Wendy Lill

[Transport, April 26th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, my question is about plutonium. Today the International Association of Fire Fighters added its voice to environmental groups, thousands of concerned citizens and an all-party parliamentary committee in calling for a moratorium on the transportation of plutonium through Canadian communities.

Will the minister listen to the growing chorus of Canadians?

[Petitions, April 14th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition on behalf of over 100 Canadians. The recent commercial television and radio decision of the copyright board retroactively reduced the royalties of Canadian music creators and adopted the American practice of forcing individual music composers to negotiate directly with large broadcasting corporations. By adopting the American scheme the copyright board has failed to respect parliament's longstanding commitment to the collective administration of the copyright of Canadian creators.

The petitioners request that parliament strongly reaffirm this commitment and that the Minister of Industry immediately appoint a judge to chair the copyright board and respect parliament's intent that the board be a competent and objective quasi-judicial tribunal.

[Questions Passed As Orders For Returns, March 24th, 1999]

With regard to the October 1996 Report of the Task Force on Disability, entitled “Equal Citizenship for Canadians with Disabilities—The Will to Act”, what actions has the government taken to implement recommendations nos. 1 to 9 (including 9 a ), b ) and c )), 10 to 13 (including 13 a ) and b )), 14 to 18 (including 18 a ) through f )), 19, 20 (including 20 a ) and b )), 23 (including 23 a ) through d )), 24, 25 (including 25 a ) and b )), 26, 27 (including 27 a ), b ) and c )), 28 b ), 29 b ), 30 b ), 31 (including 31 a ) through e )), 32 (including 32 a ), b ) and c )), 33 (including 33 a ) through e )), 34, 35 (including 35 a ) and b )), 36 (including 36 a ), b ) and c )), 37 to 43, 44 c ), 45 (including 45 a ) through d )), 46 a ), 47 to 51 (including 51 a ) through f )) and 52 (including 52 a ) through g ))?

Return tabled.

[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, March 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, we have known the government has been involved with various kinds of interference with the CBC for a long time. There was a $400 million cut to funding. It has told CBC what logo to have. It censored Terry Milewski for his reporting. It has made CBC interference an art form.

I find it ironic that at this point in time the minister would be saying that they are trying to stay out of this and let business take its course. I think the CBC has to be dealt with quickly and the government has to have some hand in it.

[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, March 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, CBC Radio Canada as we know it may go off the air on the Friday.

I was on the picket line this morning with Dean Haywood. His father was a technical director and his brother directed Hockey Night in Canada for 15 years. Dean has worked at the parliamentary bureau for 25 years.

Generations of committed public broadcasters have been keeping a dream alive, but it may all fade to black on Friday because government funding cuts have pushed the corporation into crisis.

Will the minister of heritage give assurances to the Haywoods and the millions of Canadians who support public broadcasting that she will find money to prevent the CBC from fading to black on Friday?

[Bill C-55, March 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the minister introduced the amendment allowing cabinet to kill the bill after parliament passes it. Her government is directing the closed door talks.

Will the minister guarantee in this House that if parliament passes the bill, it will become law?

[Bill C-55, March 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, U.S. deputy trade representative Richard Fisher has made it clear that the White House believes Bill C-55 will never be proclaimed into Canadian law. I have wondered that myself since the Liberal report stage amendment and Liberal closed door negotiations with the Americans.

Someone asked a question in the letters to the editor in today's Globe and Mail which reflected my own dismay and that of thousands of other Canadians on this issue. I am wondering if the minister could answer Brian Mossop's questions for all of us: “Has our Constitution changed while I wasn't looking? Do Canadian laws now have to be passed by the House of Commons, the Senate and U.S. trade officials in Washington?”

[Competition Act, March 12th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to offer my support for Bill C-393 proposed by the member for Sarnia—Lambton. Negative option billing represents some of the worst corporate behaviour imaginable. By saying that implied consent should allow a company to change the general contractual agreement between a company and an individual we are chucking out a thousand years of common law, the part that says a deal is a deal.

Negative option billing negates one of the fundamental concepts which I have always fought for as a writer and as a legislator, which is that we should always safeguard the public's ability to exercise informed consent when dealing with the world.

I am proud to add that this practice has already been dealt with by the NDP government in British Columbia which amended its consumer legislation to ban negative option billing in that province.

The current bill proposes to amend not the Broadcasting Act, but rather the Competition Act to ensure that negative option billing is prohibited in all sectors under federal jurisdiction, not just those regulated by the CRTC. Banning negative option billing is a way of telling the providers of those federally regulated services that they should never see the public as a pool of cash to be dipped into whenever they need to boost profit margins.

Business should provide a service and if the public wants that service and they can afford it, they can agree to buy it. If a business wants to charge customers for a service it has to ask them first, ask them nicely and make the sale by convincing them that they need it or want it. It cannot change the rules in the middle of the game without permission. It is just not fair.

Sadly we are dealing with this as a result of the other place which sent back a bill just before the last election. As we know, elections are of no concern to the other place. The fact that this took place is a good example of why we need to abolish the other place. The House of Commons said that negative option billing should be banned. The Senate blocked our will. Canadians suffer. The cycle has to go and I believe the other place does too.

I well remember the public outrage in the winter of 1995 when the cable companies introduced new specialty channels and restructured their cable package lineups. I was offended that it was suggested by the companies that they needed this anti-consumer practice to support culture.

Canadian creators produce good work and people want it, so they agree to buy it. Shame on the cable companies for trying to hide behind artists while fleecing the public.

The CRTC allowed the practice in 1995 and this shows how out of touch the CRTC has been.

I support regulation and protection for Canadian culture in the broadcast and telecommunications industries by the CRTC. I support regulation and protection for Canadian culture in broadcasting and telecommunications, but it is evident that the CRTC abandoned its role as a protector of citizens, the consumers, when it allowed the cable companies to gouge Canadians through negative option billing.

This failure also hurt the cable industry. When the new channels were introduced in 1995 it was into a much more hostile environment than the channel originators probably deserved simply because people were so appalled at the negative option billing.

I am pleased to see the measure before us in this parliament and pleased that the member has seen fit to include other federally regulated industries in its scope. I agree with the hon. member that we are also seeing the phone companies and some of the banks testing the waters with these kinds of marketing schemes and it needs to stop now.

We must remember that most federally regulated industries are granted certain privileges to conduct business in a protected way in this country and they provide essential services to the economy and the people of Canada. In return for this privilege, which often means they are guaranteed certain levels of profit as well, they have a higher duty to conduct their business in an ethical way. In some cases, the cable industry for example, the profits are high.

I hope that with the change in focus to the Competition Act we will see the Department of Industry start taking a role in protecting consumers in Canada, not protecting corporate Canada. When I say this I am referring to recent failures of the department and the minister to protect cultural interests.

We have the loss of domestic control of large sections of the publishing industry, a trend apparently encouraged by cabinet. We have also seen unprecedented amounts of corporate concentration in television and other media, all with the applause of Industry Canada. I hope the passage of this bill will encourage a change in the overall implementation of the Competition Act so as to protect Canadian citizens and not just Conrad Black, Izzy Asper and members of the Business Council on National Issues.

I would like to go on record as supporting the previous concerns expressed by the member for Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre concerning the Competition Act. He expressed his longstanding criticism of the act's ability to deal with pricing in the retail gas market.

With the changing nature of the international economy and the simultaneous trends of increased mergers and acquisitions, but also the growing number of small businesses, we need a much more active competition policy in this country to ensure that the marketplace works well for consumers and for small business owners.

On Monday my leader and I attended a press conference with members of the small business community in Nova Scotia. They raised very grave concerns about the impact of Sobey's assuming control of 75% of the food wholesale market on the east coast. The takeover of Oshawa Group by Sobey's controlled Empire Ltd. would mean that small family restaurants and corner stores will become price takers from one food wholesaler. That will hurt them and it will hurt consumers.

It is a competition issue and it is a consumer issue. I think it is time we made a comprehensive examination of the whole area. As the member from Regina has said, we do not have one-tenth the amount of competition legislation they have in the United States. I am not saying necessarily that more is better but what we have now obviously is not enough. And it is not working for anybody.

To return to where I started this afternoon, I just wanted to indicate my support for the principle in the member's bill. I hope it receives wide support from the House once again, and is not again stalled by the unelected Senate.

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, March 12th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today again to address Bill C-55 at third reading.

Unlike the government, the New Democratic Party commitment to preserving our culture in the face of American aggression is solid. We support this bill. We support Canadian culture.

We are not happy with the reported government attempts, including its last minute amendment, to delay the proclamation of this bill. We are suspicious that the government will negotiate our culture away behind closed doors, much as the Mulroney Conservatives did in the free trade agreement.

We want stronger cultural protection under NAFTA, under the FTA, under the WTO and under every trade agreement that Canada is party to. These are not my thoughts alone.

I think it is important for us to understand the feelings of Canadians around this bill and about their opinions relating to the protection of cultural from Canadian foreign trade deals.

In the last week of February the standing committee on heritage toured Canada to seek input from interested Canadians on cultural policy and on such issues as Bill C-55. I think it is fitting for me to include some of these comments in this presentation. Anne Manuel from St. John's on February 22 said:

I'm not sure if everyone is familiar with this [bill]. Basically what it is to do, if everything works as planned, is prevent split-run magazines. Currently there are magazines like Sports Illustrated coming out of the United States that have set sizes for their advertising so that when they send the magazine into Canada, all they do is approach an advertiser and say, hey, we've got a half-page ad here, let's slip that Canadian ad right in there. They've already paid for the material to the freelance writer. They've already paid the managing editors and the editors to make sure the article looks perfect, and the photographer to make sure the photo looks perfect. They've already done all of that, so all the bills are paid.

Then they approach Canadian advertisers and they say, well, let's slip that Canadian ad in there and make Canadians think that this is a Canadian magazine”. That's cheating, and that's not helping culture in Canada. That's the sort of thing that really does need federal support desperately. We need the federal government to jump in and say that the foreign publishers advertising services act is a good thing. That's where I really support it.

Mr. Andrew Terris of Halifax is the chair of the Nova Scotia Cultural Network. I think he said it best of many of the presenters who expressed concern over the enormous foreign control of our cultural industries:

Here's what we don't control: 70% of the music on Canadian radio stations is foreign; 60% of all English language television programming is foreign; 70% of the Canadian book market is imported. We don't control 83% of the news stand market for magazines; 84% of the retail sales of sound recordings; 95% of feature films screened in Canadian theatres; 86% of prime time English language drama on Canadian television; and 75% of prime time drama on French language television.

His final comment was that we are an occupied country.

We all know that the Americans would never accept these kinds of numbers in their market. It is imperative that the government of this country take a very strong stand on these issues. These have implications in terms of funding for culture, technology, issues of trade liberalization, globalization, demographics and the role of the federal government. This is the central issue in terms of cultural policy in this country.

In Halifax we heard from Mr. James Lorimer of the Formac Publishing Company. He made some important observations regarding book and magazine publishing. He noted that Canadians are constantly being pushed to the edge by American products.

In book publishing there has been this slow, sort of stealthy retreat from a tough policy that was actually put in place by the Conservative government when Marcel Masse was the minister of communications. By far the biggest book publishing company in Canada is owned by Bertelsmann. The federal government has just allowed this to go ahead in the face of a policy that is supposed to prevent indirect takeovers, to stand in the way of indirect takeovers.

Mr. Lorimer continues to say that on the magazine side, we can see what the Americans are doing with respect to Bill C-55. They are again trying to keep that space open for themselves. They are trying to hold back Canadian publishing in the magazine industry.

Witness after witness spoke to us in profound and moving ways on the importance of having direct government action to protect culture and heritage in the changing world of global deal making.

In Montreal Mr. Peter Sandmark from the Independent Cinema and Video Alliance said:

I had one comment because I haven't heard mentioned the multilateral agreement on investment. Now if that were signed, these co-production treaties that require foreign crews to hire Canadian technicians and so on would be illegal if I understand correctly the interpretation of it, and therefore foreign productions could come in here and would not have to hire any Canadians and could take advantage of tax credits because they would have to be treated like nationals, same thing.

At the same meeting Mr. Robert Pilon, vice-president for public affairs for the Quebec Alliance for the Record, Performance and Video Industries, said:

If Canada gives in on this [magazine issue] today, we will all suffer. If the Americans get a victory on this issue tomorrow they will be attacking our support for the film sector, and the day after that they will be challenging us on books and our Canadian content on the radio.

These are individuals, business people, artists and all are concerned Canadians. Their message to me was not to negotiate behind closed doors. They want the federal government to protect and promote Canadian culture and heritage.

Mr. Pilon had it right, magazines are the line in the sand. We let it slip and we will all do it at our own peril.

Bill C-55 is a glimmer of hope, just a glimmer, that the Liberals will for once follow their words with some actions.

If they are serious about protecting culture they should proclaim this bill. If they want to protect our Canadian industries they should go to the WTO table and do it there. They should go back to our NAFTA partners and get the retaliation sections of the cultural carve-out removed. They should work with the other countries in favour of cultural exemptions, like the Europeans, and take on the world.

Our artists are good at taking on the world. I hope our government will follow the example.

[Highways, March 12th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the controversial Cobequid Pass toll highway in Nova Scotia has undergone another change. Now the financing has been sold to an American company controlled by a Japanese bank. As we know, over $27 million in federal government money went into the Cobequid highway, one of the Atlantic toll roads that use federal funds to turn tidy private profits.

Will the government now admit that our national highways policy is to put roads into private hands and send the profits offshore? What a disgrace. Canadians want to know what the government is going to do about it.