Charlie Angus

[Agricultural Growth Act, November 19th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, as always, it is a great honour to stand up in the House to speak on this agricultural issue, in this case Bill C-18 and the question of plant breeders' rights. It is a great honour for me as well, because I represent a very large agricultural region in the Timiskaming and Timmins—James Bay region.

What we have seen over the last number of years through the boom-bust economy of forestry and mining is a growing strength in northern agriculture. In the southern part of my riding, known as the little clay belt, extending down through Témiscaming, Quebec, and over into northern Ontario, there is now a $91 million a year direct agriculture business with another $111 million in spinoffs for support organizations, dealers, and milk organizations in our area. There are over 1,000 people now directly involved in agriculture just in the Timiskaming region. Therefore, these issues are important to them.

Moreover, a very interesting transformation in northern agriculture has been happening over the last 25 years in areas that had opened up to development back at the turn of the last century. People who had homesteaded had found out that it was very hard and brutal work, and because of the climate it was simply not possible to maintain farming over any period of time. Therefore, in the so-called upper northern clay belt, we did have an incredible number of farmlands cleared, but people just could not make a go of it and much of that land was beginning to go back to dogwood and poplar. However, we are now seeing a new move back into agricultural regions in the upper part of Timiskaming and Timmins—James Bay, Val Gagné, Black River-Matheson up toward Cochrane.

A number of factors have made this possible. Certainly a changing climate has affected the north, although I would say this past year we did have a very erratic year that was very troubling for farmers. From putting tile drainage in northern fields we have seen an increased ability to get a crop off the field more quickly and in a more sustainable way, which makes lands that were less profitable before, or less possible for farming, now able to support farms.

One of the other factors is that we have seen new breeds of plant varieties that work in the north. This is testament to research and development. There is now an ability to grow soybeans and grains, with canola in particular being a big market for producers in our region, as well as corn, something that no one had ever thought possible but in which we are now having large growth.

At the same time there has been a whole change in how people perceive agriculture in the north. Back in the day we had many small local dairies, because we could not transport food very long distances, but there has been a move toward bigger agriculture. There is a belief that big agriculture is the only way to go, but we have seen in the last number of years smaller producers starting to create niche markets, the organic producers, the people producing specialty foods that people want.

In terms of balance and what really cuts to the heart of Bill C-18, as much as we want to have innovative farming and to make sure that we are supporting research and innovation on the new breeds and varieties that make it possible to expand agriculture in a world where we need to be able to build our food supply, we also have to take into account the fact that consumers are making very clear choices and want to be heard in the choices they are making about the food supply, food security, and the food market.

It is not good enough simply to say that big is the only way. We now see in our areas the local farmers' markets. People are wanting to buy local. They want to know where their food is from. They are willing to pay more for meats they know do not have a heavy hormone treatment. They want to know what they put on their plate. This is not the whole food market but represents a growing segment of the population. Last year in Timmins, we saw for the first time a march against Monsanto due to a concern about very large corporate interests and what role they are playing. These citizens are saying they want to be part of the decision-making, they want to have choice when they buy, and they want to know what is in GMOs.

The GMO issue is certainly very complex, and we cannot treat the public as though they should be left out of it. This is a right they have. People are raising their voices about the use of neonicotinoids as pesticides because of the clear damage that is being done to bee populations.

This bill is very important in making sure that balance is maintained, but the problem with Bill C-18 is that it is yet another omnibus bill. A whole manner of regulatory changes in agriculture were put in this bill. Some of them are long-standing and some are very much needed, but in some areas the government just did not get the mix right. The most striking example is the issue of implementing UPOV '91 and balancing the rights of the corporate breeders that are creating the new varieties. The royalties they receive will certainly be protected very well under this regime.

Coming from the artistic community, we see that the government has made no effort to ensure that artists ever get paid for their intellectual property, but very large corporate interests are being paid.

There is no problem with making sure that people are paid for their research and development. This is what drives the economy and drives development, and Canada needs to keep its own in the world. However, there is also the question of balance in terms of the small players who want to have more traditional agriculture. These are not hobby farms anymore; these are people who have a direct right to be heard, and the issue of long-standing traditions and rights that people had for saving and reusing seeds is a big question. We have seen corporate interests attempting to go after these traditional rights in India and in other jurisdictions in the third world.

New Democrats were trying to find a balance and put forward 16 amendments to fine-tune the language. Some of this language is about protecting farmers from needless litigation, an issue that was raised by the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. It wanted to make sure that producers were not going to be sued, as we have seen happening in the United States, for claims of patent infringement with respect to the natural accidental spreading of patented plant genetic materials.

Corporations cannot say that if they put genetic materials in seeds, the seeds will not propagate elsewhere. They cannot make that claim. Farmers are worried that if they use patented genetic seeds, they can then be charged with infringement if these seeds accidentally start to move elsewhere. New Democrats clarified the language on this aspect so there would be no unnecessary litigation against farmers. That was a big issue.

One of the other things that was a real concern raised by many people was the issue of protecting farmers' privilege. This bill would take decisions on the protection for farmers' traditional rights out of the legislation and put them into the hands of the minister. New Democrats do not believe that is accountable. Making sure there is some mechanism for oversight is about fairness. The fact is that the minister could simply rewrite the regulations himself and farmers would have to live with them. That is not an accountable system.

These are reasonable amendments. Unfortunately, there is a culture within the government that any attempt to improve a bill is seen as a dire threat, so it turned down the 16 amendments. It is not that the government had to accept all 16, but it could not accept one. My colleagues in the Liberal Party put forward amendments; the government would not accept any.

That is a standard practice the Conservatives have. Even when they are bullheadedly wrong, they believe that accepting amendments is somehow seen as a form of weakness. I would argue that not being able to work with one's colleagues and not being able to accept recommendations brought forward in good faith is a sign of an immature political personality.

We saw that happen with the Copyright Act. The government said there would be lots of opportunity for amendments and then struck down every single amendment. We ended up with a fundamentally flawed bill. It was so flawed that it actually struck down amendments that would have protected the right of blind people to access materials without being threatened as criminals. The government turned that down.

What happens when we do not listen to others? We end up with failed legislation and recalls. This is the problem. This is why New Democrats are raising these issues. These concerns were not respected in committee. Canadians have a right to be heard on the issues of agriculture and food security.

[Agricultural Growth Act, November 19th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the people back home need to understand that whenever the minister makes a statement, there needs to be some kind of explanation as to what he really means. When he says that this legislation has been debated for 24 years, that is not correct. There has been the issue of UPOV '91, but the bill before us is an omnibus bill. The government sticks all manner of issues in it, including the power it will give the minister to make regulations, taking it away from farmers and putting it in the hands of the minister and the cabal that sits with him. That is an issue that needs to be discussed.

When this government continually shuts down debate, it blows it. How many bills has it passed that have not had proper debate and have been struck down as unconstitutional? The government's recall rate is worse than the Ford Pinto. If the Conservatives did their job and showed up for work and allowed us to do our work, they might not look so ridiculous some of the time.

We bring forward reasonable amendments at committee to defend the interests of farmers and maintain that balance, and the Conservatives strike down every single amendment, as they do on every single bill, on every single occasion, including if we point out in a committee hearing that they have spelled something wrong. They will strike that down too. They would rather be wrong on the most basic things than right on anything.

What we are here to do in Parliament is debate to allow Canadians to hear the issues. People watch, and I sometimes wonder what they are watching. They should be able to sit here and know that members from every part of this country are able to talk about an issue, yet time after time the Conservatives shut down the debate, and the result is that they keep coming forward with fundamentally flawed legislation.

[Agricultural Growth Act, November 19th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry, but this is a debate about cutting off the ability of the opposition to ask questions. It is not an opportunity for Conservative backbenchers to lob softballs.

[Petitions, November 19th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise in the House with petitions from people across the country who are pushing for the House of Commons to support Bill C-356, put forward by my colleague, the member for Nickel Belt, regarding the need for a national dementia strategy.

As we deal with an aging population, issues of Alzheimer's and dementia can have very profound and dramatic effects, not just on the person suffering it but the families and loved ones as well. There needs to be a better system in place. We need to work with the provinces and have a national discussion on the issue of dementia and Alzheimer's.

Petitioners are hoping Parliament will take this matter seriously and support this New Democratic Party bill.

[Access to Information, November 19th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative government's attack on the Access to Information Act continues. First it denied the Information Commissioner the order-making tools she requires to keep the government honest. Now it is cutting the resources she needs to handle investigations. Her budget has been cut by 9%, while complaints against government obstruction are up a whopping 31% just this year. She has said that without adequate funding, she will not be able to do her job. Maybe that is what the minister wants. Could he clarify if he is going to continue undermining her work or going to give her the resources she needs so that she can keep the government on the straight and narrow?

[Parliament of Canada Act, November 18th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, as always, it is a great honour to rise in the House to represent the people of Timmins—James Bay, but I also have to say that it is not an honour to participate night after night, day after day, in the Potemkin democracy of what we have become.

As part of the farce that we have in the House, we all stand up and call each other “the hon. member” this and “the hon. member” that. We have learned that it is very unparliamentary to say that anyone lies. I cannot do that, Mr. Speaker, as you would be outraged. However, it is perfectly acceptable to lie in the House. It just has to be said that something is government opinion and that it was how it was stated. We cannot call that out. That somehow is considered parliamentary, because it is based on a gentleman's code here. Of course, that is an old-fashioned, sexist term, but we do not actually have rules except those that are in place for the officers of Parliament, whose job it is to hold us to account. With the Conservative government, we see a concerted attack on the credibility of the officers of Parliament. They will stand up in the House and tell us how the Conservatives all care about access to information. It is a farce.

Canada was a world leader in access to information. Year after year under the Conservative government, we fall further and further behind. Guess where we are now? We are about number 56, which puts Honduras and Russia ahead of us. The Conservatives stand up here and talk about fighting for democracy, but when we have corrupt countries like Honduras, Nigeria, and Russia serving their citizens' access to information requests better than the Conservative government does, we know where we stand.

We then get the President of the Treasury Board, who is like a flim-flam artist at a country fair, saying “I am going to give you the big prize. Put your money down.” The big prize is a booby prize. It is data sets. It is open government. What was the great line that I heard? It was in “machine-readable formats”. My God. What the heck is a machine-readable format? Do we know that is? It is junk. What the Conservatives do is to give people junk, and meanwhile suppressing the evidence that counts.

The information that people need is about who made decisions, why the decisions were made, and who was in the room when the decisions were made. However, we know that ministers' offices are black holes of accountability. The Information Commissioner has spoken out on that time and time again, but it is not just that they have a black hole of accountability; they have set out to fully monkey-wrench the Information Commissioner, just like the ridiculous member for York Centre and his witch hunt against parliamentary officers for their supposed partisan activities.

What we have now is the Information Commissioner writing to the President of the Treasury Board, the man who I said earlier was like a flim-flam artist at a country fair. She is saying that without the proper funding, she is not going to be able to fulfill her mandate. That is what the Information Commissioner is telling us. There is a fundamental problem. The reason she does not have the funding to do her job is because she does not have the order-making powers. If she had the order-making powers, she would not have to go to court all the time.

I see my Conservative friends stand up and say, “Oh my God, order-making powers. That is a very bad thing.” It is so bad that it was the number one promise in the Conservative election commitment in 2006 with regard to accountability. They said that they would give the Information Commissioner the power to release the order of information, and they lied to the Canadian people. They stood up on the issue of access to information and promised that they would reform the system. Instead, they sit there and fall on the backbenches, happily carrying on this farce that we are somehow an accountable democracy, when the access to information officer is telling us that the system is broken.

What does this mean? The fundamental principle of an accountable democracy is maximum privacy for citizens and maximum accountability and transparency by government. These guys flip it upside down: they want maximum transparency of their political enemies.

When we hear the Conservatives talk about accountability and access to information, we never hear them talk about their corrupt lobbyist insiders and friends. No, it is their big bad trio, including the corrupt Indian chiefs, they talk about. We heard that tonight, with their going after the first nations. The big bad union bosses are number two. Let us go after them, they say. Number three is the radical environmentalists. The Conservatives use the Canada Revenue Agency now, in a total corruption of government operations, to go after bird watchers because they threaten the interests of the tar sands. Meanwhile, their pals are getting away with whatever they want.

The Conservatives' idea of accountability is accountability toward their political enemies. That is what they do. They use the levers of government, misrepresent the use of Parliament and undermine the officers of Parliament. They go after people who are environmentalists, they go after fist nation people and use them as the big bogeymen, the bad chiefs, and they go after people in organized labour.

Meanwhile, the issue we are dealing with is the fact that they are suppressing information. There has been political interference. People will die of old age before they ever get any documents out of the government because it just keeps putting it off. The Conservatives think it is all funny until they are defeated by the Canadian people. It is a fundamental issue of arrogance and laziness.

Access to information should not be a partisan issue. Access to information is about accountability to the Canadian people. The Conservatives say time and time again, “The Canadian people be damned.” This is about protecting themselves, protecting their ministers.

I will give an example. When the Conservatives lost the financial information on s half a million Canadians, did they give a darn about that financial information? No. They were worried about an incompetent minister, so they suppressed the information. They sat on it.

The first thing we learn when data has been compromised is we have to alert people because they could be subject to cyberfraud. We hear the Conservatives talk about cyberfraud all the time. However, they did not tell anybody because they were more concerned about protecting an incompetent minister. What we have along with this faux democracy are faux ministers. They are bobble heads. None of them take responsibility for what happens in their offices. They are protecting the decisions that are being made, that are being given to them in orders, and they are suppressing this information.

The Information Commissioner, a person who has enormous respect in our country, had to write to the Treasury Board president, the man who spent $50 million in border infrastructure money on pork-barrel projects in his riding and said that he had no documentation. That is the man who is supposed to represent access to information.

He will talk about open government, data sets and machine-readable formats. This man took $50 million from border infrastructure, blew it in his riding and said that he did not have a single document.

However, that was not true. The documents did exist. Under access to information, the Conservatives blocked the ability of the public to see those documents, however, we got those documents through the province and municipalities. We found out that the minister had come up with his own homemade forms. It was like the Muskoka minister saying to people to fill it out and they might get a free set of Muskoka steak knives at the end of it. If not, at least a sunken boat would be raised, they would get a lighthouse and a lake would built be in a place where there were a thousand lakes.

There used to be the day people who were that incompetent were fired. Not under the Conservatives. They get promoted if they can take that much money, if they can stand and tell Canadians they lost the paper, even though the papers exist everywhere in all those little municipalities and if they can get away with that. What does the Prime Minister think? He thinks that is the man he will put in charge of ensuring that all the other departments follow their paperwork. That is the man he picked, the Muskoka ShamWow salesman. Remember that? The guy did a television commercial selling cleaning products in China. This is their idea of how government is done.

When we talk about access to information, Canada was the world leader. Our parliamentary budget officers are the most respected people we have in our country, but the Conservatives attack them, ridicule them, and make farting jokes and laugh because they think it is funny. It is not funny. This is about the lifeblood of democracy.

The Conservatives can sit over there in their fake democracy and insult people, but the fact is they undermine the systems of accountability that hold them accountable. It is their corruption that Canadians are fed up with.

[Government Advertising, November 18th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, since 2009 the Conservatives have spent over $100 million of taxpayers' funds in self-promoting advertising while telling seniors and veterans that the cupboard is bare. Canadians are not hoodwinked. The government's own polling shows that taxpayers are sick and tired of this money being wasted on partisan self-glorification. Now the Conservatives are turning the taps on again, doing ads to promote their income-splitting scheme that would only benefit the wealthy.

I have a simple question. Will the minister tell the House how much money is being wasted on this pre-electoral partisan binge?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, November 17th, 2014]

With respect to government departments, institutions and agencies: for each year from 2003 to 2013, (a) broken down by department, institution or agency, (i) how many requests for information were made to non-governmental organizations under section 7(3)(c.1) of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), (ii) under what lawful authority were each of these requests made, (iii) for how many of these requests was consent received from the impacted individual, (iv) for how many of these requests was the impacted individual notified; (b) broken down by department, institution or agency, (i) how many disclosures were made under section 7(3)(d) of PIPEDA, (ii) under what lawful authority were each of these requests made, (iii) for how many of these requests was consent received from the impacted individual, (iv) for how many of these requests was the impacted individual notified; (c) what is a type 2 request for information according to Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA); (d) how many type 2 requests have been made by CBSA; (e) under what lawful authority was each type 2 request made; (f) did each of these type 2 requests by CBSA require a warrant; (g) will the Department of Justice table its legal analysis of the charter compliance of Bills S-4 and C-13; and (h) has the Department of Justice produced a legal analysis of the impacts of the Supreme Court's Spencer decision on provisions 7(3)(c.1) and 7(3)(d) in PIPEDA, and, if so, what is it?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, November 17th, 2014]

With respect to access to information requests to government departments, institutions and agencies: for each year from 2003 to 2013, (a) what is the number of notice-of-release or notice-of-reply requests signed by a representative from the Minister's office before an access to information request was released by the Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) directorate; (b) were these requests identified for review by the Minister's office, and, if so, on what grounds; (c) did the ATIP directorate wait for a representative from the Minister's office to sign the release or request referred to in (a) before releasing the access to information request, and, if so, for how many days; and (d) did these delays extend the release of information beyond any established guidelines, protocols or agreed upon timelines?

[Ethics, November 17th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, one of the administrative functions of government is ensuring adequate oversight by the Canada Revenue Agency of the generous tax incentives given to civic-minded Canadians who want to contribute to political parties. We now learn that the former member for Peterborough used this incentive to get people to pick up his legal bills.

Does the minister of the Canada Revenue Agency think this is okay? Will she look at the issue to determine whether the tax code was misused to give a Conservative insider and felon an enormous legal advantage?