Debates of May 14th, 2012

Agriculture

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board]

Mr. Speaker, western Canadian farmers have worked with Alliance Grain over the last number of years.

Murad Al-Katib and his great team at Alliance Grain have been major processors and exporters of pulses. They now look with envy at moving into the durum market, the same market that they are feeding with their pulses. The same farmers who they are buying from can also work in the durum. Unfortunately, with the environment in Europe their major market is stagnant at this point. They have decided to delay the movement on the pulse/durum processing facility, but they look forward to the day when they can put shovels in the ground and put that facility right near Regina.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, there is no case for abolishing the Canadian Wheat Board. There never was one and the minister knows it. Now the chaos and uncertainty the government has created with its ideological crusade is actually driving business away.

The Wheat Board used to market 20 million tonnes of grain to 60 different countries with every penny of profit going back into the pockets of Canadian farmers.

The Prime Minister claimed that killing the Wheat Board would create some kind of a free market nirvana. Will he now concede that all it has caused is insecurity for farmers, uncertainty for industry and instability for the rural prairie economy?

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board]

Mr. Speaker, there are so many things wrong with that diatribe that I do not know where to begin.

I can assure the House that western Canadian farmers have embraced the opportunity. They are putting their crops in the ground right now. Canola has surpassed wheat as king in the Prairies. There are a number of farmers looking to the barley, wheat and durum market with envy. They are already forward contracting those commodities through the Canadian Wheat Board, which is still in existence. The gentleman opposite has that wrong too. It is still there at the same address with the same Rolodex and selling to the same countries around the world.

National Defence

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, our government announced that it would replace our aging fleet of Hercules aircraft. Many Canadians have seen them in every domestic emergency and every foreign mission. They are the workhorses of the Royal Canadian Air Force. The Hercules are used in a variety of roles, including transporting equipment, troops and supplies to the most remote regions of this vast nation.

Could the Associate Minister of National Defence please update us on this important equipment replacement project?

[Julian Fantino, Conservative, Associate Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for her hard work on behalf of the men and women in our military.

This modernized Hercules aircraft is bigger, can fly faster and further and hold more passengers and cargo than our previous model. It was key to have the aging fleet replaced without any operational gaps.

I am proud to say that we accomplished this task successfully. The new aircraft has completed critical missions around the world and has been heavily involved in many search and rescue operations.

On Friday, at Canadian Forces Base Trenton, the air force took delivery of the last of the 17 new Hercules aircraft.

Citizenship and Immigration

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in the minister's reckless rush to change Canada's immigration system, mistakes are being made. The latest, according to an internal government document, has to do with privileging applicants with job offers from Canadian businesses. It turns out that this is leading to more fraudulent job offers and may even create a market trafficking in fake jobs.

The minister must do his homework before ramming sweeping changes through like this. What will the minister do to address this situation?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, I assure the hon. member that we are hardly new to the idea of efforts to defraud Canada's immigration system. There are always people seeking to circumvent our fair rules, which is why we have put in place rigorous quality control initiatives. We have experts in our missions abroad who do checks on the integrity of the veracity of arranged employment offers.

However, what we do know from our major study on the skilled worker program is that those immigrants who arrive with a pre-arranged job make nearly $80,000 in income after their third year in Canada, twice as much as those who arrive without jobs, which is why the data tells us that as much as possible we should arrange jobs for immigrants before they get to Canada so that—

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the minister has already had to backtrack on certain parts of his bill—a bill that looks like it was written on a cocktail napkin. Now it appears as though history is going to repeat itself.

As things now stand, potential immigrants have a better chance of settling in Canada if they have a job offer, and the Conservatives would like put even more emphasis on this approach. However, doing things this way could lead to cases of abuse. An internal evaluation of Citizenship and Immigration Canada found that there may be trafficking in job offers. When things are done in haste, mistakes are made.

Are the Conservatives going to redo their homework rather than encouraging fraud?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member must be aware that we have put enormous emphasis on fighting immigration fraud. We have a system that will enable us to eliminate fraudulent job offers.

That said, we know that immigrants who have a job offer have an average income of nearly $80,000 after they have been in Canada for three years, which is twice as high as the income of immigrants who arrive with no job offer. This is one of the reasons why we will be giving preference to immigrants who have a good job offer before they arrive in the country, because we want to see them succeed in Canada.

Financial Institutions

[Annick Papillon, NDP, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, many Canadian companies are transitioning to the new banking system, but the Conservatives are having a hard time keeping pace.

Banks and telecommunications companies have agreed to new rules for telephone payment. The government's voluntary code of conduct does not address payment by phone or through electronic banking systems. If the Conservatives do not take action, consumers will not be protected.

When will the Conservatives introduce mandatory rules for new technologies in order to protect consumers?

[Jim Flaherty, Conservative, Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, in fact, the private sector telecommunications companies and the banks are innovating, which is a good thing. It is something that we in the Conservative Party actually encourage in our country, unlike the NDP, which would like the government to run everything. That is not what we are doing.

Now we are responsible for regulation of the banking system, and I am proud to say we have the best regulated banking system in the world.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

That fact is, Mr. Speaker, mobile payments will have a huge impact on consumers, small businesses and the digital economy, something the Conservatives do not seem to get. The Minister of Finance's own task force on mobile payments released recommendations months ago, but he has simply allowed it to gather dust.

A voluntary code that lets $5 billion in hidden merchant fees slide will not protect small businesses and consumers from being gouged even more in the new mobile market. Will the Conservatives now admit that a binding code of conduct is necessary?

[Jim Flaherty, Conservative, Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, there are two points about a code of conduct. One is not whether it is voluntary or not; it is that it is obeyed. The code of conduct that we have devised, and this is the second point, with the support of consumers, with the support of the financial sector, on consent at the end of the day, has the support of all the parties and is obeyed, is complied with precisely because of the process that we used.

With respect to payments, we have the report of the task force. I am glad the private sector is innovating, but at the end of the day the government makes the rules.

Health

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Cowichan first nations have declared an emergency in response to recent suicides and attempted suicides. First nations suicide rates among youth are seven times higher than the national average. In the Inuit population, the rate is almost the highest in the world and 11 times our national average.

Despite supporting the Liberal opposition day on a national suicide prevention strategy, the government is actually cutting the aboriginal youth suicide prevention strategy. How on earth will that help the people of Cowichan?

[Leona Aglukkaq, Conservative, Minister of Health and Minister of the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency]

Mr. Speaker, my heart goes out to those individual families who have lost loved ones from suicide.

We are committed to working collaboratively with the first nations community and our federal partners, as well as provincial and other partners, on initiatives that would improve the wellbeing of first nations communities and individuals, including the Cowichan tribes.

We recently signed an historic tripartite agreement with the first nations in British Columbia and the provincial health departments. This will give the first nations a major role in the planning, designing and management of health care services for their communities.

The Budget

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, the minister of national defensiveness is now in his third week of reading a 31 page federal court ruling on veterans' pensions. The Conservative House leader, by contrast, has allocated a mere seven sitting days for a 425 page budget bill, a bill which amends over 70 other bills. An appalling seven days for the House to consider clawing back OAS and gutting the environment, with all kinds of time for the minister to read a 31 page ruling on veterans' pension clawbacks. Why is the House leader acting like a parliamentary bully?

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, to the member from sarcastic inaccuracies, we will continue to look at this recommendation from the Department of Justice and we will make a decision. That is the way things are done.

Science and Technology

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, services that Canadians depend on are not the only ones affected by the Conservatives' unilateral cuts.

Forty-seven scientists have written to the Minister of Industry to condemn his irresponsible cuts to science, cuts that jeopardize long-term research projects. This will accelerate the brain drain.

Why is the Minister of Industry restricting our ability to innovate through scientific research? Does he realize that he is chasing our scientists away?

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Minister of State (Science and Technology) (Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario)]

Mr. Speaker, nothing could be further from the truth. I can tell the member opposite that our record on this side of the House is very clear. At every single opportunity we have had, we have voted to increase the investment in science, technology and research.

The record on the opposite side is just as clear. The members opposite vote no every time to our scientists, our researchers, our students, and our universities and colleges. The only question left is, when will they get on board and start supporting our scientists for once?

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we all know that the Conservatives do not like facts, especially when they come from scientists. The fact is, their cuts are undermining major research projects and driving talented innovation out of Canada. The letter from 47 leading scientists warns the Conservatives are cutting “programs so foundational to research in Canada that one would think that eliminating them was inconceivable”. Apparently not so.

Why are they cutting innovation and gutting our ability to compete in a modern, knowledge-based economy?

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Minister of State (Science and Technology) (Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario)]

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned earlier, every single budget the government has put forward, including the recent one, has invested more in science, technology and innovation and their development. The reason we do that is because it not only creates jobs today but it creates the high quality jobs of the future.

However, every single moment we put something forward, the NDP votes against it. It votes against money for genomics. It votes against funding for aerospace industry. It votes against basic research, like the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo. It votes against the next generation medical isotope.

Aboriginal Affairs

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, once again, our government is demonstrating its commitment to the north by increasing the borrowing limits for the territories. This important action will help governments invest in needed infrastructure projects, bringing increased jobs and long-term prosperity to northern communities.

Surprisingly, the NDP member from the Northwest Territories has been quoted as opposing improved measures that will support northern economies, despite the strong support from the territorial governments.

Could the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development explain to the House, and the out of touch NDP critic, why these measures and this legislation are so important?

[John Duncan, Conservative, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development]

Mr. Speaker, increased borrowing limits for the territories is a vital step toward increased prosperity for northern communities. It will be used to support critical infrastructure projects such as the road between Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk, a project the NWT government and aboriginal leadership support.

I urge the NDP member from NWT to reverse his stance and support Bill C-38. Northerners benefit from this government's successful agreement with the territories.

International Cooperation

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Mr. Speaker, besides the $380 million cut for poor countries, the Conservative government has denied funding for most NGOs doing hard work in these areas. One of the most dedicated and effective among these groups is the Canadian Nurses Association. Through its global health partnership program, Canadian nurses have worked with groups in over 40 countries over 35 years. This year, the Conservatives have given them the axe.

If the nurses are not good enough, who is?