Debates of Oct. 25th, 2005

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill S-36, An Act to amend the Export and Import of Rough Diamonds Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Export and Import of Rough Diamonds Act

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, thanks to the member for Saskatoon--Humboldt, we learn more about the background of members of Parliament in the House. The hon. gentleman has worked in the mining sector in northern Quebec, Yukon and the Northwest Territories. The House has a diverse group of people who come here to represent Canadians in the House of Commons.

He made a comment about the need to encourage and support continuous exploration for our mining industry, and I totally agree with him, because mines are eventually worked out. To keep the mining industry going and miners employed, we need new mines and new ways of supporting and encouraging that sector.

It was our government that I think a couple of years ago brought out a whole new taxation regime for natural resource companies, particularly the mining industry. A package removed what used to be called the resource allowance and replaced it with what the mining companies were actually paying to provinces and territories in terms of royalties. There had been a formula-driven resource rent allowance, which was replaced with the actual royalties paid by the mining companies to the jurisdictions in which they operated. Most of the mining industry benefited from that.

There were also other initiatives in that package, including an exploration mining tax credit of 10%. The member for Saskatoon—Humboldt also talked about flowthrough shares and how they have been rolled over a number of times. These are important instruments to support the mining industry so that it will have an incentive to explore and find new deposits.

The member is absolutely right. He speaks with more experience than I. I once flew over Voisey's Bay. That deposit was missed by the big companies two or three times. An entrepreneur, a chap who was looking for this type of thing, came across it and recognized that there was something very valuable there. He staked a claim and Voisey's Bay was born. I think he became a multi-multi-millionaire. More important, that area has grown and is growing and will be a huge source of nickel and other minerals for many years to come.

I am wondering if the member is familiar with the package that the government brought out. I think he indicated that these tax credits and the flowthroughs are working well. From his experience, how does it change the behaviour of the people who are exploring and looking for new deposits?

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I will preface my answer by saying that I am not the expert on all the financial aspects. I tend to have a much more hands-on working geoscience knowledge on the ground.

I will say that it is fairly important for us to have a system because this is so high risk. Mining exploration for heavy metals, diamonds and some of the more exotic minerals is much, much more risky than it is for oil and natural gas. With today's technology, such as 3D seismic and various other things, and provided one is working with a competent firm and team, one does not often hit a dry well in a well researched and well explored basin when drilling for oil and gas.

When it comes to other forms of mining, the exploration is much more risky. That is why it is important, in regard to the good provisions that have been made, to continue them. There are sunset clauses on at least some of these provisions. The provisions need to be continued.

To go back to my speech, the timeline on these things is so long and immense that it is often difficult for people not in the industry to understand. People can go for years and years working as exploration geologists without actually ever finding a mine or working on a project that will become a mine. It is just the nature of the industry. I have had the privilege of working on a project in Baker Lake in Nunavut that looks it like will become a mine in the future.

I would say these provisions need to be carried on. The underlying premise in doing this has been very good. They need to be carried on. They also need to be integrated with an overall skills package to help the people who are working in these areas take full advantage of and have the opportunity for some of the skilled positions that are coming on stream.

It is very hard. There are not that many exploration geophysicists across Canada. There cannot be one in every village. Even many mining companies bring people like me in from specialist firms. However, there does need to be something done so that the very people who work in the areas where there is development and exploration--because it is not just the mines that provide jobs, it is the exploration that goes in front of it too--are able to take full advantage of the opportunity, be that with businesses in supplying the needs of the mining companies that are coming in or by specifically working in on-site jobs in various ways.

It is important to keep these tax measures and the packages that are coming to a sunset rolling forward. They have worked, but if they sunset we may lose some of the benefit because of the timeline that needs to be done. Mixed in with a bit more progressive look toward employment in some of these regions, I think we can have some very positive results continuing and Canada can continue to be a world leader in mining, both in diamonds and other minerals.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources]

Mr. Speaker, I quite enjoyed the member's speech and thought it had a lot of interesting points, and of course anyone who has been in the Yukon cannot be bad. I did object strongly to one statement he made when he said that we need mines in the north, in Yellowknife, in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Manitoba and northern Saskatchewan. How could anyone leave out the constituency of the parliamentary secretary, the Yukon? We need mining jobs in Yukon as well.

I would like to compliment the member on his mention of geoscience. I can tell him that our department is very strongly supportive of geoscience. I agree with him totally that we have had excellent investments in geoscience. In the past, the Government of Canada has made major investments in geoscience, which have had productive results. I think we can lobby together in that area.

As he mentioned, in the north there is still a lot of unmapped area, particularly in Nunavut. I would ask the member to comment further on that.

I would also ask him to comment further on skills development and HRSDC and programs that we might put in place or might support to get more value added out of the industry. We have a very small value added industry now. There is some polishing and cutting in Yellowknife, Gaspé, Toronto and Vancouver. Is there anything we could do to get more people involved in the industry and is there any support that he or his party might have for Skills Development Canada initiating such programs?

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I must say that the slight to Yukon was not intentional. My former boss was the vice-president of the Yukon Chamber of Mines. If the hon. member ever gets to see Mike Power of Aurora Geosciences and Scott Casselman and other colleagues, I ask him to give them my regards and greetings. They are still doing good exploration work in the territories.

In the Yukon, the Klondike is one of the great stories of Canadian history. The Yukon is a fascinating place. If members have not been there, let me suggest that they go up and see the hon. member's riding. There are some beautiful stretches and some needed work.

The parliamentary secretary asked about skills development. If I may, I will put in a little plug for the plan that the leader of my party has put out overall for skills and trades across the country to try to increase the number of people able to go into the skills and trades. The plan is also to encourage them financially, so more tools will be tax deductible for the trades and skills. The problem was originally brought forward due to mechanics not being able to claim their tools against their income tax, but I believe that it will help overall. It will help all sorts of trades.

With regard to the specifics of increasing value added for the diamond industry, I am not 100% knowledgeable about the specifics. I will say, having dealt with other resource industries, that regulatory processes can be a problem. I found that in dealing with the chemical industry. There was a decision some years ago, which I think everyone regrets, that allowed the potential for some value added export products to be taken to the United States instead of developed here in Canada.

What I will say is that what we need to do is develop enough of a core. As we have skills in an area, they tend to attract. We have two mines in the territories in full development. As we continue to develop more mines, a natural centre of gravity will develop. That is what we need to do. Tax credits, incentives, et cetera, will bring people in. We need to use the market for motivation; they work together very well.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to enter the debate in a more proactive way on Bill S-36, an act to amend the Export and Import of Rough Diamonds Act.

We have had a lot of good discussion today around the bill and it is a very important undertaking to ensure Canada's diamonds are certified as being diamonds that are not coming from conflict areas, or blood diamonds as they are often referred to, and that they have been through a process to certify that.

Canada is now the third largest producer of diamonds in the world, and that is quite an accomplishment. That was done in a fairly short period of time and that industry is even growing as we speak. The parliamentary secretary talked about new mines being developed in Ontario and other parts of Canada, so this is a great story and, with this bill, we are helping the diamond industry in terms of how they can market their product more effectively and create a good market for their production.

I spoke earlier in the debate about the need to add value to rough diamonds in Canada. In rebuttal, the member for Burnaby--New Westminster talked about the fact that we are exporting all these raw logs. We need to put that into some context as well. In fact, I worked for 12 years in the forest industry in British Columbia. The export of raw logs is limited by statute and they have to meet very specific tests or criteria. To be exported in the raw log form, they have to be surplus to domestic needs and they have to pass some other tests.

If we look at the average over many years of the export of raw logs in relation to total production of logs in British Columbia, it is somewhere around 3% to 4%. We need to be concerned about that but it is very different from diamonds, where right now in Canada we are exporting virtually 100% of our uncut diamonds to Antwerp, Tel Aviv and Amsterdam, which is where the cutting and polishing is being done.

I would like to see a diamond trading centre established in Canada. The experience in Antwerp and other cities has shown that if we set up a diamond trading centre, then the people who cut, polish and further process diamonds will situate themselves very closely to the diamond trading centre. The people who cut and polish the diamonds like to be close at hand to the diamond exchange.

There have been some discussions that people in the Northwest Territories, where a lot of the big diamond mines are now located, would like to see this diamond trading centre located in Yellowknife, and I can understand why they would want to do that. It creates high paying jobs and it is good for economic activity.

The parliamentary secretary from Yukon talked about the fact that we do have some cutting and polishing going on in Canada but it is after the uncut diamonds have been shipped offshore. Some of them do come back for some further value added but it is quite small in its size and scope. I think there is a real opportunity for Canada to get more involved in the added value part of the diamond industry.

I have talked with some of the players who are anxious to set up a diamond trading centre in Canada and they are telling me that establishing such a diamond trading centre in Yellowknife, for example, would be very difficult because they need to attract people with the right skill sets.

While I understand and respect what the parliamentary secretary is saying, that we do have some of those skills in Canada, but we do not have enough of them. I suppose setting up a centre have the centre in Yellowknife is, I suppose, a reasonable option but I have been told that these diamond trading centres are typically set up in very large urban areas close to airports with easy access to international flights because people come and go, they buy diamonds and work in their businesses in terms of the value added sector.

I began to wonder why we would not want to look at setting up a diamond trading centre in the city of Toronto. Toronto has many of those attributes. It is a large centre. It is easily accessible in terms of international flights. It has the kinds of amenities that many people in this sector would be looking for. I am trying to see if we can attract that kind of business to Toronto.

I am working with my colleagues in the Northwest Territories and we are exploring different options. Maybe there is a possibility of having some value added, more value added than is being done today in centres like Yellowknife. There might be some compromise solution but the diamond trading centre, as I understand it from the experts, needs to be in a large urban centre that is easily accessible in terms of travel and the like.

The experience on this has been quite clear that once a diamond trading exchange is set up, the other value added sector industries will follow. What we end up with is a cluster that is good for creating many high paying jobs, skilled jobs, economic activity and then, from the cutting and the polishing, it also grows into manufacturing jewellery. We would end up going right to the far extremes of the spectrum of processing within the diamond sector. It is something that is being explored now and it makes some good sense.

With respect to the diamond mining industry in the Northwest Territories, the federal government would make the decision to direct a percentage of the production from the Northwest Territories into, for example, a diamond trading centre somewhere else in Canada. Right now the major diamond mining companies in the Northwest Territories are owned and operated by foreign companies, such as De Beers and others, which take the uncut diamonds and move them to their processing facilities in cities such as Antwerp. They cut them and polish them there and then they work them back into the diamond market. The diamond market is a huge, some would say, cartel. It is a very exclusive club that pretty much controls the supply of diamonds into the market, but this would be a way of adding more value.

The other feature I am working on is to see if we could set it up in Toronto as a duty-free zone because in budget 2000 the government came out with some measures which would more readily allow for the formation of what we would call duty-free zones. They would not be described precisely like that but they would allow the movement of goods into a duty-free zone, free from duties and free from GST as long as the production is moving offshore and as long as initially the value added is going to be limited to a maximum of 20% as a starting point. With respect to uncut diamonds from Yellowknife, the duty-free zone does not really offer much in the way of attraction in the short run but once the centre is established and its cluster is developed we would then have some capacity for cutting and polishing.

Over time more of these uncut diamonds would come from other sources, such as South Africa and maybe Russia. As long as a good centre of excellence was created which was cost competitive, those diamonds would find their way into this diamond centre and then they could be worked on in Canada.

As long as they are exported to the United States or any other country, they would be exempt under these rules of the duty on the stones coming in and and also the GST. This was an obstacle that was eliminated in budget 2000 because we have a number of duty deferral programs in Canada but one of the constraints to setting up a geographical area and call it a duty-free zone was the fact that the GST still had to be paid and then refunded. Therefore as the goods came in there was some value added. The GST was paid once they were exported. Of course the GST could be rebated but it was an administrative problem and a cashflow problem.

In fact these duty free zones, if we look around the world, very much lend themselves to this sort of model of a cluster, a jewellery and diamond centre cluster. There are similar examples in the Middle East for example and I think it has some attraction.

We are looking at some sites and I am working with my colleague in the Northwest Territories to see if we can come to some solution where we optimize the value added input that can be achieved in the Northwest Territories but we are also realistic about the fact that the bulk of this needs to be centred in a large urban area.

I think Bill S-36 is important legislation and I would like to see us move more in the direction of adding value to this important industry in our country.

I had the opportunity many years ago to work as a young chartered accountant in South Africa. There I could see the huge diamond industry that exists and existed in South Africa. In fact, the number of people in the diamond processing industry in Johannesburg is absolutely staggering. In fact, I met more people from Belgium in Johannesburg than I have ever met before. The reason for that is a lot of them would come from Antwerp and places where the diamonds are cut, polished and made into jewellery. Many of them would find their way into Johannesburg because it was a big diamond trading centre as well.

I also had the opportunity years ago to work and visit the Northwest Territories. I discovered that an old friend of mine who I went to university with became president of one of the big diamond companies in the Northwest Territories, Diavik Mines. He came here one time when the Diavik mine was being developing. One of the challenges his company had was to get supplies in to develop the site. In the winter the trucks drive over the lake which is frozen over but they had to get a certain amount of supplies onto the site before a certain time. They were running into some obstacles with various regulatory authorities, not that there were any issues or problems, but just that they needed some very quick decisions and we were able to talk to Environment Canada, the Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Finance. I was happy that it was able to unblock some of those impediments and able to get the material on site on time.

This is a hugely important industry for the Northwest Territories and, as the parliamentary secretary noted, for many other parts of Canada as well. It is important that we encourage the mining industry to continue to explore and to find new deposits. Many mines in Canada now are close to being worked out.

Developing a mine is a very expensive process. First, they have to seek out the lodes where the precious or base metals are located. To do that, we need the proper set of incentives. As I commented earlier, a couple of years ago our government came in with a package that changed the way in which the government taxed mining companies. It replaced the resource allowance with the actual amounts that the mining companies paid as royalties.

Some sectors of the mining industry, like the potash sector, received less of an allowance than they paid the Saskatchewan government in royalties. The government said that it would not do the formula calculation any more. Instead it would allow mining companies to deduct the royalties they paid to the government of Saskatchewan. Although other provinces have potash, it is a very dominant industry in Saskatchewan. When the government did that, the industry was very happy because it now could deduct the actual royalties it paid to the Saskatchewan government.

The mining sector has a whole range of base and precious metals. Diamonds, for example, are clearly precious metals. When we changed the tax regime, precious metals, if I recall, came out pretty well. A sector of base metals had mixed results in whether this was advantageous to it. At that time, the government, realizing that replacing the resource allowance with the royalties would create some winners and losers, put in the exploration tax credit at 10%, although some of us argued for 20%. That is a good mechanism to encourage the industry to explore and continue to explore for new discoveries.

That, coupled with the flow through shares, which the member for Saskatoon—Humboldt referred to as well, have resulted in a lot of good behaviour by exploration companies. When I say “good behaviour”, I mean behaviour that causes them to find new deposits. I am confident our government will continue to keep those instruments in place.

The mining industry is a sector which is sometimes characterized wrongly. Often we conjure up images of the mining industry as environmentally irresponsible and that it is a dirty industry. People in the industry have fought hard. They have had some issues they have dealt with, but they have also tried to approach Canadians and people internationally to convince them they are responsible managers, and rightly so.

This industry is very important for the economy of Canada. It operates in an environmentally sound way, and it deserves our support. It creates a lot of jobs in urban Canada as well. People think that mining is a rural job creating activity, but a lot of work has been done to show that jobs created in the mining sector in remote parts of Canada or in rural Canada impact a lot of jobs in urban Canada as well, whether they be financial managers or investment bankers.

I will be supporting Bill S-36. It is a good start. It also is a good signal that we have a very important industry Canada which we need to grow further.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was interested in that the member was promoting the attractiveness of Toronto as being a centre of diamond processing. I suspect that maybe Yukon may have something to say about that, as well.

I wanted to follow up on a point that I discussed with the member earlier. This bill is an amendment to an act, so without the full act, it is a little difficult to understand. There are some subtleties which would tend to indicate how very careful one has to be in legislation to deal with the import and export of products, particularly in this case of rough diamonds or blood diamonds.

In section 15.(1), it prescribes that:

If imported rough diamonds arrive in Canada accompanied by a Kimberley Process Certificate that meets the requirements of section 14--

That is, the definition that they do constitute rough diamonds. It goes on to state:

--but are in a container that has been opened, the Minister may order the person who imported the rough diamonds to return them to the participant who issued the certificate.

I have not seen the regulations to this. One of the members from the NDP raised some very important points about the committee work. This is why I raise these questions. We may not have the answer, but the committee should be sure to get the answer. It has to do with a number of aspects.

First, this is permissive. It says the minister “may”. I am not sure why, but I always get nervous when I see the minister may do something. The minister either does it or does not it, and it is for a very considered reason.

The second aspect has to do with an open container. I do not know exactly how the controls are set up in the transport chain and whether they follow through to the acceptance of a package with a certificate. Clearly, if there is an open container, there may be a problem in the transportation and importation process which would require investigation. That has not been prescribed either.

My final point has to do with the rights of rescission or withdrawal of the importer of the rough diamonds to the extent that it is very likely arrangements have been made to fully pay for the shipment of the rough diamonds. The minister may have the authority to order the shipment to be returned. Now we have a case where someone who has in good faith imported rough diamonds for processing is losing. Where are the rights of the purchaser and how do we ensure that we do not have unintended consequences?

It is a range of questions. In a very modest bill such as this one, where it is an amendment to an existing act, one clause can have some elements that raise a lot of questions. I hope the committee will deal with these questions. That is why I bring them up now at second reading debate.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Mississauga South has an amazing capacity to zero in on some important aspects of every bill that comes before this House. Clause 15(1) is one of those.

We were chatting earlier about this. I do not pretend to have the definitive answers on this. However, I believe the member raises a good point, that at a committee the witnesses from the department could elaborate on this.

What I would think is driving this section is when there is a process which certifies that these diamonds are coming from a certain area, then that process is like an ISO process. There has to be sterility in the process. There has to be the confidence that if a container is certified as containing diamonds, that container has been certified through the Kimberley Process. If the container has been opened, that challenges the sterility of that container. Maybe there have been conflict diamonds or blood diamonds mixed in with others. Perhaps someone with very bad intentions has done that deliberately. This is something that would not be tolerated.

This is where the government often wants to leave the minister some discretion. For example, maybe the container came through a tornado or a hurricane, a bolt of lightning hit the container, it burst open and this was visible to all who were present. If that discretion was unavailable to the minister, even though there was no concern about the legitimacy of these being Kimberley processed certified diamonds, the minister would be in the position of having to send them back.

I think the drafters have probably been quite astute in leaving the minister some discretion. However, he member for Mississauga South raises some very important points additionally, and that is the recourse. Is it enough only to say that the container goes back? It like coming across a crime and saying that we do not have to report it. We take the drugs and guns away and do not bother with it any more. I am sure that is not the intent. I am sure there are many more subtle things going on here than the wisdom that I have on this legislation.

I know the committee will examine this in great detail. Whatever we do, it applies to the comments I made earlier about a duty free zone and the question about sterility. We have all heard about a bonded warehouse. I use sterility in that sense, not in the sense that some members might think.

It is very important to have the controls to ensure that if duties and excise taxes have not been paid, this area must be controlled and sterile. The same principles apply here. If a person has a container that says they are Kimberley processed certified diamonds, then the container cannot be opened. It can only be opened under very controlled conditions. Otherwise, someone could mix in some of the other diamonds.

Then what assurance do we have? It is like an ISO process that has to be absolutely disciplined and rigorous so people who are buying that container have 100% confidence that those diamonds are the right ones, that they are not conflict or blood diamonds. They are uncut diamonds from Canada from the Northwest Territories or Ontario, and they have been tightly controlled so they will not be mixed in with other diamonds that would be a concern to the purchasers.

I am sure the section will be examined in some detail at committee.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources]

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry that the last answer was so long because I have a very good question.

Most of your speech was premised on the value added item and I think everyone in the House agrees that we should have more value added. Two billion dollars could have a great impact on our economy, but I thought you were suggesting that the federal government could force the diamonds to go there, which seems to me to be a great departure from the free market system. These produce 4,000 jobs--

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

Order. May I remind the hon. member that the comments are to come through the Chair, please.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, my apologies.

Is the member suggesting we would tell oil companies where they can sell their oil? I would just like clarification on how the member thought these diamonds would get to Toronto if the free market had suggested they go elsewhere, because of course we want to keep this industry healthy, to keep the 4,000 jobs, of which many are for northerners and aboriginal people.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know this is a sensitive area and I do not bring it to the floor of the House lightly.

There might well be a lot of ways we could add value to these diamonds in Yukon and the Northwest Territories. I am certainly open to that, but we do have controls. For example, if we want to export a raw log from British Columbia, we have to get an export permit to do that and there are very tight criteria around that. If it is a matter of shipping uncut diamonds from Canada to Antwerp, or to send some of them to Toronto where we could have them processed, cut and polished, it is a very valid public policy matter. This is something that should be examined.

Perhaps some of these value added activities could be conducted in Whitehorse or Yellowknife. I have visited Whitehorse and it is a most amazing town with attractive, beautiful scenery, and great fishing and hunting. The people are staggeringly wonderful and energetic. They are just like the member for Yukon. In fact he is probably the embodiment of the wonderful people who come from Yukon.

Do not get me wrong. I love Yukon and the Northwest Territories. If we can add value to these diamonds there, so be it, but what I am told is that there is a stronger case to be made for adding value to those diamonds in a big city centre like Niagara Falls or Toronto.

Certainly, speaking for myself, I have an open mind to this and I think there might even be a compromise. In other words, we could set up a diamond trading centre in Toronto but then ensure that there were some value added activities taking place in Yukon or the Northwest Territories.

In the absence of that, do we think that DeBeers on its own volition is going to send these diamonds to Toronto in lieu of sending them to its own processing facilities in Antwerp? We need to be less naive if we think DeBeers would do that without someone saying to DeBeers that it needs to ship some of the uncut diamonds into some value added activities in Canada, that the diamonds were discovered in Canada.

The House resumed from October 20 consideration of the motion that Bill C-65, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (street racing) and to make a consequential amendment to another Act, be now read the second time and referred to a committee.

Criminal Code

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

It being 5:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at second reading stage of Bill C-65.

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

I declare the motion carried.

Accordingly, the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Justice, Human Rights, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.

(Bill read the second time and referred to a committee)

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-64, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (vehicle identification number), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at second reading stage of Bill C-64.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I believe if you seek it you would find unanimous consent that members who voted on the previous motion be recorded as having voted on the motion now before the House with Liberals voting in favour.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

Is it agreed that we proceed in this fashion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Mr. Speaker, members of the Conservative Party will be voting no.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Charlevoix—Montmorency, QC]

Mr. Speaker, members of the Bloc Québécois will be voting in favour of this motion.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, members of the NDP will be voting in favour of this motion.

[David Kilgour, Independent, Edmonton—Beaumont, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will be voting yes.

[Bev Desjarlais, Independent, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I will be voting yes.