a long history, at one point the museum was called the Museum of Man. At the time, I suppose, that was okay. However, time moves on. As the member for Ottawa—Orléans points out, there was a time in this country when women were not even considered persons, but time moves on and we are better for it.

We changed the mandate of the Museum of Man, which became the Museum of Civilization. We got together and said that we had to do better and we did. The Museum of Civilization was brought forward and Canadians have been very excited about that. It has done a spectacular job. Canadians can now be as excited about the new museum of history as they had been about the Museum of Civilization, and for many different reasons.

It is a tragedy that over three million pieces or artifacts in the collection of the Museum of Civilization are in storage and not available for Canadians to see. It is a tragedy, especially when we have museums across this country that have made significant investments.

I look at my own community, the city of Markham, which has massive investments in its local museum. The people of Markham understand how important it is to preserve their local history, their culture. They have made massive investments. They are very excited about the prospect of a museum of history so they can share their collections with the national museum and so the people of Canada can understand just how important Markham was to the development of the GTA.

There are 40,000 people in my home town of Stouffville who poured millions of dollars into our museum. They did that for a number of reasons, predominantly because they knew it was a good investment for the community. They knew people wanted to know more about the history of our community, so they put more money into it. They did it also because so many people were coming, they needed to upgrade the facilities so they could host more people.

I looked at my own community. Last year we celebrated something called the Freedom of the Town for the Governor General's Horse Guards, a unit which, in part, has its history in the development of our community.

Even on that there was not complete agreement. There were people in the community who felt this celebration should not happen in because the community was founded by Mennonites, who did not necessarily support things like the war of 1812. We had fierce debate in the community, but ultimately we had the Freedom of the Town and thousands of people came out from our community to celebrate this historic unit.

However, that does not mean the people who disagreed with it were wrong. They disagreed. They talked about it. I may not necessarily have agreed with them, but they got their message out there. It shows just how exciting history can be when we present it to Canadians in a way they can debate, discuss and share. Then they can go to their local communities.

Think of what this could do to local communities across the country when they have the opportunity to see the last spike in their own little town. Think of what that would do for a local museum, the amount of people who would drive to that museum, the people who would be even more engaged to know about their communities and the things that have helped build our country.

Ultimately, we will always have disagreements in this place. It goes without saying. We are elected from different parties. We all have different attitudes on different things. I know full well that although we have different ideas, that all of us fight and argue, ultimately we are all very proud Canadians. We are all people who want to see our country prosper and do better. We also want to ensure that people around the world can understand what has made our country great. That is what this museum will help us do. That is one of the reasons why I am so proud and excited about this.

We also talked a bit in some of the speeches about the road to Canada's 150th birthday and why that was so important, the sesquicentennial, as the Minister of Veterans Affairs pointed out.

That is such an important time for Canada. It will be a time when we can showcase all the great things Canada has done. So many people came to us at committee and said that the 100th birthday of Canada was one of those remarkable things. Everybody talked about Canada's 100th birthday. I am almost jealous that I was not born then so I could have attended some of the 100th birthday celebrations.

We want to ensure Canada's 150th is the same. We want to really help Canadians from coast to coast to coast understand why they should be so proud of our country.

I had the opportunity to visit Yukon with the fabulous member for Yukon, and he took me to his local museum. That was my first visit to Canada's north. The pride he showed as he toured me around and showed me some of the important places in his community was something that all Canadians should know. Yet not all Canadians can get to the north.

When I looked at the treasures and the collection in storage at that museum and when I heard the minister talk about the opportunities with the new Canadian museum of history, to share these collections so we could be proud of what we had accomplished, I thought this was an excellent opportunity.

We see upstairs in this place a display of the Franklin expedition. We saw the pride the Minister of Health had because something so important to her community was not being displayed just outside the offices of the Prime Minister. It was being displayed and celebrated in other areas of the world, such as Norway. I had the opportunity to meet with the ambassador of the Kingdom of Norway and to talk about how important this was, how Norwegians were celebrating and wanted to continue to make connections with the Minister of Health's home town. These are things we have to celebrate. These are things Canadians have to know.

I have had the opportunity, as I am sure a lot of parliamentarians have had, to go to Pier 21. My parents came to this country through Pier 21. It is a shame to me, and one of the saddest parts of my life, that neither one of my parents was alive to see me elected. To go back to Pier 21, where they arrived in Canada, and see my parents' names on the manifest of the boat that brought them to this country, to stand on the pier and look out over the exact place they came to, was truly amazing. It was a truly amazing moment for me, and not just me. Others were visiting Pier 21, and it was easy to know who was going back. I could see them standing there and looking around. I could see in their faces how honoured they were to be there and to be Canadians.

We have to celebrate these things and let other Canadians understand. That is why when I hear things about the Historica-Dominion Institute talking to our veterans, getting first-hand accounts and making them available, that makes me proud. It is also talking to people who came to this country through Pier 21 and getting their stories about what they faced when they came to Canada.

My parents came from Italy. My mother always told me that she was depressed for the first 10 years she was in Canada, because the winters were so harsh and the summer was only a time for her to fear what was coming in the winter. It was brutal for her. My father was a very proud Italian, but also a very proud Canadian. He did not understand hockey at all, but he cheered for it, because he knew it was what Canadians did. He could not understand any part of the game, and he always tried to relate it to soccer, but he was fiercely proud of his new country.

Sometimes it takes going somewhere else to realize just how lucky we are and just how special this country is. Going back to my parents' home town, when I was 14, although it was a beautiful place, made me realize how lucky I was to be here. It also awakened me to something then, even that far back. The many Italians who came to Canada did not know enough about Canada. We have all heard stories of tourists who come to Canada in July with skis on their cars thinking it is going to be snowing. We could do a better job.

There is no problem with members disagreeing in the House about history. That is good. Let us disagree. That is what history is all about. It is not our job to write the history books. That is not what we do. It is our job to be in this place, debate, and make sure other Canadians have access to that history. That is what this new Canadian museum of history would do, and that is why I am so excited.

It is not just about a $25-million investment that will update the museum, as the minister said, after many years. Displays have to be changed. It is not just about that $25-million investment. It is not about the $142 million we have already put into arts and culture and into our museums. It is about giving Canadians access to the things, people, places and events that have helped make this country the best country in the world in which to live. Regardless of how we feel about the policies of one another, we can all agree on that. Surely we can all agree on the fact that everybody, not just Canadians, deserves to understand what has made this country so great.

[Canadian Museum of History Act, May 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it is often disappointing to listen to the member. He speaks to the very narrow vision of history that the NDP members have.

I know that to this member maybe Laura Secord is not important, but she is important to a lot of Canadians. Canada's achievements in World War I and World War II might not necessarily be important to that member and the members on that side, but they are important to many Canadians, and many Canadians want to hear more about them.

He talked about territorial independence. Clearly, he has not read the Museums Act, because had he read it, he would have seen that it is actually guaranteed. He talked about the fact that international exhibits will not be a part of this. He has not actually read the bill, because if he had, he would have read that it may “organize, sponsor, arrange for or participate in travelling exhibitions, in Canada and internationally, of museum material in its collection and from other sources”. It is right in there.

Members opposite have also had the opportunity to vote, since 2006, in favour of $142 million worth of new investments for our museums, and consistently they have voted against, every single time.

Here we have another $25 million investment for another museum, and again they are saying they will not vote in favour of that. It speaks to the NDP's narrow vision. Anything NDP members want is something all Canadians should want, but if we do not agree with what they want, then everybody else must be wrong. That is not how we have built this country.

There are some three million artifacts in storage in the Canadian Museum of Civilization. I wonder if the hon. member would at least agree with me that it is important to bring those artifacts out and to involve museums across this country, small and large, so that all Canadians in all provinces and territories can have access to them. Would he agree it is important that all Canadians have better access to their history?