Nancy Karetak-Lindell

[Committees of the House, October 31st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I commend the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore for putting forward the motion to concur in the third report of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. I had the honour of sitting in on that committee, even though I was not a regular member of the committee, and to speak on this issue.

A lot of technical information has been coming from the different speakers this morning. I want to speak more to the human element, the impact of marine service fees on communities and just what sealift means to us.

I listened to some of the debate earlier. I do not know if the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is fully aware of his comment about the fees that will not apply already north of 60 from points to other points. Not a lot of freight goes from my northern community to any other community. I would say that 99% of our freight comes from the south. If fees are to be applied to cargo going from the south to the north, that is pretty well all the cargo. Not a lot of cargo goes from one northern community to another unless it is moving, let us say, heavy equipment that might have been used for a project in one community to another.

The sealift is the most important service for a community in my riding of Nunavut. In all the years that I can remember, it was the most important event in a community because that was the only way to ship goods in. Today there is a little more option with air traffic but the costs are horrendous.

What we are really talking about here is applying the exemption and not eliminating service fees, as I heard the Minister of Fisheries mention in answer to another speaker. It is applying the exemption that was set out in 1997 to our understanding that it means from all points that are going north of 60, which is the majority of the shipments.

Let us take my community as an example, which is pretty well the norm for most communities. When we get the sealift in August or, if we are very lucky, July, we are getting the bulk fuel for our community for the rest of the year, which is for electricity, because our electricity is only diesel generated, it is to heat our homes and it is for all the vehicles. This is, in some communities, only one shipment for the whole year and it is usually the first order of supplies that come to a community.

The next important shipment will be the building supplies for any construction in a community. If we are very lucky, it will be for housing, and if we are extremely lucky, we will get a building season out of that shipment. Some communities do not have the luxury of having a season to even start building that summer. Therefore, everything has to be shipped in by a certain time in order to take advantage of a building season.

The sealift is also a chance for the stores to resupply their merchandise that can be shipped over the summer. Luckier communities do get some shipments in now by air but, again, that is very expensive. Average people do what they call a sealift order, which is common in our communities, where we order the supplies we will need over the whole year for our own individual homes.

In explaining the sealift, I am trying to give the House an understanding of how important the sealift and marine services are for our part of the country where there are no roads and things must be flown in. Any extra costs that are put on top of already very high freight rates, even through sealift, is another added cost that most certainly will be passed on to the customer.

We live in the most expensive area of Canada and yet we will not live anywhere else. Even if we had the choice to move away from our communities, we would not. I am thinking of little communities, like Grise Fiord and Resolute Bay, that are closer to the North Pole than they are to Ottawa. Even though the people were relocated there, they do not want to move away from there because that is now their home. However, they feel that the government and the country should be aware of their existence in that part of our country and that we ensure the cost of living is reasonable.

We are not asking for a lot. We are just asking that a reasonable cost of living be available to us. We are not asking for the moon. We are asking for an exemption of marine fees that have not been applied in the way that we understood them. This has been a long-standing issue and one on which I have been lobbied for many years.

I wish, when we were in government, that we had put this matter to rest. I know it was before the marine advisory board. My understanding is that the board members felt that it was not up to them to make the decision to do the exemption because that was already in place in 1977. It was more a misunderstanding, I believe, of how to apply that exemption. I heard the parliamentary secretary say that it would be applied to a ship or a cargo transport if it were going from another northern place to another northern place north of 60. However, that is not the bulk of the material that goes to our communities. It is not coming from another point north of 60. It is coming from south of 60.

Because I see this day to day in my communities, I am probably not giving the real impression of the message I am trying to get across here. I can see the sealift orders being landed on shore from my house and I can see all the off-loading. I see the vehicles and boxes of building materials being unloaded. There are whole sea cans of perhaps 60 feet by 20 feet metal containers of absolutely everything we want to ship up north. Almost everything a community needs is being shipped to our communities.

One of my sons had the good fortune of being able to buy a vehicle in Winnipeg last April but he did not receive his new vehicle until late August. We here in the south have the concept of going to a car lot, buying a car and driving away with it. My son drove his vehicle for a day in Winnipeg, which was to drive it over to the person who would be shipping it up north. He then had to wait for months and months for his vehicle to get to where he lives. Those are of the kinds of things that we live with. We live with delays of getting whatever we buy in the south to get to our communities. On top of that, we must pay extra costs.

This is really part of a bigger issue. As the parliamentary secretary said, this is not a big deal because we are not talking about a lot of money. However, it is just one more thing on top of all the many other things that we as northerners must be patient about as Canadians in this country. We must be patient while we wait for things to get to our communities and we must be tolerant of all the extra fees that we pay on top of the freight.

Gestures like this mean a great deal to us because it means that the rest of the country is understanding of the different issues and challenges that we must deal with. If we could eliminate the marine service fees that would become a win for us. It would make us look forward to the next one and the next acknowledgement of what we have to live with in our part of the country.

I just wanted to add my comments to all the great interventions that have been made by members in this House. I wanted to put more of a human element on this issue and let the House know what it means to those people living in our part of the country to have these kinds of things debated in this House. It gives everyone a chance to see what these gestures mean to us and it provides a better understanding of the unique situations that we have in the north.

I wanted to take this opportunity to add strength to the motion to concur in the third report. I certainly hope all members will support the report because it brings a better understanding of the challenges we face in the north. Many people in my riding of Nunavut are anxiously awaiting the outcome of this debate. They hope to see an exemption to the marine service fees.

[Homelessness, October 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, we on this side of the House will not accept that the SCPI program is wasteful or inefficient, as the minister said.

Earlier this year, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities told the finance committee that SCPI has been particularly effective in combating homelessness and asked that it be extended for five years. Despite a $13 billion surplus, the Conservative government would not extend the SCPI program.

There are approximately 150,000 homeless people in Canada every year. Will the minister stop making excuses and extend the program today?

[Homelessness, October 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it is appalling that the federal government is ignoring Canada's homeless. To date, the Minister of Human Resources has refused to indicate if the supporting communities partnership initiative for the homeless will be extended.

Does the minister think that if she says it is being reviewed long enough the homelessness problem will just disappear?

[The Economy, October 25th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the government continues to show contempt for reality. It is trying to rewrite history by undermining the best economic record Canada has ever seen.

Thanks to Liberal governments, Canada's economy, which was on the verge of collapse 13 years ago, is now the healthiest in the G-7. We are the only country in that group in surplus. Eight straight Liberal surpluses left the current government the best set of books any incoming administration has ever seen. And what has this government done with it? It has cut billions in funding to Canada's most vulnerable with the help of the NDP, and increased income taxes on those who earn the least.

This government's contempt for the least advantaged Canadians is no surprise, considering the purse strings are held by the Mike Harris admiration society. Ontarians remember what they did in this province at a time when federal transfers were at record levels.

Canadians are horrified at this government's trying to destroy all they have worked so hard to achieve.

[The Environment, October 19th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the government's track record on the environment is coming home to roost.

For the entire spring and summer the government cut and slashed anti-global warming programs of all kinds, all the while attempting to reassure Canadians that as soon as the made in Canada environmental plan was put into place, all would be well.

Now we have the plan and surprise, surprise, there is nothing there that actually fights global warming or reduces air pollution. Not one standard is outlined. Not one new power is given to the new federal government. Not one Canadian's health will be improved as a result.

I know Canadians will see through this blatant attempt to do nothing on the environment. As someone who is experiencing climate change firsthand in my territory of Nunavut, the made in Canada environmental plan is unacceptable.

[Kelowna Accord Implementation Act, October 16th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am very honoured to speak to Bill C-292, a very commendable private member's bill from the member for LaSalle—Émard.

I am also very honoured to have been involved in the discussions and preparations that went into the Kelowna accord. There was over 13 months of work by the Inuit organization and other aboriginal organizations in Canada. For the party across the way to oversimplify that is very discouraging. For people to say that it was not an agreement or an accord, that it could be disregarded because there was no signed agreement and no budget for it really is oversimplifying the situation. It also adds insult to all the preparatory work that people did on the agreement.

I was in my riding last week speaking with different groups that are suffering badly from the recent cuts to the social programs. The various cuts announced by the Conservative government affect literacy programs, the museum assistance program, and women's groups. The cuts are really affecting the work that communities have been trying to do at the ground level. The Conservative government does not realize the impact these cuts are having on communities. This solidifies my belief that the Conservatives do not understand what reversing the Kelowna agreement has done to our people. I speak mainly for my riding of Nunavut because that is the region I understand the best, but I have spoken with people all across the country and they believed that the Kelowna accord would give them the tools for them to provide their own solutions. They believed that the government of the day recognized their ability to run their own affairs, to come up with their own solutions and to put into play ways of governance that had been there for them in the past.

The recent history of this country has made it very difficult for people in the communities to practise their own ways of governing, their own ways of reconciling differences, their own ways of educating their people, which really are not very different from those of the rest of the country. It is just that we have learned to look at things through a different lens. We all have the same end goals, but the way to achieve those end goals can differ from one part of the country to another, or from one cultural group to another. As I said, the end goals are the same, and they are to provide a good future for our children and to take advantage of this country's resources, which every Canadian should be able to access. How we reach those goals can be different.

We certainly have different ways of looking at things and understanding things as a native people, but at the end of the day we all want what is best for our children. We all want to achieve those goals in a way that works for us. It means understanding that we have to do things our own way and, yes, make our own mistakes. Since Nunavut has become a new territory, we have certainly experienced challenges and have made mistakes along the way, but at least they have been our mistakes.

The Kelowna accord gave us the tools, the mechanisms and the resources, because we do need investments in a different way than has worked for people in the south. Education is a very strong component. The Berger report indicated very strongly that we need to educate our people in a way that is different from that in the rest of the country. It is not to say that we are any less able to be educated but that we need to look at different ways of reaching the knowledge that people have.

The Kelowna accord was certainly a step in the right direction for this country. I ask members in the House to support this private member's bill because it would put us back on the right track to where we were going before. We have been derailed but I certainly hope that we can get back on the right track with this accord.

I thank the members of other parties who have indicated they will support this private member's bill. Again, I urge all members to support this bill. I give credit to my colleague for bringing forward this private member's bill. I know he truly believes this is a way we can bring a group of people from our history back on a level playing field with the rest of the country. I take this opportunity to thank my colleagues who have been very strong in their support. I certainly will be supporting this private member's bill.

[Literacy, October 4th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative government spending cuts announced last week included the slashing of $17.7 million for literacy organizations throughout Canada. The cuts mean that local and regional literacy programs will no longer be funded.

The cuts mean that literacy organizations such as the Saskatchewan Literacy Network will have to close their doors. Yukon will lose the Yukon Literacy Coalition. Nunavut will lose its Arctic College culturally based pilot program. Manitoba will lose approximately $620,000 from local and regional literacy programs.

Twenty-two per cent of adult Canadians have serious problems reading simple printed material. In light of these numbers, it is unconscionable that the Conservative government has chosen to slash a program to help adults who want to help themselves to learn to read and write, while at the same time posting a $13 billion surplus.

[Government Programs, September 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, on Monday the minority Conservative government cut the commercial heritage property incentive program and $7.6 million in other grants and contributions given out by Environment Canada. This continues this government's long string of needless cuts to environment programs, cuts we know are needless because its own officials say so.

In February the Minister of Natural Resources was told that EnerGuide ranked among the most efficient and effective GHG reduction programs in the country. What was the government's response? It cut EnerGuide.

The minority Conservative government was told in February that over half of Canadians learned about global warming through the one tonne challenge and six million of them took action to reduce their energy consumption. What was the government's response? It cut the one tonne challenge.

This government was also told in February by its own officials that renewable energy projects were reducing more GHGs at a lower cost than had been anticipated. What was the government's response? It cut the renewable power reduction initiative.

[The Environment, September 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the attempts to undermine Kyoto are so widespread it would take forever to outline them all.

The government could not wait to start cancelling Kyoto programs as soon as it came into office. On the Thursday afternoon of the long Easter weekend, it cut 15 programs hoping that Canadians would not notice. Weeks later it ended funding for the wind power production initiative and the renewable power production initiative.

These programs were cutting greenhouse gas production at a cost one-third less than that demanded by the private sector. These programs were rated in the top 5% of all Kyoto programs for outstanding efficiency and effectiveness. Still they got cut.

Did the cutting stop there? No. It continued when the government cancelled the EnerGuide for houses program despite the fact that over 125,000 homes had been successfully retrofitted to decrease their energy consumption.

The government is hoping that Canadians will not notice or care that these programs have been cut, and we should not worry. However, we notice, we care, and we will fight the government's cynical attempt to abandon our Kyoto commitments.

[National Aboriginal Day, June 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, today is the 10th anniversary of National Aboriginal Day, a day when Canadians from sea to sea to sea celebrate the culture and achievements of Canada's aboriginal people: Inuit, first nations and Métis.

As I look back and see how far Nunavut has come since April 1, 1999, I am so proud of my territory and the people.

However, it is imperative that the federal government act on the Berger report regarding the Nunavut land claim implementation and the Kelowna accord.

The federal government must act on the housing crisis facing Inuit as well as health and education issues. By not doing so, Canada fails in its very real obligations to Inuit and puts the honour of the Crown at stake. The failure to act by the federal government fails not only Inuit but all Canadians.

I wish all Canadians a very happy National Aboriginal Day, a wonderful Canada Day, and a safe and enjoyable summer.