Wendy Lill

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, June 9th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for West Nova for his presentation. I too am very concerned about the made in America Bill C-55. I have it in front of me and it looks to me to be a three page letter between U.S. trade representative Barshefsky and Canadian Ambassador Raymond Chrétien.

What strikes me about this deal is that there is one paragraph after another saying that Canada will amend, Canada will further amend its foreign investment policy, Canada will amend its definition of Canadian issues, Canada will amend section 19. It is all of the things that Canada will do. There is no mention about what the United States will do. It seems like a very one way deal.

The only paragraph that mentions America at all states that Canada and the United States will agree to consult annually, upon request, within 20 days, on any matter relating to this agreement. That is the extent of American involvement in this deal.

Does the member for West Nova believe that this is in any way a reciprocal, mutual agreement? What can we make of this one paragraph outlining American responsibilities?

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, June 9th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, the most important thing that we are losing is our ability to protect our culture. We are losing our ability to keep those Canadian titles in the bookstores, specifically to keep those Canadian titles on the magazine racks.

The Minister of Canadian Heritage will say that there was 100% of advertising revenue and we have given away 18% and that it could have been much worse. If 100 new American split-run magazines come in here and each one of them has 18% of its advertising revenue Canadian, I would say that that valuable pool of Canadian advertising revenue would dry up very quickly.

There will be Canadian magazines out there. There will continue to be Canadian magazines, but there will be fewer of them. Many of them will go under. We will begin to see magazines which purport to be Canadian but in fact are American knockoffs of Canadian magazines that have no heart or soul or particular interest in this place as an experience, as a land to live in and to fight for, but in fact a market in which they can extract more revenue. That is the central tragedy of this bill.

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, June 9th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to the Senate amendments to Bill C-55, an act respecting advertising services supplied by foreign periodical publishers.

I have been on my feet many times over the last year on this bill. I have been asking questions, making statements and following it very closely. This is kind of the 11th hour on this debate and I will try to say some things that mean something to me at this time.

I am very concerned about the direction the bill has taken. I will speak personally as a new rookie MP. I have watched the bill with great interest from its inception around a year ago. I remember watching a press conference on television. The ministers of heritage and industry were tanned and confident as they talked about this wonderful bill which had been crafted, which was WTO-proof, dragon-proof and was going to be able to defend us in the big, wide world of mega-magazines and split runs and all of that.

We all felt good about that in our hearts. We thought it sounded good. It sounded like a net benefit to Canadian culture, as we see so much stuff coming across our border that is not Canadian.

The New Democratic Party and I gave our cautious consent because there were things in it that we did not really agree with. We would have liked to have seen it go further, but we did believe in the spirit of it. We believed that it was an effort to say that we can work within the trade agreements and protect our culture at the same time.

We are now a year down the line. The bill that was put forward that day was digested and picked over by all of us. I will talk about some of the contents of the Canadian-made Bill C-55 just for the record. It is no longer there, but these are some of the ideas we were supporting.

Bill C-55 was to make it an offence to provide Canadian advertising services aimed at the Canadian market to be placed in foreign periodical publications, except for those currently receiving Canadian advertising. For people who do not understand anything about this business and are probably sick to death of hearing about it without understanding it, the whole basis of this is that there is a certain amount of money out there for magazines to use to create their product. It is the Canadian advertising industry which Canadian magazines are dependent on for their survival, along with government subsidies and the enormous support they get from the people who buy the magazines.

The bill is all about advertising. It is about trying to protect this pool of advertising, this amount of moneys that is available to support our industry, our writers, our editors, our publishers, our photographers and all of the people who want to read our stories. That was the intent of Bill C-55 that sunny day many months ago.

There was an offence, which would have been enforceable by Canadian law, after an investigation was ordered by the Minister of Canadian Heritage. This would have happened if foreign periodical publications used Canadian advertising. The penalties would have ranged from the maximum of $20,000 for an individual's first offence on a summary conviction, to $250,000 for a corporate offender on indictment. Offences that took place outside of Canada by foreign individuals or corporations would have been deemed to have taken place in Canada for the purposes of enforcement of the act.

I am using the past tense because this is no longer the bill that we are talking about.

The government would have collected unpaid fines levied upon conviction in the same manner as a civil judgment. The cabinet would have made regulations relating to the investigators, the conduct of the investigations and the definition of the Canadian market.

The whole bill was based on the fact that we were going to protect the Canadian advertising market for Canadian magazines. The minister of culture had her dukes up. She was ready to fight. She was ready to stand up to the American bully. We heard this over and over.

Before I go on, I will say that I like American magazines. I do not want to say that they have no place in this constellation. I like them a great deal and I have tremendous admiration for American writers. I like a whole lot about the United States and its talent and its spirit. A lot of its talent and spirit managed to manifest itself in this deal but it was not to our benefit. It was to the American's benefit.

It is not the talent and spirit of the Americans that I do not like, it is the velocity and the volume of the American product that just overwhelms our shores. I think that Bill C-55 was an 11th hour effort to protect the Canadian magazine industry from being swamped by thousands of shiny, glossy, sexy American magazines which we see row by row, bicep by bicep, cleavage by cleavage in our airport bookstores and in chains of American bookstores, which we now have all over our country.

What we were hoping was going to happen was that we would have some control over this wave, which was what the Canadian version of Bill C-55 was all about.

However, what we have seen is a complete collapse of the government's will to stand up to the American bully in the final analysis. In one of my first experiences as a rookie MP, it was a very sad day when I heard that the deal, which we had taken through the House in a democratic process, had collapsed.

When I look around the room, I see others who might feel the same; that we were doing some good work in terms of looking at this legislation and really trying to make some amendments to make it as good as it could be. We voted on Bill C-55 and sent it to the Senate.

What I was not aware of was that the democratic bills in the House of Commons go somewhere else. They go to Washington where they are really worked on. That was quite a shock to me. I think it would shock most Canadians to realize that there is actually a four stage journey or maybe five. It goes from the House to the Senate, from the Senate to the United States, back to the Senate and then it comes back to the House to be rammed through.

The bill that has come back here, which went to the Senate from the United States in the last couple of weeks, is a very different bill. It is one which I will run through right now and then tell the House what it means to the people in the magazine industry, to the people who like to read Canadian magazines and to the cultural workers in the country.

The made-in-America deal, which has just been penned and signed, commits Canada to amend our foreign investment policy so it falls under section 38 of the Investment Canada Act, allowing for the cabinet to regulate and prescribe what and how much foreign ownership Americans can have in our industry. The agreement also forces Canada to allow for increased ownership, up to 51% after 90 days, and up to 100% within a year.

The new made-in-America Bill C-55 also commits Canada to change the Income Tax Act to allow advertisers to receive deductions for placing ads in American publications aimed at the Canadian market.

The new made-in-America Bill C-55 contains a “without prejudice” section to diminish the agreement's ability to set a precedent under the WTO, NAFTA, Investment Canada Act or under Bill C-55.

One of the central issues that I am concerned about is that this deal sets out the surrender of our market by prescribing the formula to allow for American split runs to invade our market with a total of 12% of total Canadian ad content immediately, rising to 18% within 36 months.

The tax act shall also be amended to allow for one-half deductions in magazines with up to 79% original content and 100% for publications with more than 80% original editorial content.

The definition of Canadian content at this point in time is one that I am extremely concerned about because it has now metamorphosed into a completely different meaning than the one we all knew it to be, and that is one of being material written by Canadians or having some involvement by Canadians. One of the questions I asked the minister today in the House of Commons dealt the issue of Canadian content.

The new wording for Canadian content means that as long as it is original to a split-run magazine in Canada then it is considered Canadian content. It no longer has to be written or published by a Canadian or have a Canadian theme. Nothing like that is important any more, as long as it is created originally for the Canadian market and has not appeared in another edition in Canada. The idea of Canadian content is watered down so significantly that I fear very much the precedent it is setting for all of the other Canadian cultural industries which are also very much dependent on the idea of Canadian content.

I would like to mention right now some of the impact this is going to have on our industry. We have over 900,000 Canadian workers in culture. This is a 1997 UNESCO figure. We have a responsibility in the House to protect these workers along with the idea of Canadian content.

We were told by the government that we had a chance to stand up to the American entertainment monolith. We had a chance to defend this at the WTO but we did not do that. We did not use our cultural exemption contained in NAFTA. We ignored our own legal advice regarding Bill C-55 being WTO proof. We basically showed the Americans that we had no interest in protecting culture. I think that is coming right down to the bottom line.

We have simply said “It is all right, this is just one more product we will negotiate with you and we will in fact give in to you”. The only lesson the Americans have learned here is that if they threaten a trade war with the Canadians, do not worry because the Canadians will surrender.

By refusing to use the existing trade rules to protect our magazines we are saying we will allow the Americans to make up international rules as they go along. It is therefore only a matter of time before American interests go after Canadian content on television, ownership levels in our broadcasting industry, support for our book publishing industry, support for our feature films and so on.

The creation of this new fund, which is going to be a fund to augment the deathblow to the Canadian industry, is suspect. This government reduced direct cultural support by over $500 million between 1993 and 1998. That is in the official estimates. Any new fund will not necessarily restore money and there is no indication at this point where the money is coming from.

In closing, I would like to read into the record a motion that I was going to put forward. It is interesting that the Reform member put forward a motion which said the new made in America Bill C-55 did not go nearly far enough. I was going to put another motion forward. I will read it into the record.

The motion we would have moved would have been:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words following “That” and substituting the following:

—a Message be sent to the Senate to acquaint Their Honours that this House disagrees with the amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-55, an act respecting advertising services supplied by foreign periodical publishers, for the following reasons:

The Senate amendments subvert the intent of Bill C-55 to protect the Canadian periodical industry in the face of American based split-run magazine editions and actually threaten the future of the Canadian periodical industry by

(a) granting a substantial amount of Canadian advertising services to foreign periodical publications aimed solely at the Canadian market;

(b) giving incentives to new foreign periodical publications to be created and aimed at the Canadian market that were not foreseen or discussed by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage in their study of the bill;

(c) granting sweeping powers to the Governor in Council to define revenue levels and determine Canadian content especially but not exclusively in section 20 of the bill.

In closing, we believe that American made Bill C-55 is a craven bill and a tragedy for Canadian culture.

[Publishing Industry, June 9th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the made in America magazine deal states that allowable Canadian content means “created for the Canadian market and does not appear in any other edition in Canada”. How can the minister have allowed Americans to be considered Canadians under the law? The definition of what is a Canadian is pretty simple to me: a Canadian is a Canadian.

Why does the minister allow Americans to be considered Canadians in the magazine deal?

[Publishing Industry, June 9th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I have a simple question for the Minister of Canadian Heritage. Would she agree that under the new Senate amendments to Bill C-55 and her vague backgrounders which she calls regulations, the definitions of Canadian content have been changed? Under the new Bill C-55 no Canadian writer, editor, publisher, photographer or printer needs to be involved for a magazine to now qualify as Canadian under the deal as long as the material is original to our magazines.

Has the definition of Canadian content changed? All the minister need answer is yes or no.

[Publishing Industry, June 2nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I think the minister should read her own documents. By agreeing upon this definition of Canadian content, the minister has kicked open the door for challenges on Canadian content in films, books, music, and all other endeavours. They are now all threatened.

The minister has a choice to make. Either she endorses an American definition of Canadian content and keeps her cabinet seat, or she stands up as a Canadian cultural nationalist and resigns in principle.

[Publishing Industry, June 2nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, background documents on the new made in America magazine deal state that Canadian content is “original to the Canadian market or has been authored by a Canadian”.

By this definition a quick rewrite of an article on American Olympians in a new spit-run edition of Newsweek becomes voila, Canadian content.

The new definition now includes work written by American writers as long as they are only published in an American split run. Does the minister agree that by this new definition American content is now Canadian content?

[Education, May 27th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, just blocks from here, cuts to special education funding have driven mothers to the desperate act of offering to sell their kidneys to stop a $20 million cut to their kids' education. Even the family of an American diplomat in Ottawa has warned colleagues away from our capital because of these special education cuts.

The social union agreement is supposed to allow for national standards. Cases like this show that the agreement is nothing more than empty words for these mothers and for other vulnerable Canadians.

The time has come for action. The government says nice things about children with special needs but does nothing. Persons with disabilities are guaranteed equality of citizenship under the charter of rights and freedoms. Why is it that the government always waits for desperate acts or court challenges before providing services that all Canadians are entitled to?

Parents should not have to offer their kidneys to force federal and provincial governments to act.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, May 27th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure today to speak to Bill C-32, an act respecting pollution prevention and the protection of the environment and good human health in order to contribute to sustainable development.

I would like to speak on the issue of children's health and the impact of pesticides and pollution on the lives of our children.

I was interested in the eco-summit which was held here two weeks ago. It was a very interesting, worthwhile and provocative event that was put on at the House of Commons to draw attention to environmental issues.

Entertainer Raffi opened the summit and I think everyone was expecting him to break into a song like Baby Beluga . However, he was there for a much more serious reason. He was there to talk about a child centred world and the importance of the starting place for absolutely any of our decisions being new life and the children who we have and are guarding for the future.

He talked about the radical idea of making each and every one of our decisions from the perspective of the child and the health and well-being of the child. He felt that all of our actions, legislations, laws and all the creativity that we have should be focused on children and geared toward children. As we all know, we have much to answer to our children.

I am sure all of us have had our children asking why the water is so dirty, why all the fish are dying, why there are no more rain forests, why half of their classmates have breathing problems and why some of them have asthma. They have all of these whys about the environment. They also want to know why we, the adults who are supposedly the guardians of this globe, are not protecting the environment.

Native people speak about the idea of making decisions for seven generations. Nothing should be put out there that has not been thought through for at least seven generations. I love the idea of using all of our collective wisdom to make decisions which will not bring shame, disgust or recriminations from our children, our children's children or our great-grandchildren's children, or even worse, that will not bring illness or death.

What a concept that we could be making decisions in the House, which is exactly where it all starts, that could bring illness to our own children and the children of our children. I do not think there is anything that quite gets me more in the gut and in the heart than contemplating that thought.

All of these questions bring about enormous shame and sorrow but they must obviously go much further than that. They cannot just stop with a sense of shame, sorrow and powerlessness. We cannot just turn off the radio at night when we hear David Suzuki speaking eloquently and with enormous detailed research about the fact that we are at the eleventh hour with the globe in terms of the health of our environment. We cannot just close that out. We have to listen to the people who are doing the work on the environment and we have to listen to the danger signs.

At the eco-summit Raffi talked about the fact that there is no baby born now on the globe who is free of the impact of toxic chemicals which just float around in our water, our food and our air. Pollution does not discriminate. It begins to work on tiny lungs as soon as they take their first breath. We know it even works on them while they are still in the mother's womb.

Wealth, power and influence in gated communities do not protect people against a polluted environment. We cannot protect ourselves in any way from this issue other than by doing something about it.

At this point I would like to look at some startling statistics which came out last week. They concern the impact of pesticide residues on Canadian produce, on the apples our children eat at the day cares and on all the food we are eating. Children have a much smaller system and they are more vulnerable in terms of the buildup of pesticides. The amount of pesticides left on fresh fruit and vegetables has grown in Canada. According to unpublished government statistics obtained through the Access to Information Act, pesticides have more than doubled since 1994.

Studies indicate that produce grown commercially in Canada now have pesticide residues at nearly the same rate as imported produce. If we have grown them ourselves or have purchased them at the local store we take some comfort in thinking that if we wash them everything will be all right. For some reason we are trying to deny the fact that we are not personally ingesting enormous amounts of pesticides. We seem to be able to let this problem build in our lives without addressing it head on.

The report by Eli Neidert and Glenn Havelock of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency dated November 6, 1998 states:

The evidence clearly indicates that both the contamination rates and violation rates for domestic and imported produce are moving closer together.

Studies show that nearly a quarter of Canadian produce randomly tested bears traces of pesticides, even after inedible skins are peeled off. Although the report states that just 1.2% of domestic produce showed residues at illegal levels, the violation rate is triple what it was at the beginning of the decade.

Kathryn Boothby, communications manager of the Pesticide Producers and Marketers' Crop Protection Institute of Canada, cautioned against becoming needlessly alarmed about pesticides, saying that consumers should take into account the well-documented health benefits of eating fresh fruits and vegetables.

After having read that, I had to ask myself what the spokesperson was saying. The good news is that an apple a day keeps the doctors away but the bad news is that pesticides will almost surely kill us at some point if we live long enough. I could not believe that she actually said that. If I would have had a phone nearby I would have called her for a reality check on what she was saying about the food we eat.

Julia Langer speaks well on that issue. She is a pesticide expert at the World Wildlife Fund Canada and a member of the federal government's Pest Management Advisory Council. She said that the trend toward the widespread findings are extremely disturbing. She also said that it should be a wake-up call to change pest management practices so we can move the trend in the opposite direction.

The chemical present in fresh Canadian and foreign grown produce includes carcinogens, suspected neurotoxins and compounds known to cross the placental barrier and affect growing fetuses. These also include long banned chemicals such as breakdown components of DDT and several others so dangerous that they merit a place on the international dirty dozen list. Although they are not registered for use in Canada, they are nevertheless legal in the food Canadians eat, as long as they are not present in quantities above 0.1 parts per million.

In closing, I will simply make an enormous plea for us to stop everything and try to get back to the basics. As Raffi said at the eco-summit the other night, let us think about our children. Let us think about the poisons going into our environment. Let us talk about a decent environment bill that is going to start reversing the pollution and the devastation that we have wrought on our globe. I will push for that at every turn in terms of the amendments that the New Democratic Party are putting forward to the CEPA bill.

[Bill C-55, May 26th, 1999]

Thank you for that answer. Mr. Speaker, I have one more question and it deserves a more serious response.

Is there anyone on the government side of the House, the ministers of culture, trade, environment, anyone, who is willing to stand up and just say no to the Americans?