Darrel Stinson

[Excise Act, 2001, April 29th, 2002]

Through you, Mr. Speaker, you are saying that small breweries--

[Excise Act, 2001, April 29th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member's speech regarding the issue before the House. I want him to clarify a few things for me. From what I was hearing in your speech, you were saying that small breweries are--

[Excise Act, 2001, April 26th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, knowing the government's insatiable appetite for taxation, we should have more concern about this than just saying it is a health issue or some other issue. When we look at increasing taxes, particularly on alcohol and tobacco because they are easily exported, does the hon. member not have some concern of a black market creeping in that will be far more costly to regulate than what the government is setting out to do here?

Would it not be better if the government were to put some of these funds into education? Would it not be better to go to the schools and show a cancerous lung and a clean lung? I speak as a smoker. I am sure if we were to show grade 5 or grade 6 students what a cancerous lung looks like compared to a healthy lung it might impact upon them, whereas I never had that chance.

Would it not be better to take someone who is suffering or dying from asthma or cigarette lung disease into the schools to talk to the children? Would that not have a bigger impact than putting taxes on a product? Young people do not understand what taxation is and they are still going to steal a cigarette. Would the hon. member care to comment?

[Terrorism, April 26th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, on the front page of the April 25 Los Angeles Times a headline reads “CIA Warns of Chinese Plans for Cyber-Attacks on U.S.”, regarding both the Beijing government and private Chinese student attacks on American and Taiwanese computer networks.

Has the government received any warnings about Beijing cyber-attacks against Canada and why has the government put a hold on its proposed contracts for cyberspace threat and risk assessments for the Government of Canada?

[Canadian International Trade Tribunal Act, April 26th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his question. Our party does not oppose that, not at all. We would like to see it in every agreement. It is nice to stand up here and say that we have free and fair trade but we should get it straight in peoples' minds that there is no such thing as free. There is trade, yes, but if we want a level playing field, and our party has always stated this, we must have the same conditions. We cannot expect to compete against a wage of $4 an hour, which is not necessarily the low wage in China but probably the higher wage, extremely high. I used the $4 example because people can understand it better than $1.25 or $1, which would probably fit better into the category of China.

We believe that if we are to go into these agreements we should all have the same type of playing field. Until such time as we do, we will always have unfair trade practices, whether it be child labour or things such as the Kyoto accord, which the member's party gives great support to without looking at what the impact would be on the monetary system and on our own companies here in Canada. Yet we will blindly rush through and blindly say this is what we will do when other countries are not signing on to that accord and do not have to come up to anywhere near the same standards while they pollute just as much or worse than Canada does.

All this plays into affecting trade, into whether or not companies will make a profit and whether or not they can compete on the world stage. When we put restrictions in place and decide to do this against the companies here in Canada, how on earth can we expect to prosper on the world stage? How can we be expected to compete in this situation?

I do not know of anyone who goes into business, particularly when competing in the world market, who says they will go into business but fine, penalize them five times the points that the competition will be. They just do not do that. Most people, when they invest in companies or when companies start up, have an understanding of what the agreement is at the time they make their investment. They know through their own calculations before they do this whether or not they will make a profit in a year or two. Then the government comes along and decides they have to compete against companies that perhaps have to pay only one-third or one-fifth the wage and do not have to live up to the same environmental standards or pay the same taxes as they do. The government says they will have to compete with them because it signed these agreements, without these issues being addressed properly.

Let me say again that I am not against trade. Fair trade would be really nice, if we ever had such a thing in this country, which we do not seem to have. For example, the United States, which has a lot of the same standards we do and some that are superior to ours, has a taxation level so much lower than ours that our companies have a terrible time trying to compete. Its bureaucracy and its red tape are so much easier to get through than ours.

This all pertains to trade in the world, but our government, and particularly this Liberal government, turns a blind eye to all of these facts. It turns a blind eye to the bankruptcies of people and companies who are trying to compete out there. The government just keeps wanting to put more restrictions in place. I have to wonder exactly where the government is coming from and where it is going.

There are a lot of people, including me, who are hopeful that through this agreement more light will be shed upon the practices in China. If that is truly the case maybe a lot of these concerns can be addressed, but I want to stress that maybe part of it. I have seen the government so often use the terms maybe and if. Both are hypothetical. I would like to know if the government were to review this in a few years whether it would back away from it. I highly doubt it. It seems that once it gets these practices in place it likes to penalize our business people as much as possible.

In closing, I have one word for the government. The government's fear is a fear of the independent business people of the country, for if they are independent they do not need--

[Canadian International Trade Tribunal Act, April 26th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I understand that very well. I also understand that the WTO does not force any country to trade with another country. That is strictly up to the government of the day. If the government perceives that practices going on in that country are up to its standards, which I gather they are according to this government, then there is absolutely no problem trading with China.

However if the government refuses to recognize that there are problems in these countries and does not address them, and it is willing to put our companies into unfair competition due to the practices in these countries, then that is the government's right.

However, whether the member likes it or not, one of my rights and the reason I was sent here was to raise concerns like these in the House. If I have information pertaining to activities going on in other countries, particularly with regard to trade issues such as this, it should be brought to the government's attention in one way or another. The member may not like that but I believe that is my duty, not only to my constituents, but to Canada as a whole.

[Canadian International Trade Tribunal Act, April 26th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the House is considering putting in place a complex system for Canadian manufacturers of goods in order to lodge formal complaints if they believe they are receiving unfair competition from imports of similar goods made in the People's Republic of China. It is called Bill C-50.

How do my hon. colleagues think there could be fair competition between Canada and China, where workers' rights and job safety are far behind that of Canada, where child labour is still widespread, where permits and regulatory control are routinely bypassed by means of graft and corruption of government officials, and where environmental protection is far behind that of Canada?

Long time foreign service representative to China, Mr. Brian McAdam, described China as a climate of corruption. I wish to thank him for the input he has made to some of the questions I put forward to him, it was very insightful.

The American chamber of commerce in China has stated that the average industrial wage in China is about $4 an hour. Literally nobody in Canada makes such a low wage. How can the government expect our companies and our people to compete against such a system?

All of the above factors mean that a company in Canada, where workers have many rights, where child labour is no longer practised and has not been for years, where job safety is a major concern of everyone, and where environmental protection and regulations like building codes are taken seriously, would find it more costly to produce an item than a similar company in China.

One of the biggest differences is that prison labour is a fact of life in China. No matter what we like to think here or where we hope this goes, prison labour is a way of life in China. There are millions in prison for being pregnant without permission, shouting “Free Tibet”, working for women's rights, seeking religious freedoms to practice Falun Gong, and protesting the lack of investigation of the tragic events of the Tiananmen Square massacre which took place on the night of June 3 to June 4, 1989. That still has not been addressed to the satisfaction of the world stage.

Amnesty International has provided me with the following information:

Torture has been reported in the full range of state institutions, from police stations, detention centres and prisons to administrative “re-education through labour” camps and enforced drug rehabilitation centres. It has also been inflicted by officials working outside the criminal justice system, sometimes publicly, to humiliate, threaten or coerce. Methods of torture include severe beating, kicking, electric shocks, hanging by the arms, shackling in painful positions, exposure to extreme heat or cold, sleep and food deprivation.

Prison conditions are harsh, often with long hours of forced labour and inadequate medical care. Some dissidents not known to have psychiatric problems have been sent to psychiatric institutions where they have been forcibly injected with drugs. Reports of torture increase during periodic "strike hard" campaigns against specific crimes and during high-profile political campaigns like the current crackdown on the banned Falun Gong organization.Groups at particular risk include ordinary criminal suspects and migrant workers, religious and ethnic minorities, labour activists and political dissidents.

If this is what is going into in the agreement, I have to wonder what we are really doing here.

We all know that under Chinese law torture is prohibited in most circumstances. China has been called before the world stage a number of times with regard to these issues.

This is from Amnesty International's backgrounder: Jigme Sangpo has spent most of the past 40 years behind bars. He was first arrested in 1960 and sent to a re-education camp for allegedly subjecting the students to corporal punishment. He was arrested again in 1970 and sentenced to 10 years for his political activities. His latest period of detention began in 1983 when he was given a 15 year sentence for spreading counterrevolutionary propaganda after he put up a wall poster calling for Tibetan independence. The sentence was extended for five years in 1988 after he shouted slogans and a further eight years in 1991 after he shouted “Free Tibet” during a visit to the prison by the Swiss ambassador to China.

I have to wonder exactly where we are going. According to Amnesty International, at least 2,960 people have been sentenced to death and 1,781 executed in the last three months of China's strike hard campaign against crime. Amnesty International said today that more people were executed in China in the last three months than in the world for the last three years.

When we go into these types of agreements we should be looking very closely at the practices in these other countries. I do not want anybody here to get the idea that I am against free fair trade. I want to emphasize the word fair, fair not only in the marketplace but also fair to the people of the country with which we are willing to do business.

I have to wonder what is going on when we go into these agreements and these issues are not addressed. We like to stand here and say that if we do this, maybe the country of concern will come to the same understanding for their people as we do here in Canada. To me the word maybe is a big gamble.

I especially have to wonder when, in all sincerity, our trade with China is actually a deficit. We import approximately $10.5 billion from China yet we export a very small fraction of that. When we do this with a country whose movements against the Falun Gong, Protestants, Catholics and other religious groups and its lack of commitment to internationally agreed upon standards for human rights, one would think that all of us in the House should be concerned, especially when we consider the fact that our trade with China is so relatively small.

I have to wonder if our speed on this might have something to do with the fact that the Prime Minister's son-in-law is the chairman of the Canada-China Trade Council. Probably the largest company in China with any interest in China at all is the Power Corporation and it also has ties.

The government members are proud of saying that they support human rights. They like to stand up and say that they are caring and sharing and that they will not support regimes in one place or another that impact upon human rights, workers' rights, religious freedoms and free speech, and yet we still go down this road without those things being addressed, which causes me grave concerns.

The idea of a country the size of Canada, with a population of approximately 32 million, trading with a country with a population of over 1.5 billion people, should in all cases open up doors for trade expansion in Canada. Unfortunately, when we look at the reality, the country to which we will be opening our doors and competing against is a country that still believes in forced child labour and still practices forced prison labour, which puts our companies in dire straits for competition in the marketplace. Instead of waiting to address some of these issues, they should have been addressed before we went there.

I want everyone in the House to understand that there is nothing wrong with trade as long as it is free and fair. When practices, such as those that go on in China today, are not perceived as being free or fair, particularly as compared to our standard of living, I have to question the wisdom of where we are going.

[Privilege, April 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. While I listened to the hon. member, he said that we threw a flag on the floor. That is totally false. It was the red book and it deserved to be thrown on the floor.

[Age of Consent, April 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it is about time the justice minister did the right thing and raised the legal age of sexual consent. Fourteen year old children are too young to drive. They are too young to consume alcohol, smoke or even vote. Yet the justice minister irresponsibly agrees to not change the laws that allow our 14 year olds to consent to sexual relations.

The sexual exploitation of our nation's children by adults should one of the government's top priorities. At the very least, the minister should increase the legal age of consent to 16. This would in part help protect our children from sexual exploitation.

A 1999 department of justice paper states that the present age of consent is too low to provide effective protection for children from sexual exploitation by adults. Additionally, last year both the provincial justice ministers and the Canadian Police Association passed resolutions calling on the federal government to raise the age of consent for sexual activity to at least 16 years of age.

Where is the justice minister on this issue?

[Species at Risk Act, April 16th, 2002]

He was.