Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to speak to the motions in Group No. 2 which are before us. The hon. member for Bras d'Or—Cape Breton and the hon. member for Sydney—Victoria certainly put a lot of thought into an issue that impacts their communities. The whole island will feel the repercussions of Bill C-11. These motions were put forward to correct some wrongs and oversights which occurred in the context of the bill.
It seems to be a challenge that at least one employee representative will sit on the Devco board of directors. It is not an unimaginable practice in any other corporation, community or sector. Providing an employee representative to sit on the board of directors is an honourable gesture. Any employee who has served in the industry, in the company and in the community would have a lot to offer in the decisions to be made in the very short term and in the long term in dealing with the whole issue of Devco.
I will give a brief explanation of the second motion in this grouping. There is a residency requirement for members of the board of directors. The majority of the directors of Devco should live on Cape Breton Island in the communities affected by the corporation's decisions. These decisions are major in impact and in concern, as highlighted by my hon. colleagues on this side. We are trying to get government members to realize that these amendments could make drastic changes in how the bill unfolds and how the decisions in the whole industry unfold in Cape Breton.
We are saying that the majority of the directors of Devco should live on Cape Breton Island. It is a small request but it is a major request. We do not need to transport people from all over Canada to serve the best interests of an industry and community in that region. Cape Bretoners are very capable of handling their own affairs, and certainly a lot of the solutions are with Cape Bretoners.
It has certainly been highlighted and recommended, dealing with the directors of Devco, that representatives of the employees' pension association ensure that one-third of the directors come from the employees' pension association. The crux of this major debate and major concern of the employees is how their pensions are interpreted, administered and identified among them. It is a major issue. If they have that much vested interest and seniority in terms of the years of service in this corporation and in the industry, they should assured of one-third of the Devco board of directors. This representation is a crucial part of the motion.
Selecting at least half of the membership of the body designated to manage the workers' pension fund is another motion that has been brought forward. If the body designated to manage the pension fund is created, then at least half of the people sitting on the representative body should be from the pension fund association.
These motions are common sense recommendations. It is hard to speak on common sense when everybody should have grasped the whole aspect. All the government members should take a second look at the motions that have been put forward. When the motions are voted on, they should vote with their conscience and vote for the common sense request.
The hon. members sitting with the other parties on this side of the House have been very silent on this issue. I challenge them to speak and debate these issues. These representations could certainly be taken by other sectors, other communities, other corporations, other mines in a very short while. The whole aspect of protecting workers' rights and views is of utmost importance for us, but it should be for every member of parliament. There are workers in the communities of all of our constituencies.
The whole issue of coal mining and the evolution of mining in this country and the transfer from private to public ownership and flipping back to private ownership is certainly a concern. I have experienced certain changes in ownership from public to private in my neck of the woods in dealing with the forest industry.
The forest industry in northern Saskatchewan is viewed as pristine. As of late there have been huge allocations of forest management and harvesting. The present forest management practices use mechanical harvesters. It is not like the B.C. terrain where they have to climb halfway up the mountain and then they are limited by the elevation.
The boreal forest is flat. There are no inhibitors. The only things that stand in our way are the waterways and maybe the communities. Certainly, we should not overlook that a community could be perceived to be in the way of any development. Community development, industrial development and social development should all be taken in context. In future plans, governments of the world now use sustainable development as a coined phrase for future sustainability, the integration of social, economic and environmental issues. The communities are an integral part of this development.
The Devco workers are asking that they be respected as a community of workers, as a community in Cape Breton. They should be an integral part of the development of any other industry in the region.
Going back to the forestry issue, there was an allocation of a major pulp mill just 18 miles from my community. At the time it would have been a bleaching process and huge amounts of chemicals would have been poured into the Beaver River which flows into the Churchill River. This was stopped. It was stopped because of an election. The government changed and a new attitude of policies and perceptions took place and the whole private pulp mill was dumped.
Years later it came back. Now it is a cleaner process. It is still an allocation of the forests. It is still a private pulp mill that produces paper. Who uses bleached paper? I do not know for what purpose we have to have extremely white paper. Why we have to bleach this paper and poison ourselves is beyond me. We could use paper that is more natural, which would be less harmful in its processes on our environment and our health.
A pulp mill was created. Huge allocations of the boreal forest were made, but there are no profits. In our region, every year the provincial government has to backfill all the losses for the pulp mill.
What are we doing it for? Why are we cutting these huge tracts of land from forested properties using the excuse that it is going to burn by forest fire anyway, that we take a certain percentage of harvested forest to use for paper that was deemed to be forest fire damaged anyway. They cannot see that forest fires recycle the nutrients in soil and recycle the nutrients for the many species that live in the forest. Clear cutting with mechanical harvesting by no means replenishes any nutrients in any soil or any region.
The community has to be taken into account. The whole region's economy has to be taken into account. The environmental impact has to be taken into account. The whole context has been coined as sustainability.
It is a challenge for the government to look at these motions on workers' rights and representation on the Devco boards, and workers' representation on pension associations. These are common sense requests that hon. members have put forward on Bill C-11.
I call on all members to seriously look at these motions and provide a debate on the Devco issue which impacts a certain part of our region that has contributed for the betterment of all the country. Looking at the history, they certainly have done that.