Debates of May 1st, 2008

Heritage Lighthouse Protection Act

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and to the Minister of International Trade]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to be very brief. My colleague from Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound mentioned everybody in the country and they all deserve a lot of credit, but he forgot to give himself some credit for this bill. He did a lot of hard work and steered it through the House. If it had not been for him, we would not be here today.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

I was having trouble recognizing the hon. member because my glasses get foggy when he is not in his seat.

Questions and comments. The hon. member for Malpeque, who is in his seat.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I can understand that. There is often quite a lot of fog on the other side in any event, so it is understandable that you could not see him.

I will admit the bill on maintaining heritage lighthouses is a light in the wilderness of conservatism at the moment. The member did a positive thing with his good work.

This is an issue that has been on the go for quite a while. I too want to recognize many of the people who have been involved in this over time, and they were named. One senator, whom I had the opportunity to work with, has passed away and this bill was a passion of his, and I think we have to recognize that.

These heritage lighthouses are part of our history, there is no question about it. The bill is a step in the right direction. I congratulate both members for their initiative in the House in bringing it forward.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Mr. Speaker, there seems to be a lot of love in the chamber today. I also join in the throng and the chorus of congratulations. The late Senator Forrestall was a gentleman who was very active on this issue, and he deserves great recognition. The passing of the bill would certainly pay tribute to his efforts, as well as the member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound and the member for South Shore—St. Margaret's who brought this forward in the last Parliament.

It is an important bill. When going through the research on it, it is astounding that we are the only country out of the G-8 that does not have legislation in place for lighthouses. We can look south of the border down through the New England states. Almost 70% of the lighthouses are protected under some type of heritage legislation.

We have over 500 lighthouses in Canada. It is imperative that the time has finally come and, hopefully, we will be able to respond to this.

I also take this opportunity to commend the Nova Scotia Lighthouse Preservation Society. It is a great group. I believe the province of Nova Scotia has more lighthouses than any other province in the country and this group has done so much with advancing and keeping this issue to the fore. Hopefully this will culminate in some success in the next number of months. We will continue to work on that because it is a concern.

Only 3% of Canadian lighthouses now have genuine heritage protection and only 12% have some type of partial protection, and that is a concern.

As I had said, the Nova Scotia Lighthouse Preservation Society is very active. It has reason to be because of the numbers. When we look at properties like Sambro, it is almost 250 years old. The member for Malpeque told me that the current of Minister of Fisheries was there at the official opening of the Sambro lighthouse, although I cannot say that is a fact. The lighthouse at Sambro is a huge tourist draw. When people come to Nova Scotia and spend their summers in there, they tour the coastal communities. They want to see Sambro and experience that trip back in history.

There are a great number of lighthouses in my riding, but the technology has changed. Where we had manned lighthouses, now the technology is on our ships. If we walk into the house of a fishing vessel now, it is like walking into an high-tech IT office, with computers, keyboards, monitors, GPS and screens all over the place. With what they have available to them now, we do not see as many lighthouses. Some have become redundant, as far as their actual function and necessity, because of the navigational aids. Others have become de-staffed and automated, but still provide a very important service to mariners and fishermen alike.

In my riding, Cape George, Cheticamp, Port Hood, Scatari Island and Flint Island all have lighthouses. I will talk about a couple in particular. We have been very fortunate in that some community groups recognize the cultural and historical importance of these lighthouses and have come forward, rolled up their sleeves and taken control over them.

I want to touch on a couple where the community has realized some success. The lighthouse in Mabou Harbour was built in 1884 and protected the coastal steamers. The west side of Cape Breton Island was the only protected harbour. That light was a beacon for safety, a safe harbour for anybody who worked and plied their trade on the west coast of Cape Breton. It was very active as was Mabou Harbour. There is a lobster cannery, which my wife's grandfather, Herb Hopkins, operated before he took the trade down to Port Morien and Glace Bay.

In 1998 a group from that community got involved and took charge of the lighthouse project. There has even been a great resurgence of interest in the property. We invested some money in the harbour authority and upgraded it four years ago. It has really taken on some energy and the community has rallied around it. It has become more of a destination and a spot for tourists to stop as they go through the Mabou area to the Red Shoe and Strathsbay Place and all those great tourist opportunities on the west side of the island.

I know everybody in the House is familiar with Fortress of Louisbourg. The first lighthouse in Canada was built in Louisbourg in 1734. The current lighthouse was reconstructed in 1923, but the old light lens can be seen at the Louisbourg Marine Museum. There is a very active lighthouse society. In fact, the lighthouse is an incredible spot to visit. I encourage anybody, when they come to Cape Breton, to go past Havenside to the lighthouse on the point facing Louisbourg. Looking out over the historic property of Louisbourg fortress is spectacular. It is something of which every Canadian should be proud. One of the best vantage points is from that lighthouse.

A group has developed a whole trail system along that coast. Ernie Parsons, Rick McCready, Jimmy DeVries and Susan Burke are some of the people who have been involved in this project. It is a spectacular experience to go out to the lighthouse, to view the coastal waters and to hike along the trail. It is a great experience.

The station in Queensport in Guysborough county was established in 1882. The current lighthouse was built in 1937. In 1991 the Department of Transportation identified that it would be finished with it, but the municipality of Guysborough stepped up. It has kept it painted and restored. There is a local foundation there now, Keepers of the Beacon, which continues to do good work on the Queensport lighthouse.

Not all these assets have had great success. There was a lighthouse just outside of Mulgrave in Eddy Point. It was on the eastern side of the Canso Strait, the strait that separates Cape Breton from the mainland. A community group was very interested in taking over operation of the lighthouse, ensuring that the lighthouse was restored and properly maintained. However, the Coast Guard came in 2003 or 2004 and said that it did not have the ability because the legislation was not in place. It was its responsibility to ensure liability was not undertaken by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Coast Guard. That lighthouse was dismantled, which was a true tragedy.

I am sure the legislation will prevent those types of losses from our inventory of coastal lighthouses.

Because of the historical importance, the cultural importance and the impact they have on the tourist industry in coastal communities, it is important we continue to be vigilant with lighthouses. Therefore, we will be supporting the legislation.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak to bill S-215, in the name of the Bloc Québécois. We will not join the Liberal and Conservative harmonies, although we would like to have a real policy for the enhancement of heritage lighthouses.

In our view, the problem when a bill comes from the Senate or is a private member's bill is that there is no budget attached to it. That is the drama in this case. Even though a bill could be adopted to designate heritage lighthouses, if no money is allocated for the enhancement of lighthouses before offering them to groups who could preserve them, there is a problem. The federal government has probably been the worst property owner in Canada. One just has to look at the West Block to understand that the government has not maintained it as it should have.

In my riding, along the Ottawa River, we have the Carillon Canal and the Grenville Canal, two military canals. The Grenville Canal was handed over to the municipality 25 years ago. It would need an investment of $2 million because it is about to collapse. No money is available for that. The canal was returned to the community. Ask the mayor of Grenville if he wants it. He is trying by all means to find the money and he is stuck with a historical canal, a military monument.

In the study done by the Auditor General, she recommended that half the Carillon Canal—one of the two military canals—be buried instead of being maintained. That is obviously what Heritage Canada did. As it did not have the money to maintain the canal, it decided to fill it up with soil so that only the nice part would be visible. The part that needed to be redone was simply buried.

Along with my colleagues, I would like to support this bill. But for us, it is clear that if the necessary funds are not provided, it is impossible. It is that simple. Many of these canals have been damaged by adverse weather, by the wind and by nature. Sometimes, there has been vandalism, as the member said earlier. Because of new technologies, no one lives in these lighthouses any more. As a result, they are in a poor state and the federal government has simply not maintained them. If we wanted to preserve them for heritage reasons, we would first require the necessary sums of money to restore them. Afterward, it might be possible to offer them to organizations, along with the necessary funds to ensure their proper maintenance in the future.

Once again, it is a pleasure for me to represent Quebec because when the Government of Quebec decides to look after its heritage it provides the necessary money, which the federal government has not done. I would have liked to have heard my colleagues, both Conservatives and Liberals, say that they want to provide the funds required for restoration. Otherwise, I will think they know about it and they are a little embarrassed to have taken part in that.

In fact, over the past 100 years, the Liberals and Conservatives have been in power in Canada and they have not provided the money necessary for maintaining our heritage. It is a shame, because these lighthouses really should be preserved. The necessary money really should be provided. We are not able to provide the money to restore them but we are deciding to adopt a bill that creates a process for assigning that task to either organizations or municipalities.

That does create a problem. Many municipalities have refused to accept that responsibility because some lighthouses have been contaminated by the old technology that produced spills. As a result there is contaminated material near the lighthouses.

No municipality would want to take ownership of a lighthouse that was suspected of being on contaminated ground. There must be a restoration program with the necessary funding to decontaminate the soil, where required, and to restore lighthouses that have been damaged by bad weather or vandalism or, quite simply, because the federal government did not look after them.

If this whole principle had been implemented, the Bloc Québécois would have been happy to support the bill. Clearly, we will not fight a huge battle in this regard. We would like the Liberals and the Conservatives to take note of the fact that they have not maintained their heritage lighthouses, in particular, much less other aspects of their heritage.

I repeat: the best example is just two steps away and that is the West Block. It was not until stones started falling off that anyone realized there was a problem. That is the reality.

That is how the Conservatives and the Liberals have taken care of their assets over the past 100 years. Clearly, we cannot talk about Bill S-215 here today and say that everything is fine and that we can transfer and protect the equipment and the lighthouses.

When this equipment is in bad shape, either because a new technology is now used, because people go there less, or because no one takes care of it anymore, we must act responsibly and say that we will implement measures for heritage lighthouses, that a budget will be allocated and that all the equipment will be restored before handing it over to community organizations, municipalities, and the like.

The bill is sponsored by a Conservative member and that is just great. He could have made sure the necessary funding was in place in order to make a nice announcement today that this legislation will indeed be implemented to protect heritage lighthouses, that there will be a budget of so many millions of dollars to restore them and that a procedure and everything needed to restore and protect them thereafter will be established to ensure they remain part of our heritage. We need to make sure that the organizations that take over the lighthouses have the necessary resources to maintain them and do better than the federal government has done in many cases since those lighthouses were built.

It is clear to us that a restoration program is important. Heritage lighthouses must be protected, but this legislation has to come with a program and the necessary funding to restore the lighthouses. When we read this bill and the comments about this legislative measure, it is as though the communities had let them deteriorate. They were the federal government's property. It is was up to the federal government to maintain them. Then they would not have deteriorated the way they have. They are isolated and the government abandoned them and did not take care of them.

I was listening to the hon. Liberal member tell us that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has demolished a lighthouse because of concerns. I understand, they did not maintain it and did not want anyone in the community to take it over. If there had been any accidents or injuries, the government or the Department of Fisheries and Oceans would have been sued. I understand them. That is what it has come to with much of this equipment that is in a rather advanced state of disrepair. Some is located near contaminated soil. Nothing has ever been done to remedy these situations.

Again, we hope that one day the necessary budgets will be adopted and that the Conservatives, like the Liberals, will understand that it is all well and good to say in a bill that they will protect heritage lighthouses, but that the necessary funding needs to be in place to restore them before they are turned over to the community to be taken care.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

If there is no other debate, I will recognize the hon. member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound for his right of reply. The hon. member has the floor.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as a member across the way said, there seems to be a lot of love in the House tonight. On the serious side, it speaks to the fact that this bill is supported right across the country. It is not controversial. This should be done and needs to be done. One thing I want to point out is that there is support from every part of the country, from one side to the other, from every province in the Maritimes, through Quebec, in Ontario where I am from, around the Great Lakes, and right out to the west coast.

There is one thing that I know will make the Bloc member happy, because he talked about the funding aspect of this bill. I have to point out to him that it has been addressed for the first time in I am not sure how long; I will not say for the first time in history but I will say that it is a long time. The minister got money in the budget this year to deal with the issue. We can all debate about whether it is enough, but there is money and I think that is a very positive thing. I thank everyone for their support.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

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

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

(Motion agreed to, bill read the third time and passed)

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I asked for this adjournment debate in order to obtain an answer to a question I posed during question period on March 5 about the so-called Cadman affair.

For the benefit of those listening to us, here is a summary. Chuck Cadman was a former independent MP. He is deceased. Chuck Cadman's wife, Dona, said that two Conservative Party representatives visited her husband to offer him a $1 million insurance policy in exchange for his support in defeating the budget on May 19, 2005.

Chuck Cadman's wife, daughter and son-in-law are adamant about this and even told an author who wrote Chuck Cadman's biography.

At the time, the Prime Minister himself made a statement on tape to the effect that it was just to compensate him for financial losses he could incur if an election were held. The Prime Minister himself spoke of the financial considerations offered.

The current Prime Minister was the leader of the opposition at the time. According to the rules of this Parliament, I cannot name him, but I am certain that everyone knows who I am talking about. Tom Flanagan and Doug Finley, two special advisors from the office of the leader of the opposition—the person I cannot name—went to see Chuck Cadman on the day of the vote and made him offers. Today, they claim that the most they offered him was to win the Conservative nomination again, but their testimony is contradicted by Mr. Cadman's family.

I do not want to spend any more time going over the facts, because they are known. What is at stake is section 119 of the Criminal Code. The stakes are huge. This section makes it illegal to offer a member a financial consideration in order to influence his or her vote. The Criminal Code is very clear on this.

The stakes were that important, and I am not talking about the political stakes, because they are also known. We know that this government blithely engages in censorship, political interference and favouritism. There have even been raids on the party's headquarters. And now, it has brought the work of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights to a standstill.

In fact, since April 1, when the members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights indicated that they wanted to look into the Cadman affair and hear witnesses, the work of this committee has ground to a halt. The committee is no longer sitting. This is holding up several bills that this committee should have been studying.

Not only is the Conservative government willing to do anything it can to prevent the committee from looking into the Cadman affair, but it is also willing to prevent the members of this House from studying other bills. The work of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights has been stalled since April 1, one month ago today.

I asked a question about this in March, but did not get a satisfactory answer. I said that “instead of dodging the issue, the Prime Minister should admit, as he already has in a recorded interview, that the Conservative Party made financial offers to Chuck Cadman” and face the consequences with honesty.

[James Moore, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services and for the Pacific Gateway and the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics]

Mr. Speaker, nobody offered Mr. Cadman $1 million. That is a false accusation.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that kind of answer is pure arrogance. Frankly, I am here to participate in an adjournment debate in all honesty and good faith. These adjournment debates are held in accordance with the Standing Orders of this House. I am here in good faith to ask the government for an explanation, and the parliamentary secretary rises to say five words to me.

That is in addition to this government's censorship, lack of transparency, disavowal of public institutions, such as Elections Canada, and rotten tricks here in Parliament. Not to mention countless contracts awarded to friends and political interference.

Even Justice Gomery said he was very disappointed. He said that the Conservatives were quite happy that the commission—

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services and for the Pacific Gateway and the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics.

[James Moore, Conservative, Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is not a matter of arrogance. It is important that the Bloc Québécois understand the facts. The simple and clear fact that everyone needs to understand is that there was no such offer. The Bloc and Liberal accusation is completely false.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the great writer George Bernard Shaw once said, “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable”. This is a statement that members across the floor on the government benches would do well to ponder.

In his gleeful statement about his virtually unfettered access to the upper echelons of the Conservative government, the unregistered lobbyist, Mr. Charles McVety, all but jumps with excitement in proclaiming that his campaign against the arts community had found an audience within the current government.

The arts do matter. They add character and meaning to our lives. They take us beyond the utilitarian nature of life and they cause us to question, to learn and to grow as human beings and as a society.

In his recent critique of Bill C-10, the commentator John Moore wrote the following in the National Post:

The reason the arts matter is because the day man first drew a picture of a bison on a cave wall was the day life became more than a grim struggle for survival.

This is the point which the current government must come to understand. The arts are not some commodity to be contained and restrained using the power of the public purse. They are supposed to challenge our belief system and they are supposed to do so in ways that are provocative and visionary.

What the government is proposing is quite simply more appropriate in a period 200 years ago than it is today. Modern societies are enriched by the arts and by artists and do not benefit from those who would seek to limit their work.

I am sure that almost all members of the House are familiar with the writer Oscar Wilde, whose work was heavily criticized by some during his lifetime. I would defy anyone here today to name the judge who imprisoned him. We remember Oscar Wilde because his work endured; it was provocative and had meaning. We do not recall those who persecuted him because they worked to limit the human imagination rather than free it. His artistic work is timeless. Their names are long forgotten.

In my city of Toronto, the arts are an important part of our community. The arts employ 8% of Toronto's workforce.There are 21,000 resident artists in Toronto. There are hundreds of arts organizations and festivals, ranging from small venues to globally known events such as the Toronto International Film Festival.

In my riding of Davenport, there are many outstanding artists and arts organizations, such as the Clay and Paper Theatre, that are invaluable to our community's life and spirit.

Although the arts generate considerable revenue for the city of Toronto and for communities across our country, their value is measured far beyond the revenue they generate.

It is vital to ensure that the arts prosper in Canada and we can only do this by encouraging innovative, thought-provoking and visionary artistic expression. Bill C-10 has the potential to rob all of us of such opportunities to experience and to question the great ideals of human existence.

Will the government recognize the need to promote artistic freedom by withdrawing the ill-conceived and unnecessary Bill C-10, which threatens the arts community across Canada?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, in order to assess whether the bill was really ill-conceived, as was suggested by the Liberal member, we must ask ourselves who conceived it. In fact, it was the former Liberal deputy prime minister, Sheila Copps, who wrote the bill when she served in the previous Chrétien cabinet.

The reason she wrote the bill and the reason the Liberal Party unanimously supported it was that it was aimed at preventing murderers, like Karla Homolka, from profiting from their crimes. It was rumoured at that time that Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo would create films to glorify what they had done and that they would be entitled to public funds to finance those films. That was the concern of the previous Liberal government.

At that time, the Liberals introduced the bill and for many years it has circulated throughout the House with unanimous support in all parties. When the current government put together Bill C-10, which is, by and large, a housekeeping bill on tax law, it was natural for us to include in the bill a piece of draft legislation that had already been written and had broad support but had just never made it through the House of Commons and Senate for procedural reasons and because of elections and other interruptions.

When we introduced the bill in the House of Commons, we had unanimous support. Indeed, the member for Davenport, wisely, was a strong supporter of Bill C-10, as was the entire Liberal caucus. Today he has changed his position and now opposes the bill that he supported, and I am not quite sure why. The bill simply states that taxpayer dollars should not be used to fund pornography, extreme violence or hatred against identifiable groups.

Most Canadians would agree that there should be an unlimited freedom of expression for artists who want to create any kind of film they want but, given that there are scarce resources in the public treasury, we should direct those resources to non-pornographic films and to films that do not glorify violence for its own sake.

I would like to distinguish for a moment between incidental nudity and pornography. I take a movie like Shindler's List, which had both violence and nudity incidental to the story of the Holocaust. In other words, one could not have the movie without both of those elements included. It is a very challenging and difficult movie to watch but one of the most important we have seen in decades.

That kind of film, though it is not Canadian nor is it applying for this tax credit, would not be made ineligible by the contents of Bill C-10. However, movies that are made explicitly for pornographic reasons, where the nudity exists for its own sake and not for the sake of telling a broader story, need not be financed by the public. Censorship would be to ban them but they are still legal but they cannot rely on public funds to finance them.

I will close by saying that one man's freedom of expression does not entitle him to stick his hand in the pocket of another.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, all the well-rehearsed statements about its support for Bill C-10 does not hide the fact that the government's proposed legislation threatens artistic freedom.

As has been noted by several observers, Bill C-10 is cunning in its method of censorship and its aim to limit artistic freedom. The funding for projects is threatened only after they are completed. The result is limitation and censorship up front simply because funding will be withheld after the completion of projects that are deemed unacceptable.

I join with the chorus of artist groups, civic organizations and Canadians across the country in calling upon the government to recognize the vitally important concept of artistic freedom of expression. We need to honour our cultural and artistic heritage, not restrict its growth and innovative expression.

Will the government come to its senses and encourage the artistic community, not try to control it?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we will continue to encourage the artistic community with what is a very lavish and generous tax credit program that helps artists flourish in the country.

We will continue to support the Liberal draft legislation, which is in Bill C-10, that deals with the tax credit. We also will continue to thank the Liberal member for Davenport for his support of that bill and the support of the entire Liberal caucus as that bill sailed right through the House of Commons without any objection whatsoever.

I think it would be appropriate for him to take a moment and call his former Liberal deputy prime minister, Sheila Copps, not known to be an extreme right wing censor, and congratulate her for having drafted this fine piece of legislation. He could tell her that he plans to continue to support it, just as he has done from the outset.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted.

Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 6:32 p.m.)