Debates of April 10th, 2008

Budget Implementation Act, 2008

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Call in the members.

And the bells having rung:

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Accordingly, the vote stands deferred until three o'clock today.

The House resumed from April 9 consideration of Bill C-23, An Act to amend the Canada Marine Act, the Canada Transportation Act, the Pilotage Act and other Acts in consequence, as reported, with amendment, from the committee, and of Motion No. 1.

Canada Marine Act

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-23. It addresses some of the valid concerns of Canada port authorities with the current conditions of the Canada Marine Act, the Canada Transportation Act and the Pilotage Act.

Port modernization is required as part of the government's new policy framework for strategic gateways and trade corridors. This is to bring Canada's ports more in line with what is happening around the world where ports are obtaining government funding for infrastructure, environmental and security initiatives. This includes long term access to federal funding for security considerations as well. This has been intended to satisfy our international trading partners' security concerns.

These goals we support. Our ports are the face we show to the world. Their development and their management should be the best in the world.

My criticism of the bill stems from my observations as a local councillor in a small city with a harbour authority. The bill is deficient as drafted and amended and does nothing to ensure more public accountability for the use or management of what we should remember is public property. It does nothing to ensure the sustainable development of Canadian ports and harbours.

At committee, my colleague from Windsor West presented some amendments that would have gone a long way to ensure accountability. His amendments were deemed inadmissible by the chair because they supposedly went beyond the scope of the bill. It is clear that the bill was deficient as drafted initially and this is what I would like to speak to.

Parliamentarians of this government and the former Liberal government gave the bill such a narrow scope and seemed clearly unwilling at committee or in the drafting of it to address some of the problems of accountability in dealing with the management of lands that belong to the public and that should be managed in the public interest.

I would like to give an example of what our party's critic tried to do at committee. He presented an amendment. I quote what he said:

This amendment here is intended to provide some balance, and also, hopefully, provide better relations between the port authorities in some areas where there are some difficulties. We all heard from testimony that even if you're appointed to the port authority through a municipality--it doesn't matter where, with the federal government, etc.--your loyalty is still, at the end of the day, to the port authority. What I'm hoping through this amendment is that you're going to see greater weight for people in that area.... But we heard testimony that--for anybody who is appointed there--the number one priority is to administrate the port.

In support of the argument made by my colleague, the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority includes a couple of elected representatives, a mix of groups from the tourism sector, the Victoria Chamber of Commerce, and the Victoria-Esquimalt Harbour Society, which is also largely industry representatives. Those are all fine organizations, but they do not necessarily represent public interest. Several private interests do not constitute public interest. Essentially in Victoria and across the country we have private clubs that control public properties with no accountability to the public.

Although one would think the elected officials appointed to the board would be accountable to their electors, this is not the case either. Instead, as my colleague pointed out, they must commit their loyalty to the board, not to their electors, Certainly in Victoria the board has taken on an even more corporate model.

There is an obvious problem of possible conflict of interest that might arise, but even more so, this is happening with the complicity of the federal government. Neither Conservatives nor Liberals seem to see any problems with that.

It was clear in reviewing the testimony at committee that agencies' interests were represented during the review of this bill, but I did not see how the interests of port communities were represented. I think it is fair to question whether the interests of port agencies always coincide with those of the community. I would say that is not the case judging from some of the examples that were identified.

Rather than dwell on the problem, I would like to propose a measure to the government that could have been added in drafting Bill C-23 to really modernize the Canada Marine Act, the Canada Transportation Act and the Pilotage Act that would have ensured that the interests of the communities were served by port authorities and that would have ensured the accountability in the governance of what is public property, that is, what does belong to the public. The principle is what I would call a triple bottom line approach. This is a business principle that measures corporate or government performance along three lines: profit, environmental sustainability and social responsibility.

Triple bottom line considers people, planet and profit, the principle being that environmental quality and social equity are just as important as profit. In fact, the phrase “triple bottom line” was coined by John Elkington, co-founder of the business consultancy SustainAbility. He wrote Cannibals with Forks: the Triple Bottom Line of the 21st Century Business. Triple bottom line reporting has become increasingly popular among large companies worldwide. A KPMG survey shows 45% of 250 global companies publish a corporate report containing details of environmental and social performance.

Adding a clause in the bill requiring that all presently held federal harbour or port properties be managed or divested to port authorities on a triple bottom line basis would begin to ensure public values--

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have had some patience, but the reality is, as you know, Mr. Speaker, this debate is supposed to be on the amendment. The amendment is simply an error in the difference between the French and the English and it is on the insertion of the letter “a”.

I do not know that what the member is talking about has anything to do with the amendment. I would ask that she be relevant with respect to the amendment.

We have already debated this. I know the NDP has quite a few more speakers. They want to delay this some more and waste more taxpayer money, but I would like the debate to at least be on point.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on the same point of order. I was here yesterday when the parliamentary secretary raised the same point of order after a number of members had already spoken to the bill and had been succinct in their comments and had focused their comments on the bill. In fact the debate did go on in that manner. I think it is disingenuous to raise the same point of order today.

In fact, the member for Victoria is speaking very concretely about this bill at report stage, as she has a right to do.

I take great offence to the member's comments, saying that we are wasting taxpayers' dollars. I would ask the question, what are we here for? We are here to debate legislation, to look at it in a fulsome way, to give it the full weight of opinion. This is not about dragging something out. It is about actually looking at legislation and being allowed to debate it.

I think it is very offensive for members to be told that doing our job is wasting taxpayers' money. We are here to actually represent the public interest and to represent those constituents.

I hope, Mr. Speaker, that you will allow the debate to continue and the member to make her comments. I think she was doing very well in explaining her concerns that she has at report stage with this bill.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my clear understanding that it is within my right and in fact it is my responsibility to speak to what I think should be in a bill. That is what I was trying to address.

Perhaps my Conservative colleague objects to members presenting where they think the government is not acting in the public interest. That is what I was trying to do in my comments.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I will hear the hon. parliamentary secretary and then that should be sufficient.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would agree. I do not make the rules in this place. All the parties make the rules. The reality is the rules are very clear. The rules are that in this particular debate we are supposed to be focusing on the proposed government amendment.

If the NDP members have an issue with the amendment, and with the letter “a” being inserted to make the French the same as the English, then they should deal with that. If they have an issue with the bill, they have already debated that and I would ask for a ruling on the basis of relevance of this particular line.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

To all hon. members, I know that Marleau and Montpetit has some guidelines on relevance at each stage of a particular bill and we are debating a report stage motion. I will allow the hon. member for Victoria to continue. She has only about a minute left in her remarks.

The Deputy Speaker, the chair occupant yesterday, did make a ruling on this. For the sake of consistency, I will be guided by those guidelines today. She has about a minute left. If she could stay as relevant to the motion as possible, I think all members would appreciate that.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I hope that was not my time that was being used up by these parliamentary diversion tactics.

I felt it was very important to speak about a triple bottom line because it would ensure that public values are protected as opposed to only the interests of a specific group. The absence of this kind of accountability measure in this bill in dealing with public property makes it unsupportable. That is not surprising, as this bill is the twin of Bill C-61 tabled by the then Liberal government and we know how well the Liberals did at integrating environmental and social interests with economic ones, with a 35% increase in greenhouse gas emissions, increase in poverty, and so on.

In the long run, integrating is just good public policy. When these components are integrated, in the long run it yields energy cost savings, better quality jobs, reduced infrastructure costs, and better environment and health.

Such a provision should cover management of port and harbour properties. It would be felt in my riding where an unaccountable body will be given control of more public property. That is just unacceptable.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate hearing from the member for Victoria. As a former municipal councillor in Vancouver, it is interesting to hear from other former municipal councillors and we will probably hear from more, because we all have experiences with dealing with local ports and the interface between the port in our community and the municipality. I know that the member for Victoria had experiences similar to what I had in the city of Vancouver.

I would just like to ask her what kinds of concerns she had to deal with in terms of representing local residents. In Vancouver East, for example, we have people who live immediately adjacent to the port. There are all kinds of issues about the interface between the port activity and a residential community. One of the problems with this bill is that those issues are not really addressed. In fact, it gives the ports greater authority to undertake unrelated port activities on port land. That is one of the concerns we have.

I wonder if the member could give us some further information on that in terms of her experience as a municipal councillor in Victoria.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, indeed my criticisms of this bill stem from my experience at that time when there were conflicts that were beginning to emerge, and precisely on the issue of land use where requests for land use changes would have had impacts. The amendment my colleague was proposing would have helped to better integrate the interests of both the port authority and the community. There also was the noise pollution issue that was being passed on to the local council about activities in the port. The amendments that my colleague had proposed could have helped with this.

That is the issue I was trying to raise by asking the ports to adopt a more comprehensive reporting process to be accountable to the community in which it is situated. We all want our port authorities and our ports to succeed, but it has to be in the context of environmental and social good for the whole community.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your ruling in relation to the relevance of this. As such, my question will certainly be on point. I am wondering if the member could comment on the issue of democracy and stakeholders' interests.

In this particular case, I sat on the committee and I know she did not. I heard all of the witnesses and I know she did not. We did not have one port, one municipality, one city or one town say one negative word about this legislation. I am wondering how the member can stand here today and criticize something about which not one stakeholder said anything negative. How can she come forward with that?

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the hon. member raised the question, because in reading the committee report, everyone can see for themselves that there were only two representations by an association.

The question I wanted to raise, if he had not interrupted me while I was speaking, was that the port authorities, themselves agencies, were represented, but how were the community interests represented during those hearings? I think the answer is that they were not.

My colleague had asked for a study allowing the committee to go from city to city, which would have allowed the communities to speak out and express their concerns, not with the idea of stopping this, but simply to hear from them, and this did not happen during the review of the bill.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to the amendment that was tabled. Of course there have been some points raised about relevancy, and I want to start by talking about the fact that our duties as parliamentarians include paying very close attention to bills that come before the House.

I wish I could say that errors and omissions in bills are a rarity, but unfortunately in the tenure of this House we have already seen a voter identification bill with such serious flaws that the government had to introduce another bill to try to correct one error. There should have been appropriate scrutiny of that bill by all members of the House instead of the New Democrats standing alone to oppose it because we were concerned about its very deep and serious flaws.

People talk about the waste of taxpayers' money. If appropriate attention had been paid to the voter identification bill, the government would not have had to introduce a bill to fix it, which then took up House time and parliamentary time. Now there is another bill before the House for which a minor amendment has been produced.

The member for Windsor West has done extremely good work in raising some very serious concerns about this bill. The question the NDP has is whether a simple amendment of the letter “a” is sufficient to correct all the flaws in the bill. Of course we would say no, it is not.

I want to thank the member for Victoria for her very good words and I will be echoing some of them, because I too have been a municipal councillor. A number of us on the New Democrat side of the House have been municipal councillors and understand that the rubber truly does hit the road in our communities with municipal councils. I want to talk a bit about the importance of this bill to our local communities.

There is a port authority in my community, the port of Nanaimo, and it is a very important part of downtown Nanaimo. The reason New Democrats have been speaking is that we are very concerned about the ongoing health and vitality of the ports. Certainly there were some positive things in the bill, but there were a number of things that we are concerned about in terms of maintaining the vitality of those ports.

In my own city, the port of Nanaimo businesses generate 3,700 direct jobs and $115 million in direct wages. There are in excess of a total 10,000 jobs nationwide related to the port of Nanaimo after including a multiplier--these are the induced and indirect effects--and these jobs generate $335 million in total wages.

In British Columbia, port of Nanaimo businesses generate over $160 million in direct gross domestic product and over $410 million in direct economic output. The total national economic impact of the port of Nanaimo, including indirect and induced impacts, is estimated at $500 million in GDP and over $1.1 billion in economic output.

Direct employment is employment that can be attributed to the operation, management and tenancy at the port of Nanaimo, including firms on site at the port and port-dependent businesses off site. Indirect employment is employment in goods and services supplier industries that result from the presence of the port of Nanaimo's direct employers.

An example of port of Nanaimo indirect employment would be the supply of machinery to value added manufacturing tenants at the port of Nanaimo. As such, indirect employment is generated in industries that supply or provide services to the port of Nanaimo businesses. This brochure I am reading from concludes by saying, “Port of Nanaimo produces jobs!”

Anybody who has ever visited my riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan and this my part of my community, Nanaimo, sees a vibrant port. The port has a commercial fishing fleet. During the summertime, people come from literally the whole Pacific northwest to enjoy the activities that take place. A walkway built around the port is heavily used. Any Sunday afternoon people will see families from all over the city enjoying the very beautiful walkway.

That leads me to one of the points that the member for Windsor West has raised around the importance of how the boards of directors are made up at these port authorities. Port authorities have a distinct local flavour. They have a direct impact on jobs, recreation, environment and businesses. One would hope that the board of directors would ensure a linkage between the local community and the port itself.

The member for Windsor West has rightly identified some problems with the number of board members and the appointment procedure. One would hope that every effort would be made to ensure that local voices are adequately represented on these boards of directors, because that participation in the local economy and local livelihoods is important. Instead, Bill C-23 fails to address some of the concerns raised by the member for Windsor West.

Other members have raised issues around land use planning at port authorities, connections with local municipal councils or regional districts, and the broader connection to community.

The member for Victoria raised the fact that as former municipal councillors we are hoping that more municipal councils become greener. One way we are encouraging municipal councils to become greener is to look at this triple bottom line accountability that everybody is talking about: people, planet and profits, in the simplest way.

We of course want to see port authorities planning integrated into municipal planning. The city of Nanaimo and most municipalities in British Columbia have something called official community plans, OCPs. These official community plans lay out a vision for the community and are regularly reviewed. If municipalities are going to deviate from the official community plan, they often must have hearings or pass special zoning amendments.

When I was on the municipal council in North Cowichan, the development of the official community plan was a wide, community based consultation process. People from all over the community came together to talk about their vision for the community, whether it was with respect to recreational use, land use planning or community identification. There was a myriad of issues.

As the port of Nanaimo and the city of Nanaimo go through their community planning process, it is very important that the port be integrated into that official community planning process. Again, it is important that these plans consider the triple bottom line.

There are substantial land use planning issues around the port of Nanaimo. When the port makes a decision about land use planning, it must fall in line with how the residents of Nanaimo want their community to look. Unfortunately, when we look at appointments for boards of directors, it does not ensure that this very close linkage happens.

We have examples in other areas. The member for Trinity—Spadina has raised some issues around the Toronto Port Authority. The member for Vancouver East has raised issues around the Vancouver Port Authority and how it often goes off willy-nilly without considering the important issues the community has outlined as its future vision for that liveable community for their children and their grandchildren. Local representation is essential in terms of making sure that ports fit in with a community's vision.

In addition, the member also raised some issues around transparency. Among other things, the member for Windsor West called for the Auditor General to have the power to probe port authorities' financial practices. One would think the Conservatives would welcome this kind of oversight, because they often talk about transparency and accountability, yet when they have an opportunity to do that, they fail to follow through.

That would have been an important amendment. If we are talking about adding the letter “a”, why not just stretch it to “Auditor General oversight and accountability”? Those are two very good uses for the letter “a”. They would have been welcomed by the New Democrats as an improvement to the bill.

It is time for me to wrap up. Although we will be supporting the amendment on the letter “a”, once we get through the amendment stage I would encourage all members to vote against the bill itself.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport]

Mr. Speaker, I know that my friend who just spoke did not have an opportunity to review the bill or else she would have seen, of course, that there has been some consultation and that there is a requirement for consultations with communities. In fact, it goes beyond what the current bill has in place. That is indeed included within the bill, which actually goes on for some time about community involvement and how that has to be considered.

I never received an answer to my last question, which I posed to the member's colleague. We heard from those ports. Not one spoke against this bill. Not one city council, not one town, not one city, not one municipality and not one province came forward to speak against this bill. I am wondering why today the member stands in the House with the New Democratic Party opposed to this bill when not one stakeholder came forward to speak against it at committee.