House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2004, with 46% of the vote.
The Environment June 7th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, we just heard the Minister of the Environment claim that the government is taking responsibility in the area of drinking water.
I would like to ask the hon. minister, what has the government done to clean up the water systems on the 171 aboriginal reserve communities, systems which were identified in 1995 by Health Canada as defective?
Cape Breton Development Corporation Divestiture Authorization And Dissolution Act June 2nd, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I rise today with regard to Bill C-11. I will give a bit of history with regard to what is going on with Devco and what I have seen take place in Cape Breton since 1994.
In late 1994 or the early part of 1995 I had the opportunity to go to Cape Breton to try to get an understanding of the concerns. I had the great opportunity of meeting with the miners, the union people and with business people. I was also taken down through the mines. I started to catch up a bit on what was taking place.
I knew about the money that had been put into Devco. What I could not understand, particularly after being down there, was what happened to a large percentage of those funds. I could see that the funds had not gone to the miners or even into the mines.
As I began to dig a little more I came across the fact that the government had decided not to renew its contracts for exporting coal from some of the mines. Although I am not a raving genius myself, I can understand that when a company gives up a segment of its market, particularly when it is competing on an international scale, it has just told its customers that it is no longer willing to produce the goods that they want. Any sane thinking company would know that its customers would go somewhere else to find the market, but not the government.
The government figured that it could bring them back any time it wanted to, but that was not the case. Instead, the government decided to try to prove that this was not economically feasible. It went through a broad scope of deals and non-deals, promises and broken promises in order to achieve this. In the meantime, it told the people of Cape Breton that it would look after their best interests.
The government repeatedly told the people of Cape Breton that Devco would be there, that they should not to worry, that they should be happy and that the government would look after them. All the time it was planning on just closing the door without very much concern about what would happen.
The door closed and now we are left trying to clean this up and trying to make some sense out of this. The government comes forward with Bill C-11. Everybody from all parties of the House have gone through the bill carefully and some members have put forth a number of amendments. The government has decided not to accept any of those amendments. I cannot understand this. We have members in the House who represent Cape Breton, who have been down there and know the people intimately, and yet their motions are not to be accepted by the government.
We have been down there and have spoken with the people. We have met with the business community, with labour and with management but not one of our motions has been accepted. This does not show a willingness on behalf of the government, no matter what it says or professes in the House, to listen to the people of Canada no matter what region they are from.
Some members like to stand in the House and say that this is an eastern problem or that is a western problem. No, this is a Canadian problem. Maybe it is about time government members made up their minds that they are here to represent all of Canada, not just pieces and segments here and there whenever they see fit.
When this bill came before the House we were in a dilemma. I may be hesitant sometimes in the way I speak, but when I went through the files on Devco and read between the lines—it is not there in black and white because the government will not let it be there in black and white—I had to wonder who took the money out of Devco. It was not the miners. It is not laying there in an abundance of assets. There are some assets there, yes, but what happened to most of the money? How much went toward patronage appointments? How much was never accounted for?
I cannot seem to find the answers in the bill no matter how hard I look. I have to wonder what Devco was all about. It certainly was not to help Cape Bretoners. Maybe it helped a select few, but certainly not the Cape Bretoners themselves. When we see the mess that is there now, we think of the money that has been put into Devco and what has been accomplished.
Some of our people have talked to the union. We have talked to the miners who have worked in the mines for years, some of whom are two months or a year short of retirement. They will get no funds out of this.
Where is this passionate Liberal Party? Where are the members who hammered on our doors just before the last election and said “I am here to help you. I am here to listen to your problems and I am here to help fix them. Please elect me again”.
In the next election those members will get the same message in Cape Breton as they will get in our constituency in British Columbia, “Get out of here. We are sick and tired of listening to what you say you are going to do and then having to live with what you actually do”. Cape Breton has found out the tough way, and it is really a shame.
As I go through the motions, I see one that I wanted in the bill. Motion No. 14 reads:
The Liberals turned this motion down. What is so unreasonable about that motion? All it asks is for the government to do its job, and it has refused to do it.
In closing I want to say that this government has a lot to be ashamed of today and I hope it realizes this soon.
Correctional Service Canada June 2nd, 2000
Mr. Speaker, according to Statistics Canada there has been a decrease in the inmate population. Yet the cost per inmate has increased, believe it or not, to $171 per day.
Obviously Correctional Service Canada is either pampering its inmates or its executives. Could the solicitor general please explain this outrageous waste of taxpayer dollars?
Parole June 2nd, 2000
Mr. Speaker, in my riding a young mother disappeared May 21. She was last seen together with her common law husband who left their baby at the babysitters. A blood soaked carpet was removed from the home and police are treating the disappearance as a murder investigation.
A Canada-wide warrant has been issued for the arrest of this man, who is on parole after serving only nine years of a so-called life sentence for second degree murder in the stabbing death of his then mother-in-law.
Falkner resided at Vernon's Howard House, a facility helping to reintegrate offenders into society. But the Howard House staff can only work with whoever the parole board sends them, including previously violent criminals. A local official with Correctional Service Canada was quoted as saying that Falkner was released “because the parole board determined he was not an appropriate risk”.
Today's lesson for the solicitor general is, start protecting the public by requiring that inmates earn parole rather than expecting it as an automatic right.
Prisons May 12th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, the people of Nass Valley never left this country.
Canadian taxpayers have spent $60,000 for scanners in federal prisons that can detect the smallest amount of drugs. Yet when the bells and whistles go off, these people are not arrested nor are the drugs confiscated.
My question is for the solicitor general. If a person visiting an inmate at a federal prison is caught with illegal drugs, the drugs are not even seized and that person is not charged. Why?
Penitentiaries May 12th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, we now have scanners that can detect the smallest amount of drugs. When I spotted a scanner at Joyceville Penitentiary I knew what it was. They told me it cost about $60,000, but I figured this was a good investment as we could confiscate the drugs. They told me “Oh, no, we do not confiscate the drugs. When we find somebody who brings drugs inside the prison we send them back home and then they can try again 24 hours later”.
That is like someone getting caught while driving impaired and when they blow over the legal limit the RCMP tell them to turn their car around, go home and try again tomorrow.
They also told me there is another choice. The visitor carrying the drugs can still go on with the visit, but must be accompanied by a guard.
This week's lesson for the solicitor general is, we might reduce the drug problem in our prisons if the guards could at least confiscate the drugs. Then they could let the prisoners have plenty of time to visit with their buddies while their buddies are doing five years for illegal drug smuggling.
Cape Breton Development Corporation Divestiture Authorization And Dissolution Act May 8th, 2000
I was just going to talk about the mismanagement with regard to Devco.
Cape Breton Development Corporation Divestiture Authorization And Dissolution Act May 8th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, but not on the subamendment.
Cape Breton Development Corporation Divestiture Authorization And Dissolution Act May 8th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, thank you for recognizing the constituency of Okanagan—Shuswap. Mr. Speaker, imagine sitting around in Cape Breton or anywhere in Canada 30 years ago with your coffee buddies, your friends and you were talking about what would be happening in Canada 30 years later. If somebody said that all the coal mines in Cape Breton would be shut down, somebody would have called for an ambulance and a white jacket.
What are we doing today? We are talking about exactly that. We have to stop and wonder how this all took place and what exactly happened.
I have had the opportunity to go to Cape Breton. I have also had the opportunity to go down into the mines with the workers, and hardworking and dedicated people they are. Not one of them I talked to was asking for a handout. When I talked to them they were asking for the truth.
Cape Breton Development Corporation Divestiture Authorization And Dissolution Act May 8th, 2000
Yes, the finance minister of the Liberal government.
Naturally, being nice, honest and hardworking people, I have to wonder when we talk about job creation and helping out the miners just exactly what the government has been doing. I would say that it certainly gave the miners the shaft while it closed the mine down. That would be my way of looking at it. I do not think I am wrong but I am willing to accept that maybe I am.
Meanwhile out in Alberta, to comply with the government's promises made at Kyoto, Japan without adequate consultation with business and industry here at home, at least some great experiments are being done to reduce carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. In Alberta technology has been invented that can actually bury carbon dioxide in the coal seams so that for every molecule of carbon dioxide taken out in order to clean up our air, we get back two molecules of usable methane gas. Experts predict this will allow Alberta to bury, they call it sequester, all carbon dioxide from all the coal they export and expect to burn in their coal fired power plants in the next 500 years and make money while doing it.
Where is the new technology for coal back east? Instead of technology it brings in call centres. I go back to what I originally said. The government is trying to force the miners of Cape Breton to become telephone operators. I have to wonder exactly where the government got the brilliant idea to go this route.
Eventually the government got the brilliant idea to privatize the coal mining operations. Would we not expect the privatization to be completed before it did a shutdown, before the workers left because they lost hope of making a future for themselves and their families in that part of Canada, before they gave up their foreign markets? That was so tough to get in the first place but the government gave it away lock, stock and barrel. Here we are today looking at Bill C-11 which is trying to get the government off the hook after so many years of mismanaging one of the country's greatest natural resources, the coal of Cape Breton.
Men who went down to the mines as teenagers still do not have enough years of service combined with their ages to qualify for any pension under the plan because they are still too young. These men are supposed to be retrained. Maybe they will become telephone operators at the Prime Minister's new call centre but I doubt it.
Maybe the Liberals will move in some other centre, like New Brunswick's role as the registration centre for all Canadian firearms, and the Prime Minister can turn Cape Breton coal miners into federal bureaucrats. Maybe that is the game plan, I do not know.
Before I close I would like to quote Mr. Murphy:
We feel that handing off of the Nova Scotia Power Inc. supply contract to foreign suppliers is an unacceptable situation. We decided back in May to do something about it by forming a worker's co-op and submitting the bid for the Devco assets through the Nesbitt Burns process. Our bid was rejected, as was a bid put forward by Donkin Resource Limited, which is determined to press on with opening the Donkin Mine with the support of the community and groups such as our co-op, which is ready to invest in the project to ensure that at least some of NFPI coal is supplied by Cape Bretoners.
Mr. Murphy also goes on to question why the federal government would rather hand over a lucrative contract to a foreign company when the coal could be supplied locally. That is the question. Why would the government do it, unless there is something for somebody else's pocket?