Maurice Dumas

[Social Housing, November 18th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, for the past six years, the federal government has invested nothing in the construction of social housing in Quebec, although the government of Quebec and social coalitions have been calling upon it to reinvest in this sector.

My question is for the Minister of Public Works. How can a government that claims it wants to fight poverty justify the fact that it is still refusing to invest any funds whatsoever into the construction of social housing?

[Ageism, November 5th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the government routinely refuses to assume its responsibilities, preferring to hide behind the courts. This time, the judge himself has thrown the ball back into parliament's court.

How will the minister defend these women, who are victims of discrimination?

[Ageism, November 5th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, a federal court judge ruled that the Old Age Security Act discriminates against women.

However, the judge refused to eliminate this discrimination, saying that this was up to the lawmakers.

My question is for the Minister of Human Resources Development. What is she waiting for to assume her responsibilities and eliminate this discrimination?

[Council For Canadian Unity, October 29th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, according to the public accounts, the Council for Canadian Unity is still the darling of the Department of Canadian Heritage.

In 1998, it received $6.2 million in funding from the department. But, as everyone knows, the Council for Canadian Unity and its research centre are nothing more than propaganda tools, the purpose of which is to see that the Liberal Party of Canada gets re-elected.

Will the Minister of Canadian Heritage re-assess her priorities, stop diverting public funds to the Liberal party's campaign fund, and use taxpayers' money for something more acceptable than propaganda?

[Supply, October 28th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask a question of my colleague from Kings—Hants, for whom I have the utmost respect.

It is the same question I asked of the Liberal member opposite. He probably was a young student in 1982 and he may not remember why Bill S-31, limiting to 10% the ownership of any company by a buying company, was introduced at that time.

The Caisse de dépôt et placement intended to get substantial ownership of Canadian Pacific. The prime minister of the day—all the members will recall that it was a certain Pierre Trudeau who did not like Quebec very much and who feared Quebec's influence in everything—had Bill S-31 passed. It was to prevent the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec from buying Canadian Pacific. I must tell you that it was not the loftiest of initiatives.

Now we see that the government, to favour its friends, to allow the Liberal Party's bagman buy Air Canada, will use this legislation to let Onex become part owner of Air Canada and Canadian Airlines.

I hope my colleague from Kings—Hants will remember that. I wonder if he would like to comment on that.

[Supply, October 28th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, if I may, I would like to put a question to my friend from the Liberal Party.

Does he remember Bill S-31, which limited ownership in a Canadian company to 10%?

It was passed, of course, to prevent the Caisse de dépôt et de placement du Québec from buying shares in Canadian Pacific. I am surprised to see that today the government is willing to set aside the act to accommodate the Liberal Party's bagman, the Onex president, and increase the 10% limit to allow Onex to take over Air Canada.

[Audiovisual Productions, October 22nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, in order to allow Telefilm Canada to regain its credibility, what it the Minister of Canadian Heritage waiting for to ask the auditor general to shed light on a case where the actions of a minority are detrimental to the whole television industry?

[Audiovisual Productions, October 22nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the media are reporting that Telefilm Canada is showing arrogance by refusing to answer the questions asked by journalists, preferring instead to refer them to the Access to Information Act.

My question is: How can the government tolerate the arrogance displayed by Telefilm Canada, which is refusing to answer questions about how it is spending public moneys?

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-55, an act respecting advertising services supplied by foreign periodical publishers.

This bill was originally introduced by the Minister of Canadian Heritage for the purpose of limiting access to Canada's advertising market to Canadian magazines only. Unfortunately, as we see, the Canadian government has given in to pressure from the United States. In effect, it has decided to open the domestic advertising market to foreign publishers by authorizing them to publish in Canada.

The Bloc Quebecois believes that by giving in to the Americans like this the federal government is giving them ammunition in their fight to reduce cultural protection measures. In fact, the Canadian government's concessions with respect to magazines are merely the latest in a series of such concessions that began the day after the Liberal government was elected in 1993.

Many in the House will remember the well-known case of Ginn Publishing and Maxwell-Macmillan. Contrary to Canadian cultural policy, cabinet authorized the handover of these Canadian publishing houses to American interests when there were Canadian publishers prepared to buy them.

The CRTC also gave in to the Americans in the case of the country music specialty channel. The Americans had threatened $1 million in reprisals if the CRTC decided to cancel the American station's licence, in accordance with its policy at the time, because a similar Canadian station was already licensed in Canada.

The objective of this CRTC policy was to counteract American broadcasting competition. After the Country Music Network affair the CRTC abandoned the policy.

In the DMX affair the minister also gave in to the Americans. In this case, we will recall, the CRTC gave a broadcasting licence to DMX although it did not meet quotas for Canadian and French language content. The entire artistic community rose up in arms over this.

It is quite obvious that the Americans are nibbling away, and successfully, at the scope of Canada's cultural policies.

We had obtained assurances from the present Minister of Canadian Heritage and from her predecessor that Bills C-103 and C-55 in their original versions would conform on all points with international trade treaty requirements. The ability of the Governments of Canada and Quebec to defend the rights of citizens has been jeopardized considerably by the federal government's errors, not on just one occasion, but two.

It is the Canadian and Quebec governments' ability to adopt cultural protection measures that is being questioned here.

The Bloc Quebecois feels that the periodicals issue is a clear demonstration of Canada's inability to defend its own culture in a bilateral and single-sector negotiation.

Quebec's culture is the focal point of the sovereignist project. Quebec must therefore be at the negotiating table for the coming millennium talks, starting next fall at Seattle, under the auspices of the World Trade Organization.

The Bloc Quebecois is opposed to this bill. It is vital, before explaining the reasons for this opposition, to speak to the procedure followed in this matter for the benefit of those watching.

The federal government simply improvised in this most important matter. Bill C-55 was intended to keep the advertising market exclusively for Canadian magazine publishers.

As usual, the bill was sent to the Senate for ratification, but there the usual procedure came to a halt.

The Minister of Canadian Heritage, the senators and the witnesses who appeared before the Senate Standing Committee on Transport and Communications debated the bill, which limited access to the advertising market to Canadian publishers only.

There was an unusual occurrence in this matter. In fact, on the last day of hearings by the Senate committee, the Minister of Canadian Heritage tabled amendments to reflect the agreement she had negotiated with the Americans. The result: the Liberal majority passed Bill C-55 in its amended form, which now gives foreign publishers access to the domestic advertising market.

Today, before this House, the government is asking us to ratify its legislation. Clearly, no committee was in a position to evaluate the impact of the amendments the minister made to the bill. No witness was heard on these amendments, which give foreign publishers access to Canada's advertising market.

It is fairly unusual, indeed surprising, to have the Minister of Canadian Heritage table these amendments in the Senate. The House of Commons has always been the place for Quebecers and Canadians to debate legislation. The members comply with the rules. How did the Minister of Canadian Heritage dare to circumvent these rules and the spirit of this House?

I cannot support this bill when I have not heard witnesses speak to the measures the government brought to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. This is an unprecedented and unacceptable improvisation on its part. It would be more reassuring if the improvisation were left to the Ligue nationale d'improvisation, a Quebec cultural invention that enjoys worldwide success.

Order must be established so that the government will comply with the rules of the House of Commons. Cultural legislation will have a bearing on Quebec and Canada's cultural future.

The main purpose of the bill was to limit advertising revenue to Canadian magazine publishers only. This measure was introduced last October in place of Bill C-103, which the World Trade Organization considered incompatible with Canada's international commitments proposed by the previous Liberal government.

It is important to remember that, at the time, the government told anyone who would listen that its bill was consistent with our international commitments. Unfortunately, that was not the case. The federal government was proven very wrong indeed.

The Minister of Canadian Heritage said that the original bill was consistent with the government's commitments. She claimed that it was still consistent with WTO and NAFTA rules. Why did the minister decide to give in and open the publishing market to foreign magazines?

A number of questions come to mind. Did she have doubts about her ability to convince a NAFTA dispute tribunal? If so, why did she then introduce Bill C-55 in its original format? And, if she was certain of winning, why did she cave in?

The bill that has come back to us from the Senate is very different from the one it received. It unfortunately opens the door to foreign publishers interested in the domestic advertising market. Foreign publishers who decide to publish their magazines in Canada, by recycling editorial content, will be able to sell up to 18% of their advertising space to Canadian advertisers.

The bill then allows U.S. publishers to set up shop in Canada, provided their investment application is approved by the Minister of Canadian Heritage. If they publish 50% or more Canadian content, these U.S. publishers, like Canadian magazine publishers, will be able to grant Canadian advertisers tax breaks.

The amendments water down the rules limiting foreign ownership in the magazine industry. Now a Canadian magazine could be 49% foreign owned.

Representatives of the Magazine Association of Canada have expressed their disappointment with this agreement between Canada and the United States. They expressed it as follows, and I quote “In our opinion, the agreement puts the magazine industry at risk by allowing American magazines to take over an unacceptable proportion of the Canadian advertising services market through unfairly lowered advertising rates”.

These concessions are unacceptable. The Bloc Quebecois cannot support the bill.

In an interview given to the Globe and Mail —and I repeat the quote given by my colleague from the Reform Party—François de Gaspé Beaubien said that the United States has 19 women's magazines, containing 19,000 pages of advertising. If these foreign publishers sold 18% of their magazine pages in Canada, they could sell 3,400 pages.

The principal Canadian magazines for women, however, contain a total of 4,800 pages of advertising. That means that 18% of the pages set aside for advertising by the United States represent 63% of the pages of advertising in Canadian magazines.

The threat is serious. Some have estimated that the Americans could go after some 50% of all advertising revenues in Canada, approximately $300 million, with the authorization given them to sell 18% of their advertising pages to Canadian advertisers.

The Bloc would like to know what resources will be allocated to administer the new proposed rules.

At this point we know very little of the support measures. What form will they take? How much money will be spent on them? Where will this money come from? Will programs be set or proportional to the loss incurred by the Canadian publishers? Will they be adaptable if, in the coming decade, the proportion of revenues taken away from Canadian publishers by foreign publishers turns out to be greater than expected? Will there be one office responsible for ensuring that foreign publishers in fact meet their quotas? Will there be resources allocated to ensure that foreign publishers authorized to set up in Canada meet the conditions for setting up on the Canadian market, namely that of publishing over 50% of Canadian editorial content?

However, quite apart from the publishing industry, the minister, in negotiating this agreement with the Americans, though she was convinced she was in compliance with all the international trade agreements, simply reinforced the Americans' habit of challenging our existing and future cultural measures.

How, then, will the Americans react the next time a government, generally the Government of Canada or Quebec, takes some step to protect the development of its culture when we have already backed down in one area in which we felt we were right? Do the Americans just have to raise their voices a bit to scare us, to make us backtrack, to make us not apply our cultural measures?

Multilateral and multisectorial negotiations will be starting this fall, under the auspices of the World Trade Organization, in Seattle. If Canada has given in on such an important issue, what will it do in the WTO negotiations?

Incidentally, we no longer know what the government's position will be on the place culture will take in international trade agreements. Does Canada favour a general cultural exception clause, defined by us, as it did at the time of the MAI? Or does it intend to initiate negotiations on culture in some context other than the WTO?

The Bloc Quebecois is concerned. We would like to see Quebecers at the international negotiating tables representing our interests.

We are seriously wondering, if Canada is not capable of defending its own cultural measures, what will become of ours, particularly our Charte de la langue française?

Quebec must be at the WTO negotiating table. This is only common sense.

[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, June 7th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I would have liked to hear what the Prime Minister had to say.

By offering an accommodating ruling in the Heenan case, the ethics counsellor loses a lot of credibility. Does the Prime Minister realize that his own defence in the Auberge Grand-Mère case is consequently seriously weakened, involving as it does the judgment of this same ethics counsellor?