Svend Robinson

[Supply, March 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member refers to edicts and decrees from the czar. What we are saying is that we are tired of secret, unaccountable tribunals telling us as elected representatives what we can do about our own future. Those are the real edicts and the real decrees the member should be concerned with.

More and more we are losing democracy and sovereignty to the hands of multinational corporations, which have the ability, under these so-called trade deals, to challenge environmental policies and to challenge our policies with respect to social programs, cultural programs and other programs. My colleague from Dartmouth can certainly speak eloquently to the concern that we have in the cultural sphere with issues like split run magazines and so on. That is the concern.

We are not saying that there is not an important role for rules in international trade. Of course there is, but we are saying that those rules should be set democratically by elected representatives of the people who consult with the communities they represent. They certainly should not be set by multinational corporations whose sole interest is the bottom line.

[Supply, March 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, let us cut through the rhetoric and the nonsense here. The member asks why I am going to Quebec City and why I am opposed to the proposals of the government. I will tell hon. members something: we do not even know what the proposals of the government are because it refuses to make public the texts that are being negotiated. It is the height of sophistry for the Liberals to say “trust us, it will be good for Canadian people”.

I have great respect for the member, who chairs the foreign affairs committee, but it is absolutely absurd to ask the Canadian people to simply trust our government to negotiate a good deal even though we still cannot see the text that is being negotiated.

That summit is coming up in a little over a month from now. What we were told by the Minister for International Trade in one memorable declaration was that there is no problem, that these trade deals all look like one another anyway, so if they all look the same and are basically the same idea, what is the big deal if they cannot show us this particular text. That is our concern.

I ask the hon. member for Toronto Centre—Rosedale this: if in fact this trade deal is going to look like the other trade deals, does that mean there is going to be an investor state provision in it? Does that mean we are going to give corporations like Metalclad, Ethyl Corporation, Methanex and others the right to challenge the decisions that we as democratically elected representatives make? We do not know. We do not know because the government has refused to allow us to know. It will not make those texts public.

I want to say one other thing, and that is with respect to the point I made initially about the consultation with members of the House.

As I said, I congratulate the member for Joliette because I believe, though I may be mistaken, that this is the first serious debate we have in the House of Commons on this issue. And it is taking place two weeks before the expiration of the agreement. This is unacceptable. The Minister may have done some consulting here and there, but what have we done here, in the highest forum of Canadian democracy, where the country's elected representatives meet? Absolutely nothing. And this is unacceptable.

[Supply, March 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in debate on this very important motion.

First, I congratulate the member for Joliette for having brought forward this motion on behalf of his party. This is a very important issue and I wonder why we have waited until today, 15 or 16 days before the expiration of the softwood lumber agreement, to finally hold a debate on this issue, which is so important for Quebec and Canada.

I find it extraordinary and unacceptable that it is literally on the eve of the expiry of the softwood agreement that we are now having a serious debate in the House. As I said, I congratulate the hon. member for Joliette for having tabled this very important motion.

I need to ask the representatives of the government why it is only now, and it is coming from an opposition member, that there is this kind of opportunity for debate. Why did the government not bring this forward for debate much earlier in the process, well before the date of expiry?

We all knew that this five year agreement was coming up for renewal when it expired at the end of this month. Why did the government not take the initiative to invite all Canadians affected by this agreement, such as the unions, the workers, the environmentalists and others, to make representations and to make their views known about the impact of the softwood lumber agreement? Why did it not to find out their proposals for what should take place when it expires on March 31?

The government has completely failed to show any leadership whatsoever on this very important question.

Others have already pointed out the importance of this industry. I do not have to repeat that. I am a British Columbia member of parliament and the forestry industry is absolutely critical for the people and the communities of British Columbia. We want to do whatever we can to strengthen and support that industry and to ensure that there is even more value added from the products that are produced from that industry. We have to take a look at exactly what is happening in this industry.

The fact of the matter is we were sold a bill of goods when the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement was brought in in 1988 and replaced in 1994 by NAFTA. What we were told at the time this came in, and I remember because I was in the House, was that the free trade agreement would get rid of the barriers that existed with Canadian products entering the U.S. market. This did not happen.

We know very well that when it comes to lumber the United States has always been the bully. It does not accept free trade at all. It is an illusion. Time and again when the U.S. has challenged Canadian practises, it has been told to forget it. Whether it was on countervail, or dumping or other provisions, it lost.

The United States is not at all serious when it talks about free trade and in its approach to free trade. It wants to prevent any meaningful access by Canada to that market. We all know that is what led to the Canada-U.S. softwood lumber agreement which affects the four key provinces of British Columbia, Quebec, Alberta and Ontario as producers.

Sometimes we overlook the fact that it does not affect the Atlantic provinces, which have done very well over the course of the past few years in the absence of any restrictions whatsoever. We are going to want to hear from Atlantic representatives. My colleagues from the Atlantic are concerned that in any new regime the significant benefits that have accrued to the Atlantic provinces not be lost.

The options we face on the eve of the expiry of the softwood lumber agreement are basically threefold.

The first option is to renew the agreement. We could agree once again with the United States to accept a ceiling, whether it is $14.7 billion square feet of lumber a year beyond which quotas are applied, or some other form of ceiling. Basically we could renew the agreement. On behalf of the New Democratic Party, I want to be very clear that is not an option for us. The current agreement must be allowed to expire. I think there is unanimity in the House on that point.

The second option, which is the proposal of the Bloc Quebecois, is to throw softwood lumber wide open to free trade without any kind of restriction whatsoever. This would come under the WTO, NAFTA and ultimately under the FTAA, if the FTAA is negotiated in 2003 or 2005.

That is the position the Bloc is putting before us today. It wants to scrap the current SLA and not renew it. We agree with it on that. However, the Bloc motion goes on to say clearly, unequivocally and categorically to throw it open to free trade with no restrictions whatsoever.

I want to suggest that there is another option and a very important alternative that we as New Democrats want the government to look at.

The government has to recognize that the current agreement must not be renewed. It must be scraped. It clearly has not worked in the best interests of Canadians, particularly those in British Columbia and the provinces that are affected by the agreement. The market is not gone. The other alternative is to replace the softwood lumber agreement with a fair trade agreement that gives Canadians some ability to ensure that some very important factors are taken into consideration in the area of forestry policy. Any trade agreement on softwood lumber should allow the Canadian government, as well as the British Columbia government and le gouvernement du Quebec, to do a number of things.

First, it should maintain employment and community stability, set strong environment protection regulations and develop policies to promote value added production in the forestry industry. Those are the kind of objectives that surely we do not want to give up as Canadians, as the people who own this precious and magnificent resource. That is precisely what the Bloc would do.

I am surprised to hear the member for Joliette, for whom I have a lot of respect, suggest that we are losing our sovereignty, the sovereignty of Quebec and of Canada, by adopting, for example, environmental regulations on the right of the province of Quebec, of my province, British Columbia, and of Atlantic provinces to set environmental standards.

This is precisely what the member for the Bloc is proposing. For this reason, NDP members will vote against this motion.

I find it extraordinary that a party that has spoken out, and I respect the position it has taken, strongly about the right of the people of Quebec to determine their own future should be prepared to throw away that right to make decisions on something as absolutely fundamental as forestry policy, particularly environmental regulation. However that is what it is doing. I am going to show in a couple of minutes exactly why that has happened.

Yes, we say that the current agreement must be allowed to expire. We recognize that there have been many problems with that agreement. The fact is that the way the quotas were originally set was according to 1994-95 exports to the U.S., so-called experience ratings. What that meant was that some companies in some regions were penalized because, quite frankly, they were not concentrating on the U.S. market at that time. Yet they were locked in to those provisions.

Coastal British Columbia, for example, was particularly focusing on selling products to Japan. Because of the quota system there was no flexibility to shift into the United States market. This was simply because they did not have any quota. It was not because they were not competitive or efficient enough to penetrate that market. The current agreement clearly is unfair in that respect.

There is another very serious concern with respect to the issue of raw log exports. This has been a profound concern in the province of British Columbia where we have seen a huge increase in the last couple of years in the export of raw logs. Most of those logs were harvested on private lands on Vancouver Island. The companies that do that are constantly lobbying the federal government to reduce even the weak current restrictions on log exports so they might export even more raw logs.

In 1997 a little over 100,000 cubic metres of raw logs were exported from British Columbia. The average between 1992 and 1998 was around 300,000. Last year the estimates were somewhere between 1.8 million and 2.4 million cubic metres. That is totally unacceptable.

Under the existing provisions of the SLA, the softwood lumber agreement, we know that the restrictions or the ban on raw log exports in some cases is considered a subsidy. Clearly that as well is quite unacceptable. Ironically lumber exports from third countries outside Canada and the United States enter the U.S. duty free.

We do not dispute the position taken by the Bloc or other parties in the House that the current agreement has not worked for Canadians and that it must be allowed to lapse when it expires at the end of this month. We want fair and open access to the U.S. market. We want a level playing field for all Canadian lumber producers.

The question is how do we achieve that. Why not just move to free trade without any restrictions whatsoever, as the Bloc has suggested? This does not particularly surprise me.

I remember quite well that in 1988-89 and the following years, Bloc Quebecois members supported NAFTA. They supported NAFTA, saying that it was good for Quebec and for Canada. Now, after seven years with NAFTA, can we really say that it was in the best interests of the people of Quebec and Canada? I do not believe that.

What the Bloc is suggesting with this motion is that we should effectively throw ourselves on the mercy of the great free market under NAFTA. Under NAFTA there is no free market. The reality is that under NAFTA more and more power is being taken away from governments. Power is being taken away from the governments of Canada, British Columbia and Quebec to make decisions, as democratically elected representatives, about our future.

Look at some of the cases that have been brought under chapter 11 of NAFTA, such as the investor state provision. We know Mexico, for example, has recently been told by a secret tribunal that it has no power to ensure that a toxic waste dump is not put into a small community of Guadalcazar in Mexico. It said it did not want it.

If we were to accept the Bloc motion, we would be effectively surrendering our sovereign right as Canadians, as Quebecers, as British Columbians and as Atlantic Canadians to say that we want to ensure that we have the opportunity to enforce tough environmental standards. We want to ensure more value added in our forests. We want to ensure that communities and workers are respected in the decisions that are made about the forest industry. Under this proposal that would not be possible, so we say no to that proposal.

Look at the Pope & Talbot challenge. This is an American company that is challenging the current provisions of the softwood lumber agreement. It is the ultimate in irony. It is saying that, due to the regional disparities which exist, it is somehow being treated unfairly. An American company is challenging the softwood lumber agreement, which was pushed by the United States, because it cannot make enough money out of it.

That is the regime that the Bloc wants to take us into. We as New Democrats say no. That is clearly not acceptable to us.

We have to do far more in terms of value added. We also have to recognize that there are some serious changes that have to be made in the way we conduct forestry. We do not want to have our hands tied as we attempt to make those changes.

Recently in British Columbia, we learned that some of the biggest multinational forest companies have been using what is called grade setting, which is a practice of harvesting only low grade timber to set the grade for huge cut blocks. That means their appraisal is very low for their stumpage payments. Then they switch to harvesting high grade timber but pay the low grade stumpage rates. That kind of abuse of B.C. forests has to stop.

We have to look very seriously at alternatives. Many of us, certainly my colleagues in the New Democratic Party, and many environmentalists are concerned about a number of the current practices that are the norm in too many parts of British Columbia and elsewhere in Canada.

Instead of this kind of race to the bottom approach that the Bloc is supporting, and apparently other parties in the House are supporting, maybe it is time we looked at tough effective environmental standards that would affect all of the countries that are producing. This includes the United States, Canada and other competitors.

We should be looking at protection for endangered species habitat, biological diversity, fish habitat, water quality and sustainable logging practices. Why not call for a global approach to sustainable forestry that would involve input from communities, workers, aboriginal groups and others? Why not do far more to promote value added and to push for bans on raw log exports which are a direct export of jobs from British Columbia?

I mentioned concerns about clear cut logging. I am pleased to note that more companies are moving away from that. We have to look at other reforms as well, which may very well be deemed to be trade barriers. Under the terms the Bloc is suggesting we would not be able to undertake them.

There is no question that we have to look at tenure reform in the forestry area. We have to look at how we protect the long term ecological health of our forests, how we maintain that biodiversity that I spoke of earlier and how we provide a stream of sustainable benefits to communities, including non-timber benefits. At the same time we must recognize that workers in the forest industry, who are concerned about their futures, should be directly involved in these decisions.

We have to look more at moving tenure away from the big multinational logging companies and locating more community based opportunities such as community forests, locally controlled woodlots, expanded small business forestry programs, licences for small processors and processing co-ops.

I know my time is limited, but the concern I have with the motion is that unfortunately it is in a sense replacing one bad deal with another. As New Democrats, we say there is that other option and that is what we want to put forward in the debate today, an option which would allow us to ensure that we can in fact respect environmental standards, that we can respect the rights of communities and workers to determine their own future, that we are not locked in to this investor state provision, and that in fact we can make decisions as the representatives of the people of this country, as the representatives of the provinces we live in, about the future of this very precious resource.

I hope the government will recognize that we must move toward a much fairer trade system in lumber. I hope it will consider the recommendation of the B.C. forest minister, Gordon Wilson, who recently called on the federal government to send a special envoy to Washington to try to negotiate a newer and better softwood lumber agreement. He points out, in fact, that if we do not do so we will once again be into this endless cycle of countervail, threats of countervail and dumping. We now have a threat that there may not even be any retroactivity if we lose at countervail, that again under the WTO.

In closing, it is important that we recognize, as I said earlier, that the market is not God, that the forests should belong to the people of this country, the people of British Columbia, the people of Quebec, the people of the Atlantic provinces and the people all across Canada. We must not have our hands tied in how we approach those forests. For that reason we say no to the renewal of the softwood lumber agreement and no as well to the unrestricted proposal of the Bloc Quebecois for free trade.

[American National Missile Defence System, March 14th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I thank all of those who participated in this debate. In particular, of course, I thank my colleague, the leader of the New Democratic Party, the member for Halifax, for her comments.

I must say I was very saddened to note that spokespersons from each of the other parties all spoke out in opposition to this motion.

Frankly I was astonished by the position expressed by the spokesperson for the Bloc Quebecois. He has said very clearly that the space shield exists and that Quebec wants to profit from contracts arising out of Canada-U.S. co-operation.

What is going on with members of the Bloc Quebecois? In the past they were occasionally the voice of progress, but now they are speaking out in support of the spate shield because of the profits it will bring? This is truly shameful and unacceptable.

I recall that in the past they also supported France's nuclear testing. I presume that was for the same reason.

It is very interesting to note that two weeks ago today the Minister of Foreign Affairs, speaking from Brussels, said that there was some urgency to the community of nations making their views known with respect to the proposed national missile defence system. He said in an interview from a NATO meeting:

I think the message there is that those of us who feel we should influence what comes out ought to be talking to them now.

He went on to say:

I think they are very much at the stage now of really putting their facts together and deciding what their plans are and what their options are and now is the time for their allies to indicate what their concerns or interests may be.

For heaven's sake, that is exactly what we are appealing to the government to do. It should get off the fence, as the leader of my party said, and make our views known now clearly and unequivocally to our allies that this is unacceptable.

We have heard talk about NORAD and Canada's involvement in NORAD. I sometimes wonder when I hear this talk whether this is not the desperate pleas of the generals and the arms manufacturers to allow them to continue their jobs.

What is the enemy? Surely to goodness the real enemies that we should be confronting are the enemies of environmental destruction, of poverty, of homelessness and of injustice, not these theoretical enemies that NORAD has created to try to counter. That is why we have said that Canada should be strengthening our position within the United Nations and not working within this absurd and outdated framework.

My colleague referred to the words of the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lloyd Axworthy. I want to refer to the very eloquent words of a member of the House of long standing, the member for Davenport, who spoke out very recently in opposition to the national missile defence and appealed to his own government to take a stand.

He talked about the fact that this so-called rogue state scenario was in fact ludicrous. He said that this absurd hypothesis omitted the fact that none of these states had nuclear weapons nor long range missiles, that these countries were very poor, and that their leaders did not want to provoke retaliation. Moreover, experts agreed that terrorist attacks, weapons stuffed in briefcases or trailer trucks, posed a greater danger to national security than ballistic rockets.

I appeal to the members on the government side to listen to their colleague from Davenport who has pleaded with his government to say no, to take a clear stand now.

Medical students in British Columbia have just launched a campaign called www.bombsaway.ca, appealing to the government to speak out against missile defence. They said the nuclear arms race is one of the greatest threats to global health and security.

New Democrats strongly support the attempts to try to convince the government to say no to NMD and to say yes to the abolition of all weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons.

[American National Missile Defence System, March 14th, 2001]

moved:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should take whatever measures are necessary to ensure that Canada does not participate in the research, development, or production of components for use in the proposed American National Missile Defense System.

Mr. Speaker, at the outset I thank the hon. member for Halifax, the national leader of the New Democratic Party, for seconding this motion. I also thank all my colleagues in the House of Commons for the work they have been doing across the country to try to bring to the attention of Canadians, and in particular to our government, the profound importance of Canada finally and urgently taking a strong and clear stand in opposition to the U.S. national missile defence system.

I pay a particular tribute to my colleague, the spokesperson on defence for the New Democratic caucus, the member for Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore. He has worked tirelessly on this issue for many years. His predecessor, Gordon Earle, the former member for Halifax West, also did an outstanding job in pleading with the government to show leadership on the issue. It is an issue literally of life and death not just for Canada but for the planet.

The essential elements of my motion are, first, that the government should speak out strongly in opposition to the proposed national missile defence system of the United States in view of the fact that it represents a very grave threat to international arms control agreements and raises the serious possibility of a new nuclear arms race.

Second, it is very important that Canada refuse all participation in the research, development or production of components for use in the NMD.

Finally, and in many respects just as important, Canada should work with other governments to strengthen and deepen existing arms control agreements toward the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons. That must surely be our fundamental goal. It is in that light that we approach the issue of the proposed U.S. national missile defence program.

We all recall an earlier version of the program, the so-called star wars proposal of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan. Even the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney spoke out against that incredibly destructive proposal by President Reagan.

The tragedy today is that we look across at a Liberal government that remains on the fence. It refuses to take a strong and clear stand now in opposition to the proposed national missile defence system. The system clearly threatens the current international framework of non-proliferation, arms control and disarmament agreements, areas in which Canada has historically shown leadership.

Canada along with 186 other states has signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Canada has formally undertaken, along with those states:

—to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.

That was the commitment made by 187 states less than a year ago in May 2000.

In February of last year United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said that the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation agenda was in a state of deplorable stagnation and that it was difficult to approach the NPT review conference with optimism given the discouraging list of nuclear disarmament measures in suspense, negotiations not initiated and opportunities not taken. He said that a dangerous nuclear arms race looms on the horizon.

There is no question whatsoever that a decision by the United States to proceed with a national missile defence system would dramatically escalate that nuclear arms race. We know that this would be a clear breach of the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty between the United States and Russia.

That treaty is a cornerstone of the international arms control regime. The United States would simply rip up the treaty. President Bush would rip it up and indeed President Bush's vision for star wars goes even further than that proposed by former President Clinton.

There is no doubt that in many respects it is part of an agenda to militarize space itself which, as we can all appreciate, would have a devastating impact again in terms of the nuclear arms race.

There is no doubt as well that deployment of the NMD would provoke other nuclear weapons states to counter it by building more nuclear weapons rather than keeping their NPT promise to eliminate their own nuclear arsenals.

We know the possible impact in terms of China. The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Hu Xiadi, warned recently that once the NMD is deployed the treaty on the limitation of anti-ballistic missile systems, the ABM treaty, will be dead.

To seek complete missile defence capable of protecting all a country's territory is tantamount to seeking unilateral security so as to gain freedom to threaten others. As a result, the threat of nuclear war will loom again and international relations will become turbulent and unstable.

We know as well the potential implications on other countries in the region, for example on India, Pakistan and Taiwan among others. We cannot allow this escalation to take place.

We know as well that the current proposal has already stalled the negotiation of nuclear disarmament agreements in the UN conference on disarmament. That again is a tragedy because we must be moving in the opposite direction for the elimination of all nuclear weapons.

That is why we are calling on our government to show leadership, to speak out clearly and forcefully to the United States against the NMD. We would not be the only country to do so. Indeed, a number of European countries have raised very grave concerns about the deployment of the NMD, and indeed the Australian senate just recently passed a motion strongly opposing it.

Countless groups in Canada that support nuclear disarmament, including the Canadian Peace Alliance, the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, les Artistes pour la paix, Veterans Against Nuclear Arms, Project Ploughshares, Physicians for Global Survival and many religious groups and others have appealed to our government to show leadership and to finally speak out.

We know as well that there has been a number of threats, some of them not so veiled threats, by our United States allies that we must get on board on this. Indeed, the deputy Canadian commander of the joint U.S.-Canada NORAD scheme told Liberal MPs last year that the longer Canada delays its support the less influence it would have on the system. He said that we must participate. As my colleague the defence critic has pointed out, the U.S. deputy commander of space command threatened that the United States would be under absolutely no obligation to defend Canada unless it joined the missile shield.

The U.S. ambassador to Canada, Gordon Giffin, has warned Canada. He said a refusal by Canada to support the NMD would mark a significant evolution in the historic defence relationship between Canada and the U.S., and that if the defence relationship ends it could affect the fabric of the whole relationship. We as New Democrats say it is time our government rejected those kinds of threats from the United States and stood up for peace and nuclear disarmament.

I want to close by once again appealing to the government to listen to the voices of Canadians, 92% of whom in a recent public opinion survey called on our government to lead in the struggle to abolish all nuclear weapons.

That should be the position we take. We should not in any way participate in NMD itself. I call on members of all parties to support the motion. I appeal to the Alliance which has recently stated that it supports the U.S. national missile defence system. The Leader of the Opposition was in Washington speaking to the vice-president in strong support of NMD, which is very sad.

We are waiting to hear the position of the Conservatives. They say they are not sure exactly where they stand. I look forward to clarification on that position.

We are looking most of all for clarity and leadership from the Government of Canada, from the Minister of National Defence and from the Minister of Foreign Affairs. We want them to speak out clearly and say no, no, no to the U.S. national missile defence system.

[Species At Risk Act, February 28th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I was very pleased to hear the hon. member indicate his concern that this legislation, as it is currently drafted, does not go far enough in a couple of critical respects.

Could he elaborate on the two most critical areas in particular that have been raised by my colleague, the member for Windsor—St. Clair? The first is the question of habitat protection. The second is who will ultimately have the responsibility for designating which are the endangered species? Will it ultimately be politicians or scientists? Could he comment on those two issues and his intention to seek the strengthening of the bill in those two very important areas?

[Human Rights, February 28th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, Canadian citizens are entitled to be civilly disobedient if they are being ignored and if democracy is being trampled on.

The Prime Minister has also spoken about the summit being about human rights. Colombia has an appalling record of human rights violations, one of the worst in the world with murders, massacres and impunity.

If the Prime Minister is serious about human rights, why are countries like Colombia and Peru invited to this summit when the country of Cuba, with which we have an excellent trading relationship, is not being invited? Why is there a double standard?

[Human Rights, February 28th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. Yesterday the Prime Minister spoke in Quebec City about the upcoming summit of the Americas. He described it as an “extraordinary exercise in democracy”.

If the Prime Minister is serious about democracy, how could he call this an exercise in democracy when Quebec City is being turned into an armed militarized fortress during the summit and when his government refuses to make public to elected representatives and the people of the country the text that is being negotiated? Is that not really contempt for democracy?

[Pensions, February 23rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Human Resources Development. The minister will recall that the House unanimously passed a motion in 1998 condemning the discriminatory treatment of British pensioners living in Canada and the failure of the British government to uprate their pensions.

I understand that yesterday Prime Minister Tony Blair, in a meeting with our Prime Minister, effectively said that his government was not prepared to take any action on behalf of these pensioners.

What action is our government now prepared to take on behalf of the 140,000 pensioners? Specifically will the government launch a challenge in the European Court of Human Rights to end this discriminatory treatment?

[Foreign Affairs, February 21st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the recent bombing by the U.S. and the U.K. of the Baghdad area of Iraq is another gross violation of international law that has led to more injury and deaths of innocent Iraqis.

While this illegal bombing is being condemned by many countries, including France and Germany, shamefully Canada's Liberal government makes us one of the only countries to support this outrageous attack.

Tony Blair is coming to town today. On behalf of our New Democratic caucus, I would urge the Prime Minister to let both Tony Blair and George Bush know very clearly that Canadians are appalled by these latest bombings, the ongoing bombings in the north and south, and the impact of depleted uranium.

Tell Tony Blair and George Bush that Canadians support the immediate lifting of the genocidal economic sanctions on Iraq that have killed so many innocent civilians. Act on the unanimous recommendations of the foreign affairs committee on Iraq. Let us send a clear and strong message to Tony Blair and George Bush. Let us stop bombing Iraq and lift the economic sanctions now.