Bruce Hyer

[Aboriginal Healing Foundation, March 30th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad of the opportunity tonight to speak in support of this very important program. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation provides resources that promote reconciliation. It encourages aboriginal people both individually and together with their communities to build and reinforce sustainable healing processes that address the legacy of physical, sexual, mental and cultural abuse in the residential school system, including intergenerational impacts.

In June 2008 the government stood in the House to formally apologize to former students of the residential school system. The Prime Minister acknowledged that policies of assimilation were wrong and “caused great harm, and has no place in our country”. Meaningful apologies are followed by concrete action. Actions that honour the concept of reconciliation with a focus on healing, building a sense of well-being and moving toward a stronger future are certainly called for in the wake of the residential school legacy.

It is clear that discontinuing this funding is in direct contradiction to the values that inspired that national apology. As we know, the intergenerational impact of assimilation and the residential school system are multi-layered and difficult to face. Violence, suicide, depression, increased probability of facing poverty, erasure of traditional parenting skills and loss of native language are just a few of the negative consequences of the institutional abuses suffered by aboriginal people throughout Canada.

Funding provided by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation directly and effectively addresses some of the intergenerational impacts of the injustices faced by those who attended residential schools. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation currently supports 134 programs that directly address the aftermath caused by the residential school system. This funding has helped organizations and communities offer restoration initiatives that support healing and well-being.

One such example in Thunder Bay—Superior North, the riding I have the honour to serve, is that of Gull Bay First Nation. This community is an example of strength and courage. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation has funded a program called the Gull Bay First Nation healing program. It increases access to counselling, talking circles using traditional practices, information on abuse and other intergenerational impacts experienced by residential school survivors and their descendants.

The benefits of the healing program are real and they are pragmatic. Speaking with Chief Wilfred King of Gull Bay First Nation, it is abundantly clear that the funding from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation has helped elders from his community reconcile their relationship with Canada. Chief King reports, “This is an excellent program that has met the needs of elders that were directly impacted by the legacy of the residential schools—this program has started to bridge the gap between elders and the intergenerational impact of the residential school system”.

Sixty individuals in that community alone have directly benefited over the last 12 months, but the overall effect has been even further reaching. The services made possible through this funding have helped elders who left Gull bay reconnect with their home community, a central aspect of supporting culture and maintaining traditions.

The same is true in many first nations and other communities across my region such as members of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation. In the neighbouring riding of Kenora, the first nations and communities of Lac Seul, Mishkeegogamang, Sandy Lake, Wapekeka, Cat Lake, North Caribou Lake, Sachigo Lake, Slate Falls and Bearskin Lake will all be negatively impacted. They find the support of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation absolutely crucial.

I will be watching with interest to see if the hon. member for Kenora fights to continue funding for these vital programs in his riding. I am disappointed he is not here for the emergency debate tonight. Not only should this funding be preserved, but it could be expanded to other communities who need it across northwestern Ontario. We have many first nations reserves and communities in Thunder Bay—Superior North and if any of them, including—

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, March 30th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I have focused primarily on the ecosystems and the environment in my talk because many of my fellow NDP members have done a very effective job of talking about the human rights issue. I was struck by what one of the members of my colleague's party said about an hour ago. If I understood him correctly, he commented that we were initiating trade with a country that would not even come close to meeting the terms of our own Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It really resonated with me.

A simple criterion and one of our main criterion for how we deal with trade issues in other countries should be this. Does that country meet even close to the Canadian standard in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms that protects our rights? How can we be trading with countries that treat either the environment or humans less well than we do ourselves?

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, March 30th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, before I had this career in the House of Commons one of my past careers was to be involved in agriculture and pesticides.

I have watched a disturbing trend over many decades. We are displacing aboriginal hunters and gatherers and aboriginal and mestizo farmers who have been using a Sweden kind of agriculture in these very sensitive soils and ecosystems throughout the tropical rain forests in the world. It is the only kind of agriculture which is sustainable in the long term. We cannot go to intensive agribusinesses as we have in other places and use those in tropical soils without disastrous results, not only on the short-term biodiversity but on the long-term productivity of those rain forest ecosystems.

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, March 30th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, we must protect our forests around the world. We know that every acre, hectare, square kilometre or mile of forest is going to be increasingly precious and hanging on to the carbon sinks that most of us and most scientists would agree we need to do if we are to have any hope of preventing dangerous climate change.

Not only are there huge carbon sinks in this area in Colombia, they are also one of the richest storehouses of biodiversity on the planet. The losses will be priceless not just in terms of biodiversity but in the products and pharmaceuticals that we will need in future decades to help our sick and unhealthy stay alive.

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, March 30th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to the government's proposed legislation on a free trade deal between Canada and Colombia.

Despite what we hear repeatedly from the other side, the NDP is not against trade. We are not against fair trade. We are not against good trade. In fact, we are all for it, but it has to be fair and it has to be sustainable. This trade deal is not that.

This is a troubled bill. There are many problems with it. I will not go into them all. My colleagues have done a good job in talking about such concerns as workers, labour abuses, human rights and outright murders in Colombia, just to mention a few. One of the things I want to talk about is how this deal offers no real protection for the environment.

As we know, Colombia is one of the countries in South America that is especially blessed in parts of the country with productive rainforests, especially in the southeastern lowlands near the Amazon.

Tropical rainforests are disappearing from the face of the globe. Around the world more than 32,000 hectares per day are being cut down. Rainforests are down to only 5% of the world's land surface presently, and much of this remaining area has been impacted by human activities and no longer retains its full original and rich biodiversity. Worse, rainforests are so rich in plant and animal life that we do not even know most of what we are losing, such as countless undiscovered species, renewable botanical and animal resources, and a pharmacopoeia of potential new drugs.

Aside from species extinction, deforestation means that we are losing something else: the lungs of our planet and one of the world's great carbon sinks. It is not just the oxygen they produce, it is also the carbon they store in biomass. When forests are destroyed, the carbon they contain is released into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide, which most of us realize leads to a greater probability of dangerous climate change.

Much of the rainforest in Colombia is currently being slashed and burned. Why? Because of rapidly expanding agribusiness plantations for fruit and other crops.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has said that over the last 20 years over four million Colombians have been forcefully displaced by plantation companies and paramilitaries in order to take the land and destroy the forest for new agri-business agriculture. In 2007 alone there were more than 300,000 refugees, mostly Afro-Colombians and indigenous communities.

Is that the type of production we want to help expand and accelerate with a flawed free trade deal? As the evidence submitted to the Standing Committee on International Trade in 2008 showed, this trade deal is primarily centred on agribusiness-type agriculture.

This deal offers no protection whatsoever for the environment. There is no effective method of enforcement. The only thing in it is a complaint mechanism, which would be simply to file a complaint with a bureaucrat with no independent review and no rigorous analysis.

The environmental playing field is totally uneven with this deal. Expert witnesses before the international trade committee confirmed the weaknesses of the environmental provisions side agreements. The standards for environmental protection are lower than the already very weak statutes of NAFTA.

There are no effective proactive measures for environmental monitoring or for preventive enforcement. The lackluster enforcement of environmental laws in Colombia would only make this situation even worse.

If that is not bad enough, it goes even further.

This deal is exporting NAFTA's chapter 11 mistakes, which we in northern Ontario suffer daily, to new countries. Chapter 11 allows multinational corporations to sue governments when actions taken have impacted their bottom lines, actions like passing laws to protect the environment or biodiversity.

Instead of helping to encourage conservation of South America's valuable rainforest, we will be tying their hands. As soon as they try, if they ever try, to pass conservation legislation that may affect the profits of investors, they will open themselves up to a tidal wave of litigation and liability. Talk about putting profits before people, and profits before the planet.

From an environmental point of view, the trade deal with Colombia is very troubling. It must be renegotiated to take into account environmental and human rights considerations, among others.

Sure, there is some lip service paid to accountability on human rights. The Liberals, the Conservatives and the Uribe government have agreed to produce and table in both Parliaments an annual report on the human rights situation in Colombia and amend the deal. However, in effect, the Colombian government will be forced to police itself, the very same government associated with various right-wing paramilitaries to start with. This amendment is like putting lipstick and a dress on a pig so the Liberals can feel better about taking Bill C-2 to the prom.

There is nothing in the amendment about the rules of trade, which will be the underlying cause of environmental problems, and no clear mechanism for the ongoing monitoring of the effects of free trade, for instance investment provisions, on the human rights of the population as well as on the environment.

I am not sure why the Liberals seem to be supporting this bad trade deal. They were opposed to it in 2008. The only things that have changed since then are the Liberal critic for this went down to Colombia to get a small but unfortunately ineffective amendment to this bad trade deal. And the environment as an issue seems to have dropped off the back of their platform in general. It is interesting that they would do such an about-face on human rights and the environment for the sake of a relatively minor trade deal.

Colombia ranks fairly low on the market for Canadian exports out of Latin America and the Caribbean and that has actually been falling in comparison to our trade with other countries in the region. The majority of Canadian investment in Colombia is in the mining sector. Perhaps that is really what this trade deal is about, as the previous member has pointed out.

Gauri Sreenivasan of the Canadian Council for International Cooperation said:

Beyond that issue [of free trade], in Colombia, Canadian oil and mining companies are active in some of the most conflict-ridden zones of the country, even beyond the issue of royalties. These zones are characterized by high levels of military and paramilitary control. The overlap between the two is sobering. Colombian regions that are rich in minerals and oils have been marked by violence. They are the source of 87% of forced displacements, 82% of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, and 83% of assassinations of trade union leaders in the country.

I do not see how this flawed trade deal will improve the situation. In fact, it seems to me it will make it worse. Certainly all human rights organizations agree that it will.

The Conservative government is negotiating a number of bilateral trade deals like this one. Its intention seems to be to hand over as much oversight and responsibility over multinational companies as possible under the guise of free trade, and there is little to no accountability. This is totally unacceptable as a basis for trade deals in general. It is especially unacceptable in the context of Colombia, the country with just about the worst human rights record in all of South America and one with so much biodiversity and tropical rainforest at stake. The United States would not even agree to a trade deal with Colombia.

This debate is about a lot more than just trade. It is about our values as a country. The government is asking us to go against our basic fundamental values as Canadians to uphold basic human rights and to conserve the planet's natural heritage for the sake of investment profits.

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, March 30th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member seems to have significant interest in the aspect of this free trade agreement that is related to investor confidence, fairness between countries and fairness for Canadian investors.

I am a small-business person myself and have been for decades. I am a Spanish speaker, and I am the kind of potential investor who would be interested in investing in a Colombia that is fair and sustainable, and I could capitalize on the biodiversity and interesting cultures there.

I would ask whether the hon. member has considered that the shift from traditional agriculture and traditional cultures and the rainforest to large plantations by large multinationals would be the kind of concern he would have, as we shift and put pressure upon those economies.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, March 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, a partial answer is that these are very small steps toward a lofty goal. Unfortunately, as the hon. member knows, the government of former Prime Minister Paul Martin hoisted $57 billion in moneys contributed by workers and corporations across Canada and moved it into general revenues to appear to balance the budget, and appeared to be heroes in doing so.

My party and I are quite concerned when we look at the projections over the next four years, particularly the new worker tax to be imposed on companies and workers across Canada, which will kill jobs and productivity and is the worst possible investment in our GDP

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, March 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, enhancing the value-added products that our forestry industry can produce would not only sequester carbon and create jobs, but also think about what we could be doing right now in places like Haiti if we had ready, resting on the docks of Thunder Bay and the docks of other timber-producing countries, prefab housing for places around the world that suffer natural disasters.

We would come closer to meeting our target of 0.7% of our gross domestic product for aid to foreign countries, create jobs, sequester carbon and see our Canadian flag once again being greeted and welcomed around the world, instead of the disrepair into which it has fallen over the last four years.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, March 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member knows, under Conservative and Liberal governments, for decades we have not fixed the antiquated bankruptcy laws in Canada. It is high time that the House passes the kind of legislation that has been put forward by NDP members again and again, which is to pay workers first in the case of failures by companies rather than big banks and other creditors.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, March 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, let us talk about employment insurance. According to the government's own figures, every dollar that is invested in EI, $1.70 is sparked in economic activity, so why is so little being done to fix EI?

The government has so far ignored the NDP motion passed last year in this very House to make EI eligibility fairer and end the two-week waiting period. As a result, most of the unemployed in northern Ontario and across Canada still do not qualify for the employment insurance they paid for.

Much worse, the government is hiking EI premiums after this year. This is just a tax on work by another name. This will take $19 billion right out of the pockets of workers and employers alike. It is a job killer and it is a killer of gross domestic product.

I would ask the government to heed what the New Democrats have been asking for, to extend the freeze on EI premium hikes until the $57 billion historical debt, some would call it theft, owed to employers and workers has been paid back. It is Canadians' money paid into EI. They have already paid and paid, and they should not need to suffer huge payroll tax hikes as well.

Let us talk about pensions. With so many Canadians still out of work and seniors worried about their financial security, the pension crisis requires urgent action by the government. Here again it has failed to respond. Yes, there was a seniors day announced, and a re-announcement of plans for public consultations on pensions, which went nowhere, but that is it. There was nothing to help workers at AbitibiBowater, who had their pensions on the line. There was nothing to help workers when their companies went under.

The government could have taken up NDP ideas such as expanding the CPP and increasing the guaranteed income supplement to lift seniors out of poverty, but it has not.

The Canadian Association of Retired Persons said:

In the end all CARP members got from this budget are some nice words and the promise of more consultation.

Let us talk about fair taxation, or maybe we should call it unfair taxation. Federal spending goes up by $22 billion this year, to a record $280 billion. This will be a record deficit of $58 billion. The government is dreaming in Technicolor about its deficit reduction estimates, as the Parliamentary Budget Officer and many economists have indicated.

This is a tax and spend government if there ever was one. The government is engineering a huge tax shift from large corporations onto the middle class, onto low income earners, onto workers, and onto small corporations. Workers and employers will be saddled with $19 billion in payroll tax hikes and the government is still insisting that Ontarians and British Columbians pay for the harmonized sales tax, which was in this budget. It shifts the tax burden right onto the people who can afford it the least.

While it is taxing Canadians, the government is actually bragging about having the lowest corporate tax rate in the western world, and going lower as indicated on page 48 of the budget, chart 3.1.1. It is already roughly half that of the United States. Slightly lower might make a little sense, but why the huge difference? It is a blatant corporate tax grab, something we cannot afford right now, especially given the last 10 years, where the figures show clearly that tax cuts to big corporations have not resulted in investments or jobs, and the money has flowed to the United States or tax shelters in the Caribbean.

The government's own figures show that for every dollar of expenditure on tax cuts to big corporations, the good economic multipliers that provide stimulus are infrastructure, which sparks $1.60 in GDP growth per dollar; housing, which yields $1.50 per dollar; and spending a loonie on the unemployed gives $1.70 back. The bad investments for each buck are EI premiums at 60¢ on the dollar spent and broad corporate tax cuts, which the government's own figures show bring back only 10¢ to 30¢ to domestic growth, and the other money flows out, as per a table on page 281.

More numbers highlight how much of a tax shift the government is planning quite deliberately. Over the next four years, personal tax revenues are expected to increase by $42 billion, plus $8 billion more coming from GST. That is an increase of $50 billion from citizens versus only $10 billion from corporate taxes, five times the tax increase over the next four years from citizens as opposed to large corporations.

Canadians are concerned about the environment and there was little in this budget for the environment, except talk and inactivity. We have no national standards for drinking water quality. Canadians were expecting to see real action by the government. Instead, what they got were distractions and bafflegab. Instead of real vision and leadership, they got tinkering with the words to O Canada.