Bill Graham

[Petitions, December 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition calls on the House to work for the conclusion in the year 2000 of an international convention that will set out a binding timetable for the abolition of all nuclear weapons. In that context, you, Mr. Speaker, will have noticed that our Minister of Foreign Affairs is reported in today's press as having achieved NATO's approval of this matter.

[Petitions, December 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present two petitions this morning.

The first petition relates to the reopening of the embassy in Belgrade. This is causing great hardship for many Canadians and their relatives. It is important that this embassy be reopened as soon as possible. I support this petition on behalf of my petitioners.

[Committees Of The House, December 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the second report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade entitled “Exporting in the Canadian Interest: Reviewing the Export Development Act”. Pursuant to Standing Order 109 the committee requests that the government table a comprehensive response to the report.

This is an important and particularly significant report. I am sure you would agree with me, Mr. Speaker, that it is important the second report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade be presented on what will either be the ultimate or penultimate day of this sitting of the House of Commons in this century.

It is understandable that members of the House would receive this report with the understanding that it is the work of perhaps the most active committee with the best committee members in the House.

[Interparliamentary Delegations, December 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34(1), I have the honour to present to the House, in both official languages, two reports of the Canadian delegation to the Canada-Europe Parliamentary Association.

The first report relates to the second parliamentary conference of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, or OSCE, on “Sub-regional Economic Cooperation Processes in Europe Faced with the New Challenges”, that was held from October 13 to 15, 1999 in Nantes, France.

The second report relates to the attendance of the Canadian delegation at the expanded bureau meeting of the summit of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. It was a parliamentary assembly meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, from November 17 to November 19, 1999.

[Minimum Sentences, December 14th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I had the opportunity to raise the question some time ago with the Minister of Canadian Heritage about what measures the government is taking to protect culture in the country, in particular against the influence of its erosion in connection with what we loosely call globalization.

This is a matter which was raised by our committee and by the heritage committee and is of great concern to all Canadians. People in my own riding are very concerned about what measures we are taking in Ottawa to ensure that the cultural diversity and strength of the country remains in the face of what is going on outside our borders and throughout the world.

We know very well that in the province of Quebec people have succeeded in preserving a vibrant cultural life that is unique in North America, that enriches our country and that encourages us to also preserve and promote the use of French in the other provinces.

Cultural diversity when seen in the context of the integrated world in which we live is a very complex issue. When we look at the Internet, when we look at new means of telecommunications, we see on the one hand tremendous opportunities. We see opportunities for Canadians to participate in exporting our cultural products and with them our values and our sense of what we are about ourselves. On the other hand they serve also as a vehicle by which other cultural products and other visions of how the world is seen come into our society and come into our homes and influence.

Our neighbour to the south is the most important producer and largest exporter of cultural products in the world. It is naturally to the Americanization of the world of culture that we look with some concern and ask ourselves what our government is doing and what we as legislators can do.

The Minister of Canadian Heritage is to be particularly congratulated on having held last year a very interesting meeting of cultural ministers. It brought ministers from countries as diverse as France and Mexico, as well as others, to discuss how to work together to preserve the nature of cultural diversity in this world. This was in the interests of all citizens of the world, not just some. The minister followed the meeting with an interesting meeting with the UNESCO culture ministers. I know she has been pursuing this with some aggressive action.

We also know that the ability to protect culture today is linked to trade rules. There was the famous magazine case. We have had to look at the effectiveness of the articles in NAFTA and the free trade agreement which raise a form of cultural exemption which some people today are telling us does not work in the new environment in which we operate.

As I said before, we must recognize that the Americans are the most aggressive at pursuing the export of their cultural products and at resisting any suggestion that trade rules would reflect an opportunity for those of us who feel vulnerable in this area to protect ourselves.

We have allies in France and other countries but we still wonder what is taking place. That is why I am rising again today and taking this opportunity to ask the government what took place after the Seattle meeting.

We called for new measures in our committee report on the WTO. We called for the government to look at creating a new international cultural instrument. We recognize that this issue raises complex matters, differences between goods and services, but we believe that this must be accomplished in the WTO context and we look forward to knowing that the government continues to pursue this agenda aggressively and in the interests of all Canadians.

[International Circumpolar Community, November 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member for Churchill River for introducing the issue of the Arctic into the House. It is a subject which I think has not been prevalent enough in our debates and discussions. He is to be commended for taking this initiative.

He may be aware that our committee, the foreign affairs and international trade committee, a year and a half ago undertook a study, Canada and the Circumpolar World, which was deposited in the House before the last election. The response of the government was subsequently tendered in the House. I will speak to that in a few minutes.

We have to recognize that we share many challenges and opportunities in common with our Arctic neighbours. Canada is seeking solutions to expand a northern co-operation and how our northernness contributes to organizations within the United Nations, Organization of American States and others. The past decade has witnessed an unprecedented process of multilateral co-operation and institution building in the circumpolar north designed to foster circumpolar co-operation in tackling the region's problems and aspirations.

Canada has been an active player in the circumpolar north for many years. It is an area where we have important interests at stake and where we can exercise meaningful influence and leadership. Being clear about our aims will help ensure that we have the greatest possible benefit from our diplomatic, scientific and other international efforts in and concerning the circumpolar region.

From time to time we have pursued specific policies in the region, as with our initiative to establish the Arctic Council to which the member for Churchill River mentioned in his speech.

Vigorous circumpolar institutions and processes are now emerging, and they will play an increasingly important role in facilitating collaboration between governments and the people of the north.

Among the concrete expressions of this emerging circumpolar community is an increase in person-to-person contact. These developments all contribute to a shared vision of responsible action in an increasing number of areas.

That is why this government expressed its intentions in this area in the recent Speech from the Throne:

To advance Canada's leadership in the Arctic region, the Government will outline a foreign policy for the North that enhances co-operation, helps protect the environment, promotes trade and investment, and supports the security of the region's people.

Indeed, many of the complex issues we face as a nation are centred around the direct concerns of northerners. This initiative, therefore, is also in keeping with the prominence the government gives the human security agenda in Canada's foreign policy.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs intends to move forward in this area by examining the possibilities in the trade, investment and transportation sectors by exploring new ways of dealing with the pollutants that threaten the livelihood, lifestyle and often the existence of our northern communities, by seeking new approaches to connect communities and forge partnerships in order to secure a better life for all northerners, and by examining how northern issues, practices and solutions might have an application and expression elsewhere. In other words, he will make the northern agenda a two-way proposition.

With this in mind, the government is working on a comprehensive new document called “The Northern Dimension of Canada's Foreign Policy” which will be ready by the end of this year.

At the beginning of my remarks I made reference to the report that the foreign affairs and international trade committee filed in the House entitled Canada and the Circumpolar World. The Government of Canada's response was filed in the House. In our report we raised many of the issues that the hon. member for Churchill River raised in his speech. It recognizes the nature of the northern community and its specificity, yet also how it links to the south and our neighbours.

In the course of preparing our report, the members of the House had the opportunity to travel to Russia and the northern nations that are our neighbours and of speaking to the people in our circumpolar region. We learned that there is much work to be done there to integrate members of the northern community into what is taking place in the world.

I believe strongly that the formation of the Arctic Council was an extremely important part of that community building. If our northern neighbours in our own country are to affirm their specificity and develop a life for themselves which guarantees the preservation of their lifestyle, surely the member for Churchill River will agree with me that one of the best ways to ensure this is to ensure they have strong collaborative links with people of similar aspirations and backgrounds who are their real neighbours in the north. I am speaking of people in northern Russia, northern Finland, northern Norway, northern Sweden and Greenland. These are people who share similar aspirations and cultures, people with whom our citizens in Canada, in northern Quebec, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, can be in daily contact with through the Internet. They have regular communications.

They also have something else and totally new in the Arctic Council. The Arctic Council is an unusual international organization. It brings the members of the Arctic nations together, not only the countries I have already spoken about but also the United States of America. Through Alaska, the United States is an arctic nation.

In the Arctic Council there is a relationship that has been developed that is very unusual in international law; that is, the role of the aboriginal peoples of the north to actually have the right to participate in the deliberations and actively be involved in the Arctic Council. That is an extremely important innovation in an international institution and an innovation that we can learn from in other international institutions where, as members of the House know, there is considerable concern today that individuals do not have relationships with huge international organizations like the WTO or even the United Nations.

What is happening in the Arctic through the Arctic Council is that the aboriginal peoples who live there are having an input into an important part of what is not only Canadian foreign policy, but the development of their lifestyles in that area.

We all know that northern issues are complex, ranging from the questions of sovereignty and defence to issues of industrial and commercial development, new trading relationships and transportation routes, environmental protection, research and education, health and social development, and the promotion of cultural diversity.

The circumpolar community embraces some of Canada's most important foreign policy partners, as I believe I have demonstrated, from the Nordics and the EU to the U.S.A. and Russia. Only by working together and building on the broad community of regional organizations from the Arctic to the Barents Council and promoting co-operation, coherence, and synergies between and among them, is Canada better able to move forward on these many issues that tend to be transboundary concerns.

The end of the cold war has opened new possibilities for co-operation with Russia and the Baltic states. There are also exciting new possibilities for partnership with other countries of the north, particularly Russia, the Baltic states and with various communities within the north, particularly the indigenous peoples operating through the Arctic Council and other institutions that we can build in the future.

We know of the Nordic Council, the Council of Baltic Sea States, the Barents Council and the Arctic Council. They are four important institutions that have been developed in the north to enable an international dimension to be brought to the existence and preservation of indigenous people.

I conclude by saying to the member that perhaps in my remarks I have not addressed his specific concern about the 55th parallel, but I did want to bring to the debate a dimension which I thought was important. I remind the House that the Arctic is a region of Canada that is part of a circumpolar region. Its development, the development of its people, their survival, their way of life and their existence in the global community will only be preserved if we bear in mind their relationship to their Arctic neighbours and our relationship to our Arctic neighbours and the way in which we work together in these important international institutions.

I urge the hon. member opposite who has brought this matter before the House not only to bear in mind the issues which he raised in his speech, which I think were very appropriate, but also those other issues of foreign policy which I think we have to focus on if we are going to guarantee that the indigenous peoples of the north will preserve their way of life.

I believe that the government through the activities of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development is doing exactly that. The government is focusing on not only the domestic dimension of this issue but the international one.

[Health, October 22nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, today the Minister of Health made an announcement in Toronto of major funding for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Can the parliamentary secretary tell us how health research will be enhanced by this new funding, and how our researchers will be able to contribute to the quality of health in Canada as a result of these new resources?

[Gairdner Foundation, October 21st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to ask the House to join me in congratulating the Gairdner Foundation of Toronto as it celebrates an important anniversary.

For 40 years, the foundation has been recognizing and rewarding those in the medical world who, through unselfish devotion of their time and efforts, have been successful in making major contributions to research for the conquest of disease and the relief of human suffering. Over time, international Gairdner awards have been presented to 249 recipients, including 51 who have gone on to win the Nobel prize.

On behalf of the House I congratulate the founders and trustees of the Gairdner Foundation on this distinguished record of achievement.

The more than 50 Gairdner winners gathering in Toronto and 13 other centres across Canada this week for the Minds That Matter symposium to mark this occasion provide an eloquent testimony to the success of this important institution.

We salute their past and wish them a great future.

[Culture, October 20th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Canadian Heritage.

Canadians want our government to protect their cultural identity and to preserve global cultural diversity. Both the foreign affairs and heritage committees have recommended strong international action to achieve this goal. What steps is the government taking to implement these important recommendations?

[Speech From The Throne, October 18th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps you put your finger on the problem of the speech from the member for Kings—Hants, whom we all respect for his economic perspicacity and his wit and wisdom, but sometimes perhaps he allows his wit to run away with his common sense and I suggest perhaps in today's intervention as well.

I am surprised that the member is so oversimplifying this issue of tax. I am surprised that he has laid every woe of Canadians at the door of high taxes. I remember when there was a brain drain from his province to Toronto. There were no tax differences between his province and Toronto, it was a question of opportunities. I suggest to him that it is opportunities. Some of the measures in the Speech from the Throne, which address opportunities in academic and other areas which will create an enriched atmosphere in the country for opportunities, will reverse that brain drain because those opportunities will be here for Canadians. That is something he has to look at as well.

The member should not say that high taxes is the reason why the Canadian dollar is low. I suggest he look at the Swedish currency, which is very strong today. The Swedish economy is booming at the moment. Sweden has some of the highest tax rates in the world.

How does the member, with his extraordinary sophisticated knowledge of the working of things, drive down the single lane 101 highway of tax reduction, which he will end up crashing himself and his party with the same problems he has on his highway down in Nova Scotia, instead of looking at all the other factors which we have to address when we are trying to deal with what is a very complex and not a single issue?