Debates of Nov. 27th, 2002

Committees of the House

[Peter Adams, Liberal, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, could we return to presenting reports from committees, which we just finished prematurely?

[The Speaker]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

Petitions

[John M. Cummins, Canadian Alliance, Delta—South Richmond, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present to day. The first petition has to do with the concerns of some constituents and others about the funding of the Coast Guard. The petitioners bring to the attention of the House the fact that there was what they might refer to as a botched rescue attempt this summer after the capsizing of a vessel. They blame that on the lack of funding by the government for the Coast Guard. They would like to see that funding restored and they would like Parliament to separate the Coast Guard from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

[John M. Cummins, Canadian Alliance, Delta—South Richmond, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in the second petition, the petitioners call to the attention of the House their concerns about child pornography. They suggest that the courts have not applied current child pornography laws in a way that Parliament had intended.

They call on Parliament to protect our children by taking all necessary steps to ensure that all materials which promote or glorify pedophilia or sado-masochistic activities involving children are outlawed.

[Scott Brison, Progressive Conservative, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition on the protection of children against pedophilia and sado-masochistic activities. The petitioners call upon Parliament to protect our children by taking all necessary steps to ensure that all materials which promote or glorify pedophilia or sado-masochistic activities involving children are outlawed.

Questions on the Order Paper

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

[John M. Cummins, Canadian Alliance, Delta—South Richmond, BC]

Mr. Speaker, back in May I asked Question No. 167 and the question was repeated in October. The question has to do with the failure of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to enforce the Fisheries Act and the Navigable Waters Protection Act. The question dealt with the simple matter of numbers of fish farms that have been licensed.

Apparently the government has to ask the provinces for the answer that it should know. If the government really does not know the answer, could it tell me it does not know rather than keeping me in suspense?

This matter is well over the 45 days notice.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for this question as well as his written one. I can advise him that I have information that indicates that the answer to his question is being prepared. However I will certainly endeavour to contact those who are preparing it and urge haste upon them to try to get this answer for him as quickly as possible.

[The Speaker]

Shall all questions stand?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Points of Order

[Joe Clark, Progressive Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have had an opportunity after your calling me to a halt moments ago to check House Standing Order 33(1) relating to statements by ministers. It states:

A Member from each of the parties in opposition to the government may comment briefly thereon.

There is no reference to equivalent time. It then goes on to state:

The time for such proceedings shall be limited as the Speaker deems fit.

I of course respect the authority and decisions of the Chair and expect to be guided by the same rules as other members in the House. We have not had much experience in this Parliament with the practice of ministerial statements. I hope we will have more.

I would hope also that the Speaker may have an opportunity to reflect upon the flexibility available to members responding to statements, bearing in mind that while the minister in this case did the House the courtesy of making a copy of his statement available in advance, that is not always the practice and a rigid adherence to a rule of equivalency would put some limitations upon members of the opposition.

[The Speaker]

I would cite for the right hon. member the guidelines I was following that are set out in Marleau and Montpetit at pages 378 and 379. They are ones that in my experience in the House have been fairly strictly observed for many years. The guidelines state:

During “Statements by Ministers”, Ministers are expected to make brief and factual statements on government policy or announcements of national interest. Only Members speaking on behalf of parties recognized by the House are permitted to speak in response to a Minister's statement. However, with the unanimous consent of the House, other Members have been allowed to respond. In responding to the statement, Members are not permitted to engage in debate or ask questions of the Minister. The length of each response may not exceed the length of the Minister's statement; Members who exceed this length are interrupted by the Speaker. The rules provide no explicit limitation of time allotted to the Minister or the overall time to be taken for these proceedings, although the duration of the proceedings can be limited at the discretion of the Chair.

I hope the citation helps the right hon. member. I am sorry to have had to interrupt him, but I did enforce the same time rules, I assure him, with respect to the other hon. members who spoke. In fact, I was signalling quite vigorously the hon. member for Crowfoot to indicate that his time had expired, and he sat down before I got up.

Motion for Papers

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all notices of motions for the production of papers be allowed to stand.

[The Speaker]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Points of Order

[Jim Abbott, Canadian Alliance, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Yesterday in the other place a point of order was raised regarding the Kyoto motion that I believe must be raised in this House as well.

As you are aware, Mr. Speaker, the motion in the Senate is identical to the motion before the House. While the Speaker in the Senate has reserved his decision, I do not think that should be a deterrent to raising it at this time, since the Senate Speaker's ruling, while we would of course consider it, is not binding on the House and in the past conflicting rulings on an identical matter have been brought down. Bill S-13 from the last Parliament comes to mind. The Senate Speaker ruled that it did not infringe on the financial privileges of the Commons and the Commons Speaker ruled that it did.

In any event, I hope the Senate Speaker rules before Françoise Ducros gets appointed there and becomes the Senate's next Speaker.

As you know, Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister appoints the Senate Speaker, another reason why we should be raising the matter here with our duly secret-ballot elected Speaker.

Having said that, I will go over the points made in the Senate and add a few more to those arguments.

Points were made regarding statements in the press that Parliament would ratify the Kyoto protocol and the statements were attributed to statements made by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister gave the impression that Parliament would ratify Kyoto, and the motion that we ended up with calls on the government to ratify.

Although this adds to the confusion over the issue, what is more important is that Senator Cools and Senator Kinsella argued that the government motion calling on the government to ratify the Kyoto protocol could not be considered a government motion. They argued that a motion that calls on the Senate to recommend something to the government could hardly be considered a government motion.

In our case, the motion calls on the House to recommend something to the government. That is the job of private members during private members' business and it is the job of opposition parties on supply days.

I would like to point out to the government that if it thinks that by passing a motion calling on itself to do something it will get action, I advise the government to check its own record in these matters. The government should know that it does not listen. The last NDP supply day is a perfect example. Our supply motion dealing with the conditions that must be met before Kyoto is ratified is another example. The government ignored those motions and many others like them.

Or maybe the government will comply only with motions that call on itself to act. The government does not mind telling itself what to do; the government just does not like it when others tell it what to do. I have some news for the government: the House speaks with one voice, and when it adopts a resolution the respect given to the motion should be the same no matter who sponsors the motion. Motions should not be judged by the colour of the sponsor's party banner but by the content of the motion adopted by the House.

Yesterday, Mr. Speaker, you made a ruling in regard to the motion in the name of the right hon. member from Calgary. He had placed a motion on the Order Paper instructing a committee, asking it to determine the level of provincial support for Kyoto. The motion was listed to be moved under the rubric “Motions”. I suspect it was there because the member asked that it be placed there. However, Mr. Speaker, you ruled that it should properly be placed on the Order Paper as a private member's motion. As a result, its designation was changed and it was moved.

It is very important to get these things right, Mr. Speaker, because as you know there are different rules for different motions. The case of the motion from the right hon. gentleman is a good example. If the member's motion would have been allowed to be placed under “Motions”, it could have been moved as early as today at routine proceedings. Now that it is a private member's motion, the member will have to wait until his name is drawn in a lottery, and by the time that takes place Kyoto will have destroyed our economy.

This illustrates that the Speaker can decide these matters and it also illustrates what a difference a designation makes with respect to a motion.

One of the points made in the Senate was in regard to the Senate's rule of closure. The same argument can be made in the House. It is not a surprise that the Canadian Alliance will do whatever it can to prevent any ratification of the Kyoto protocol. With the government's record of using 80 closure motions, it is no surprise that it might use closure. In any event, the motion is eligible for closure and any motion that is closure worthy will be too irresistible for the government House leader to pass on his favourite pastime of moving closure.

Senator Kinsella pointed out the absurdity of the government asking the House to ask itself and then forcing the issue through closure of the government asking the House to ask itself. It is kind of a schizophrenic situation.

The government has many prerogatives that private members do not. It controls most of the business of the House. It can move certain motions and bills that private members cannot, like bills requiring royal recommendations. It can raise taxes through ways and means motions and it decides how the money is spent. Does it really need to be muscling in on private members' turf?

Does it need to beg itself to do something? While it is not always dignified, it is the role of private members and the opposition to beg the government. Maybe the Liberals see the writing on the wall and are already in opposition mode, calling on the government to take action. Maybe they have some internal polls they are not sharing with us.

Under the circumstances, I am tempted to recommend that this motion be moved to private members' business or be considered as a supply motion, but since it is sponsored by a cabinet minister it is disqualified. It is disqualified as a private member's motion, a supply motion and a government motion. To complete the set, I would argue that it cannot be moved as a motion under routine proceedings either because, as you have pointed out many times, Mr. Speaker, very few opportunities exist for private members' motions or motions of a private member's nature to be moved under the rubric “Motions”.

The fate of the motion, Government Business No. 9, should be that it be removed altogether from the Order Paper.

Mr. Speaker, I would also ask again for your considered opinion. Until you have given us a decision on this point of order and the other point of order, I would recommend for your consideration the actions of the Speaker in the other place, whereby he set aside the motion until he could come back with a decision as to the efficacy of moving forward with the motion at this time.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that for the most part you have dealt with the substance of this point of order already. When the hon. member for Kootenay--Columbia speaks about statements of the Prime Minister in the media that Parliament would ratify the Kyoto protocol, it is clear that we all know here that we use words in different ways. We do not always, when we are outside this place, and even inside, use words in the strict legal sense. I am sure that my hon. friend and his colleagues would be the last ones to want us to always use legalistic phraseology in this chamber.

In this case it has been made clear that the Prime Minister and cabinet do respect Parliament and want to hear from Parliament on this. They have asked for Parliament to give its advice on the question of ratification, and yes, they have made it clear it is their intention to do so, but they certainly want to hear from Parliament, and I think they would like to hear from all sides of Parliament, not just repetitive statements from one side of the House, which we have heard over and over.

For example, we know that the hon. member for Red Deer has told the Speaker he is going to repeat himself. He said nine times that he was going to repeat himself. Nine times he stated this to the Speaker, so it seems to me that if he is going to say that nine times that is a clear admission of repetition.

At any rate, Mr. Speaker, I think you will find that this point of order is not a point of order and that, as you have ruled already, clearly the motion is in order.

[The Speaker]

The hon. member for Kootenay—Columbia indicated to the Chair that he had an open and shut case. The parliamentary secretary to the government House leader has indicated his views on the matter so I will now indicate mine. I am quite prepared to dispose of the point of order immediately.

Page 406 of Marleau and Montpetit states:

Any item of business proposed by a Minister outside of proceedings on Supply, Ways and Means, and bills is listed under the heading “Government Business”. They typically include, for example, motions to establish special committees, to refer business to committees, to propose a resolution declaratory of some opinion, or to make arrangements for the conduct of the business of the House.

I will skip on to:

The business that the House is to consider during Government Orders is determined solely by the government.

It seems to me the government can put before the House any motion it wishes. We have had some motions in my own experience urging the government to proceed with a war, urging the government to do this or do that, stating the opinion of this House, and all those motions have been held to be in order.

In my view this motion is in order. We are debating it. The debate is underway. The motion was put to the House. I had numerous arguments before it was put as to whether it was acceptable and in every case I ruled that it was.

In my view, the point of order is not well taken and the motion is in fact properly before the House and is one that can be debated by the House, as we have been enjoying for the last couple of days.

The House resumed from November 26 consideration of the motion.

Kyoto Protocol

[The Speaker]

I wish to inform the House that because of the ministerial statement, government orders will be extended by 12 minutes.

[Bob Mills, Canadian Alliance, Red Deer, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is certainly nice to be back. I got out of the swing of talking about Kyoto.

The most exciting part of this is that Canadians are engaging in the debate. The e-mails and calls are amazing. I would not believe that I would suggest to anyone watching, to those reporters watching, that they make sure to tell people to send their e-mails and faxes and make their telephone calls to the Prime Minister's Office so he can know what Canadians think about this whole issue.

So as not to repeat anything that I said in the last couple of days, I want to start off by talking about the provinces. We need to talk about the fact that the provinces were supposed to have a meeting on November 21 but it was postponed by the government. There was no new material. The second edition did not rate any change.

The meeting was postponed until Friday, November 29, two days from now. That meeting has now been cancelled and has not been rescheduled. All the provinces say the federal government is not proceeding in good faith.

I will use some quotes from across the provinces so that members understand what the various provincial ministers and premiers are saying about the government's action to ram through this debate in the House and to ratify this very important treaty before Christmas. That is what this is all about. It is all about the actions of the government, which has known about climate change since 1992 when it signed the first agreement. In 1997 it signed the Kyoto accord, and now, all of a sudden, it has to be ratified by Christmas.

The reason it has to be ratified by Christmas is that the government fears that when Canadians find out what it is the government is committing them to, they will be totally and absolutely opposed to it. The Canadians out there who really matter are the moms and dads who will be taking their kids to the hockey game tonight after work. They are the single moms who are trying to make a go of it. They are the people on fixed incomes who, because of our demographics, are increasing. Those are the Canadians who matter. Those are the Canadians who will be affected by Kyoto. The government is ignoring them by ramming this through.

Let us examine where the provinces are at on this issue. Let us start way out west in British Columbia, a long way from planet Ottawa. Let us hear what the premier had to say, who by the way the Prime Minister called down here to try to divide and concur, and with whom he tried to make a special deal. The only problem is it did not work very well. The premier was on television last night saying it is a bad deal, that it is something we should not be going ahead with, that it is something that needs a lot more discussion, a lot more costing and a lot more discussion on the implementation.

I will speak about the first plan and the second plan. For people to keep track of what this is, the first plan is the one that was issued on October 28. The second so-called plan was the one that was prepared for the meeting on November 21. These are the closest things the government has to some kind of statement as to what it is going to do, what implementation might include, but it will not reveal any of the costs of it.

Mr. Campbell, the Premier of British Columbia, said that this is no way to build a country. He said:

We are not going to stand by while the federal plan, the favoured plan, blows away 11,000 British Columbia jobs.

That is his evaluation of the first plan. Then we go on to the second plan. Remember that the Prime Minister attempted to coerce him in between. He said:

British Columbia has grave concerns about the Kyoto accord. There is no implementation plan, there are no targets that have been set. The federal scenarios that we see, British Columbia seems to be taking a greater hit in terms of job loss, a greater hit in terms of gross domestic product and that is not acceptable to us.

That is fairly clear. I could quote the energy minister and the environment minister of British Columbia, but I think that gets the point across. British Columbia is saying no way to the Kyoto accord, no way to ratification by the end of December, and no way to proceeding with the plan.

Moving on to Alberta, many people do not know Alberta's stand on this but let me quote Mr. Klein about the first plan. There have been many quotes but I will choose one. “We are giving as strong a signal as we possibly can that the Kyoto protocol, as it is now written, is the wrong way to go”. That was on November 5. The energy minister, Mr. Smith, around the same time said , “It is a long way from completion. It is very clear that they are not ready”.

Of course the environment minister, who largely has carried the ball for Alberta, has made many comments about how there is no plan, there is no costing, how they have not been consulted, and how there has not been anything to allow the ratification of this protocol. Remember, as I pointed out, there are penalties when we ratify.

Mr. Taylor commented on the second plan, the one issued a month later. He said, “It is a clear breach of trust. It looks just like the original plan that all of the provinces rejected. One might say it is like putting lipstick on a pig”. That is fairly clear as to how acceptable this plan is to Alberta and how ready Alberta is that the government should ram through the ratification, should do it now, and then force it on the provinces, on industry, and on the Canadian people.

Moving east to Saskatchewan, Mr. Eldon Lautermilch, the industry and resources minister, has had a lot to say on television. A lot of people would be familiar with him. Saskatchewan derides the document as a non-plan. “No detail, no specific information, no cost estimates”, said Mr. Lautermilch, the Saskatchewan industry minister.

Then he got the second draft, which I intend to review today. I reviewed the first draft yesterday and I will review the second draft today. He said, “I can say from our perspective it is not acceptable in any way, shape or form from what we see”. Three provinces have spoken out. He further said that the province will not accept the plan for the ratification of Kyoto. It will not accept the plan.

If members recall, we have a Prime Minister who does not care. there is a potential future prime minister who says we should not ratify this agreement unless we have the full cooperation of the provinces. It is time that the future prime minister stood up, was honest with Canadians and said, “That is what I believe. I know the implementation can only work if the provinces are on side, and I do not believe they are on side yet”.

Let us move on to the Prime Minister's beloved Manitoba, the one province that is on side. Mr. Tim Sale is the minister of energy for Manitoba. Remember that Manitoba wants to take hydro power, get credit for it, run it to Sault Ste. Marie, provide however many thousand kilowatts per day and have a guaranteed source of income from Ontario because it will capture half of that energy market. That is not about the environment; it is about economics.

Let us hear what he has to say about the first plan. The New Democratic provincial minister said, “Everybody in Canada now agrees that we've got to lower our greenhouse gas emissions and that's a real step forward. The question is what is the plan going to be and how are we do it so we share the load and share the benefits? That hardly sounds like a great endorsement for Kyoto or for the plan. That is reading between the lines. We do not know what the plan is so we do not know if we are for it. Remember, they are supporters of it.

With regard to the second plan, the conservation minister, Steve Ashton, said, “It's time to move beyond the issue of Kyoto, yes or no. It's time to move on to the issue of whether we can have a real Canadian plan that's going to have a substantive response in terms of greenhouse gases”. That is a question. He is saying that he wants to see the plan and how how it will be implemented, then he will support it. He is saying that there has to be a real Canadian plan. Who does not believe that? If that is outright support, then I would hate to see the ones who are opposed if that is the best they can say about this government. That is almost a condemnation of the government for not having a plan. That is the best friend the government has in terms of Kyoto.

I do not know if you were part of this before, Mr. Speaker, but I would like to give an update of the number of cars parked out front because a lot of viewers are very interested in that. Just prior to Question Period 13 cars were parked out front and three were running. It is interesting to note that so many were turned off in a day. I wonder if next week they will still be running. At present the Prime Minister has four big black limos outside, with red lights on top, and they are all running. That is just an update so people will know what kind of example the government is showing in front of the House of Commons. Obviously we would not want anyone to catch a cold.

Let me move on to Ontario where I can provide lots of quotes from the Ontario environment minister. Speaking about the first plan, the Ontario environment minister said, as noted in The Star , “Candidly I think the federal government has misread the provincial mood and the public's mood. They want the information and without the information they are not prepared to take a flyer on this one. We should not have a vote until we can have a first ministers meeting to really seriously look at a plan”.

That makes a lot of sense. All those people in Hamilton on Sunday said they did not know about this. They never thought it would to affect them. They did not know they would have to slow their cars down. They did not know they would have to have smaller cars. They did not know they would have higher power bills and heating bills.

The government did not tell them its plan and how it would be implemented. That is exactly the point. The government has not told the provinces, industry, the small businessman, Canadians, or the mom who is taking her kid to hockey after school. The government has not told anybody its plan. It does not know what the plan is. It does not know how it will be implemented. It does not know what it will cost.

Let me go on to the second plan and what the environment minister had to say about it. He said “We haven't seen any funds set aside. We have not seen any commitment to dollars and we really haven't seen the cost projections of what Kyoto will be”.

There is no plan. The government does not know what it will cost. The government does not know how it will be implemented. Ontario is a long way from being on side as well and is asking for a plan and a cost of implementation.

Let us move on to Quebec, the other friend of the federal government. Let us look what the environment minister had to say on the first plan. He said, “We stopped debating the opportunity of the ratification and we then decided to concentrate ourselves and our efforts on the implementation plan of the federal government”. Quebec wants to talk about the implementation plan and it has given up trying to get any ideas about ratification: let us do it and let us get on. However, it has asked for the costs and how it will be implemented. That is hardly an endorsement.

Mr. Boisclair tabled a motion calling for a new deal with Ottawa and all the parties in the legislature supported him. He said, “If the current plan is far removed from the principle of polluter pays, it is geared toward the principle of polluter pays. This approach goes against Quebec's vision because it attempts to protect the businesses that produce the most greenhouse gases. This proposal softens the impact of the protocol implementation on the sectors that emit the most greenhouse gases to the detriment of the manufacturing sector which is very present in Quebec”.

That is an endorsement. In other words, he is saying that we have have to give them credit for a lot of different things, that we have to have a whole different plan if they are to buy in and that we had better not count on support for the implementation plan unless we take these things into consideration. That is a big caveat. That is why all provinces are not showing up on Friday, including Manitoba and Quebec. They do not agree with this government's mini me plan which simply will not work.

Let us move on to New Brunswick. Jeannot Volpé said, “Within the next few weeks or month, we will be in a much better position to see what the financial impact will be on New Brunswick”. New Brunswick is concerned about the financial impact on it

On the second plan, the energy minister went on to say that the Kyoto accord was a moving target. He said his main concern was remaining competitive with the United States and getting credit for emissions cut on power sold to the U.S. He said, “Eighty-eight per cent of our exports are going to the United States. If the emissions reductions that we are achieving in New Brunswick cannot be credited it will be a major challenge”.

Again I apologize. I went through all the reasons why we will get clean energy credits. The bottom line is Europe will not give them to Russia for the natural gas that Russia provides Europe so why would the Europeans agree to give them to Canada for sending clean energy to the U.S. which is a non-Kyoto participant? We cannot have a deal with a non-Kyoto participant because it would totally upset the whole European plan and would require a great deal more credits that it would have to buy from Russia.

Obviously, New Brunswick has a major concern. I come back again to the guy that picked me up at the airport when he said, “Hey, you guys in the federal government are about to knock us down when we have our first chance to stand up on our own two feet”. That is exactly what that minister had to say.

Let us move on to Nova Scotia and hear what Mr. Gordon Balser the vice chair of the committee had to say.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have been listening to the member and I am a little confused. I know he has been going on for a couple of days. For me to understand, is this somebody who picked him up at the airport a minister?

I know that the Alliance has complained that we have nothing to do, but it is about time the hon. member start making some sense. A minister does not pick him up at the airport. It must have been a taxi driver. Therefore, I am confused as to who picked him up at the airport.

[Grant McNally, Canadian Alliance, Dewdney—Alouette, BC]

That is not a point of order. That is debate.