Blaine Calkins

[Questions on the Order Paper, January 27th, 2020]

With regard to Destination Canada, excluding general tourism promotion: what measures, if any, is the agency taking to specifically promote Canada as a hunting, angling, and outfitting destination?

[Firearms, December 10th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, many of my constituents are farmers, hunters and sport shooters. They are licensed, law-abiding firearms owners who have invested in these tools as an integral part of their lives. They are also among the most heavily vetted people in the country. Every day, the name of each licensed firearms owner is checked against the police database to make sure they have not committed a crime, yet these are the same people whom the Liberal government is targeting with its forced confiscation of lawfully owned property.

The Liberals are not making life miserable for gangsters, smugglers and violent criminals but instead are blaming law-abiding Canadians who happen to own firearms as part of their way of life. This is outrageous. Only in Liberal lefty la-la land does the government focus on turning law-abiding citizens into criminals, instead of turning criminals into law-abiding citizens.

I encourage all Canadians to speak out against this unconscionable government overreach and encourage the Liberal government to focus on actual measures that will reduce crime. To law-abiding gun owners, the Conservatives will continue—

[Criminal Code, June 14th, 2019]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-458, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (sentencing principles – remote emergency medical or police services).

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Red Deer—Mountain View for seconding my bill.

My bill seeks to amend the Criminal Code by providing for changes that evidence that an offence was directed at a person or property that was vulnerable because of the remoteness from emergency or medical or police services be a factor when considering sentencing. Rural Canadians are particularly vulnerable right now. Statistics Canada, police reports, all the information points to the fact that rural Canadians are specifically being targeted by criminals.

If my bill is passed it would ensure that criminals will face longer times in jail for purposely targeting rural areas, contrary to Bill C-75, which would just speed up the revolving door, which is a hot button issue in my riding and for all rural Canadians, many of whom are tired of being repeat victims.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Natural Resources, June 14th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, Alberta has been shown nothing but disdain from the Liberal government for the last three and a half years. The Liberals continue their assault on the energy sector. Last night they shut down debate on Bill C-69, which has devastated many of my constituents.

People have lost their businesses, their jobs and their homes. They have lost hope. Some have even taken their own lives.

When everyone is telling the environment minister that her plan is a disaster, she chooses to ignore this advice. Everyone has been repeating it so long and saying it so loud. Why will she not listen?

[Fisheries Act, June 14th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I am very saddened to hear the rhetoric around fisheries that I have heard in this debate. Nothing has happened that is catastrophic in the world of fisheries as a result of the changes that were made to the Fisheries Act in 2012. Nobody anywhere in this country can point to a single incident of anything directly related to the changes in that bill. Everybody wanted those changes. Counties wanted them and even fisheries officers wanted those changes so that they could more effectively enforce the law.

I remember issues where farmers whose fields were flooded actually drained their fields and were charged because the old language in the act interpreted a flooded field as a fisheries habitat, even though it was only flooded for a couple of days. People faced ridiculous charges for things like that. There is nothing actually done for fish by changing the legislation in a way that actually prevents restoration and habitat projects from going ahead.

What we actually need are amendments that will do things like habitat banking which, for some reason, the government does not want to do anything about by increasing spawning channels. Rather than stopping all activity, we should enhance things, do offsets and increase the productivity of the natural environment. That is not done by changing legislation that gets in the way of all of these things.

The continually stumbling and bumbling of the left-hand side arguments that somehow we need legislation that pretends humans do not exist in the world is what is actually causing the environmental degradation that we have right now. We need enhancement. We need the ability to intervene and to work hard on behalf of fisheries. These changes are not doing it.

[Carbon Pricing, June 11th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are getting hosed at the pumps, no thanks to this Prime Minister. Recently the Canadian press reported that rebates from the Liberal carbon tax are much lower across the country than had been promised. Canadians are feeling the increased costs on everyday essentials such as groceries, home heating and gasoline. That is a far cry from the Liberal leader's claim that eight out of 10 families will get more money back than they pay into his scheme.

Between all the ums and ahs and the confusing world of water bottles, Canadians are realizing they cannot believe anything this Liberal Prime Minister says. The proof is in the pudding with his “Do as I say, not as I do” attitude, as he jets around the world on more taxpayer-funded vacations, with zero regard to his carbon emissions.

What he says and what he does never match. It is hardly a surprise that the Liberals' carbon-tax rebates are much lower than expected. Much like the Liberal leader, they are not as advertised.

[Ending the Captivity of Whales and Dolphins Act, June 10th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, all I am asking for is the same respect I granted the speakers from other political parties while I sat and listened to them.

The problem, as I and the people I represent see it, is with the Criminal Code amendments as well as the follow-through and execution of this piece of legislation, which creates a framework and structure whereby anybody can add onto that by simply adding a comma into the legislation and saying that horses can no longer be kept or used for breeding or for purposes of entertainment. I am not saying that is going to happen, but the structure is actually there in the legislation to do it. One has to ask the question why this would need to be done. Why do we need this sledgehammer in legislation to effect the change we are looking for?

We are known by the company we keep. If we look at the organizations that are publicly and vocally expressing support for this bill, we see they call for the end of things like rodeos, fishing, eating animals and raising animals on a farm. These organizations, like Animal Justice and some SPCAs, call for these kinds of things. This is the company that this piece of legislation is keeping.

As I said, I am actually okay with it. I understand the science behind cetaceans and that not all cetaceans do well in captivity, but we also have to be logical. We have to think with our heads too about whether this is the right way to go. I will give an example. Dr. Laura Graham, who has a Ph.D., testified at committee and said there is no actual definition of cruel anywhere in this bill. As I said, it would create new definitions. For the very first time, it would make it illegal and criminalize the breeding of animals. This is something that is a very dangerous precedent for anybody involved in animal husbandry or any of these industries.

Dr. Laura Graham says that the definition of cruel is not anywhere in this bill, and as a scientist, she finds the lack of objective assessment troubling. She has also observed that the people pushing this bill are dismissing the importance of zoos and aquariums in educating the public and eliciting a concern for conservation and saving the planet.

As a matter of fact, she highlighted a very specific case about Vaquita dolphins down in the Gulf of Mexico, of which there are about 10 left; that is all that is left. If we were to use the facilities in Vancouver, Marineland and various SeaWorld installations as something other than entertainment, but rather as a conservation tool, through captive breeding programs we could potentially some day get to the point where we could release a viable population of Vaquita dolphins back into the wild.

I will get back to Dr. Graham in a second. When I was talking to Senator Sinclair at committee, I asked him about this notion of going to a national park, for example. Where I live in Alberta, there is a park called Elk Island National Park, which is not the typical national park that people think of when they go to national parks in their neighbourhoods. Elk Island National Park is a completely fenced-in enclosure. It is a captive facility for the purpose of breeding and population enhancement. People buy a park pass and go in there for the purpose of seeing that wildlife. They may have other purposes, but make no doubt about it, they go there to see the elk and the bison. There has just been a relatively successful, depending on the standards one wants to measure it by, reintroduction of bison into Yukon. There has been reintroduction of bison into Banff National Park, which would not have happened without the captive facility and the breeding program that went with it to re-establish this population.

The whole argument behind getting rid of cetacean captivity is an emotional one. I get it. Look, I have those same convictions when I look at animals in captivity as well. As a guy who goes hunting and fishing and sees all kinds of things in the wild, I get those same heartstring tugs that everybody else gets. I am not some cold and cruel individual. I get the arguments. However, as a conservationist, I also know that we need to make use of every tool available to us in order to help reintroduce wildlife lost through bad practices or mismanagement. Not everybody in the world does things as well as Canada, and we do not do some things all that well either.

However, we have an opportunity to ask ourselves if this bill is actually going to do more harm than good in the long run. It is the same emotional tug that wants us to end the captivity of whales and dolphins that never would have created these facilities in the first place. The City of Vancouver made the choice to end cetacean captivity for the purposes of entertainment without needing this big piece of legislation to do it, yet that facility is still used for rescue and rehabilitation of cetaceans.

It could just as easily use that facility to save a population of belugas, such as the population of belugas in the St. Lawrence Seaway. We know from the experience at Marineland that belugas are actually breeding quite well there. This legislation would be for the express purpose of making that breeding impossible or illegal, actually to the point that someone could go to jail for it. What is that going to do? It is going to split up that family pod at Marineland. It is going to separate the males from the females, and it is going to create the exact same issue that others are arguing captivity is causing in the first place. It is going to create divisiveness and stress in those families.

We know that belugas in captivity are quite successful at breeding. They have a very high success rate. They have a very high birth rate and a very high survival rate. We have populations of belugas right now in the world that are in trouble. If we do not get the environmental conditions right in nature, in the wild, before those populations are actually gone for good, we would have an opportunity to save those genetics. We could actually use the revenue from letting people come and watch them to help the science and research and help that captive breeding program do more good than harm in this particular case.

That is what I am asking my friends in the House to consider. Yes, it is going to be very popular to vote in favour of this bill. We have Free Willy and Blackfish and others movies that create the desire to do what we think is right.

Dr. Laura Graham talked about Dr. Jane Goodall. She had the same feeling about keeping chimpanzees in captivity, and then she changed her mind. As the habitat was encroaching on the natural range of these chimpanzees, as she saw how zoos and other captive facilities were treating these animals and as research and knowledge expanded, she changed her mind. I am simply asking my colleagues to at least consider that before passing this flawed legislation.

[Ending the Captivity of Whales and Dolphins Act, June 10th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that I rise today to speak to Bill S-203, which on its surface seems to be popular and appeals to the emotional drives behind it. Like many Canadians, I have gone and seen cetaceans in captivity at places like SeaWorld and the Vancouver Aquarium; and at places like Marineland, where personally I have never been. I just want to put this in context.

This bill is designed to shut down one business in Canada. There is only one business in Canada actively pursuing or using cetaceans right now for the purpose of entertainment. That is what I want to talk about in this bill.

I am not against the notion that, if Canadians are by and large against having cetaceans in captivity, we can have that conversation. Of course we can have that conversation. It is the approach that this piece of legislation is taking that concerns me. It concerns me because I am a hunter and an angler. I am a guy who grew up on a farm and used animals every day at every stage and walk in my life. I am a guy who represents two areas of my constituency. One area hosts the Ponoka Stampede and one area hosts the Canadian Finals Rodeo in Red Deer.

I am also a conservationist. I have a zoology degree. I am pretty sure the guys who are laughing at me right now probably do not. I am going to ask that they just sit and think about this for one second. Many scientists appeared before the committee in the Senate and the committee in the House of Commons. They were people with not just bachelor of science degrees in zoology but with Ph.D.s. They were very concerned by the precedent that this piece of legislation would set. I asked the question in the committee whether we could end cetacean captivity in Canada in a simpler way, such as by just ending the permits of this particular business. We could do that by making a small change to the Fisheries Act and to the plant and animal transfer act.

However, this bill would change three things. It would change the Criminal Code of Canada and would do some interesting things. The bill is not about how humans handle animals or about the welfare or treatment of animals in people's care. The bill would, for the first time ever, make it a criminal act in Canada to keep an animal in captivity. That is the first time in our legislation anywhere that having an animal in captivity would be considered an illegal act. It would be illegal in the Criminal Code of Canada to breed animals, and these particular cetaceans—

[Accessible Canada Act, May 28th, 2019]

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the way you have just adjudicated and comported yourself in this House. It was admirable, unlike some of the behaviour we have seen. It should not have come to that.

I want to let my colleague from Spadina—Fort York know that there is a young gentleman from the Maskwacis area in my riding who is deaf. He came to me seeking my help and guidance some time ago. The translator he was provided with understands the dialect and intonations. Even in sign language, much like in English, French or other languages, there are dialects or differences. He had an understanding with his provided interpreter, but when he applied to go to school to get a journeyman welder certificate, the college wanted to use a different service provider to provide interpretative services, who did not have the same dialect, and that was creating issues when it came to the ability of the student to understand in the terms and conditions that he was used to.

Is there anything in the legislation or were there any amendments to this bill, either at the House stage or at the Senate stage, that could have or should have been taken into consideration so that a constituent such as mine would have been able to use the interpreter he wanted for his educational purposes?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Return, May 17th, 2019]

With regard to the establishment of an Interim Management Advisory Board for the RCMP: (a) who is responsible for selecting board members; (b) what is the criteria for board membership; (c) when will the board members be selected; and (d) who has been selected for the board to date?