Charlie Angus

[Points of Order, November 24th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I will keep my remarks short. What is disturbing is using legitimate points of order as an attempt to create a narrative that then can go out to the public. That undermines the role of a point of order.

The idea that members of the New Democratic Party are to sit and be polite to whatever government insults they receive on a daily basis—

[G8 Summit, November 24th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, it is the Pinocchio principle. The Auditor General said that the rules were broken. The minister told the committee that he had nothing to do with the review of 242 projects and no role in deciding which ones to support or reject. That is simply not true. We have a letter from his office, sent to Muskoka Lakes, telling him that he reviewed its project and he rejected it.

Therefore, why was this letter not given to the Auditor General and when will he live up to his promise and give over those documents that he hid from the Auditor General?

[G8 Summit, November 24th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Muskoka minister made the claim, “the documentation that was in my purview was forwarded to the Auditor General, who had access to all documentation”. That is simply not true.

Here is what the Auditor General said, “We received a small amount of documentation, which wasn't directly relevant”.

Therefore, why is it that, even as he is trying to protect his privileges, he cannot give the House a straight answer? When will he bring forward the documents that he has been hiding, just as he promised to our committee?

[Access to Information, November 24th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, in the Federal Court of Appeal decision on access to information documents, the judge specifically warned against the ethics committee interfering in the work of the courts.

It is very similar to what the Parliamentary Law Clerk said warning against Conservative interference. Yesterday the Information Commissioner warned against Conservative interference.

If the Conservatives have truly had their road-to-Damascus moment when it comes to access to information, they need to show more of a true and humble conversion, and maybe they could look at their own backyards.

The Information Commissioner has said the Conservative ministers are a “black hole of accountability”. She listed their failures as “off the chart” and a “red alert”. The commissioner even calls the Prime Minister's own department the “antithesis of the duty to assist”.

We all know these out-of-touch Conservatives have one set of rules for themselves and one set of rules for everybody else, but I would suggest that they take a bit of a pause from their full out attack on the CBC, and begin looking in their own backyards and deal with their own black hole of—

[Copyright Modernization Act, November 24th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise in the House as the digital affairs critic for the New Democratic Party on the issue of copyright.

I have been involved in the issue of copyright in this House for seven years and I have seen somewhat of a transformation in terms of the understanding of Parliament when it comes to copyright. Unfortunately, with the bill, we still see that on key elements the government does not get it.

If we go back to 2004, the idea of a digital culture that was being told to us by the lobbyists was that of a great cultural tsunami that would wipe out everything that was special about Canadian culture. They tried to constrain the digital environment as it somehow was a threat. However, we saw it in the New Democratic Party as probably the greatest platform for the distribution of ideas and culture since Gutenberg got his Bible.

I want to be fair to all parties. We have moved down the road in terms of understanding that the digital culture is not, as the recording industry used to say, the toothpaste they were going to put back in the tube or the genie to be put back in the bottle. We were going to have to find a way to adapt, as we have done time and time again with copyright. However, what is missing in the bill are two key elements that make copyright work.

One element is the understanding of remuneration of artists. We have to be able to monetize how artists' materials are being transmitted. That is the fundamental principle of copyright, yet we see within the bill time and again the traditional royalty payments to artists being erased. That is not a balance. That is creating an incredible disequilibrium in the artistic and creative community.

The other element is access, the ability of people to access works. The Conservatives' position is to put a digital lock on products and let the market decide. That would create a two-tier set of rights where Parliament would establish which rights citizens can have. For example, a blind student could access work in an analog format, but if there were a digital lock on it, that right would disappear. In a parliamentary system, we cannot create a two-tier set of rights. The digital locks cannot override the rights of Canadians.

The obsession of the Conservatives that digital locks would somehow create a better market does not stand up to the test. Our WIPO competitors around the world have adopted standards on digital locks. Under the WIPO treaty, specifically in articles 10 and 11, countries are given the right to establish digital locks to protect property from being stolen, but the exceptions that are created in a parliamentary system are a citizen's right.

Most of our competitors have adopted that model. The Conservative government is actually going backwards and would put artists and consumers in a worse position.

[Keeping Canada's Economy and Jobs Growing Act, November 21st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I am so glad I received such great respect from my hon. colleague.

He knows the song Crossin' the Causeway is about Cape Bretoners who had to leave to find work in Ontario. Unfortunately, the Conservatives responded by saying that if they did not like it, they could go to Fort McMurray. I have nothing against going to Fort McMurray, but I would like to see some investments in our region in terms of job training so people could stay.

I was actually surprised at what the government has called this bill. It is one of the most bizarre names it could ever come up with. I would have thought it should have been something like “Busted flat in Ottawa” or “Smoke on the water”, but it would probably be better to say “Smoke in the mirrors”. In terms of a credible name for a budget, it certainly does not pass that test. We can work on a song so maybe we can correct that.

[Keeping Canada's Economy and Jobs Growing Act, November 21st, 2011]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My hon. colleague has one important point. I might have said as a metaphor that she was Annie Oakley and not like Annie Oakley. I referred to someone earlier as Mr. Magoo. Referring to people as historic characters is irrelevant to the issue.

What is relevant is the fact that during the last election I talked to my constituents about the government's lack of plan for pensions. I talked about the government's complete disregard for the lack of rural doctors. The Conservatives came into my riding and the only thing they talked about was guns.

The people of Timmins--James Bay overwhelmingly voted for the New Democratic Party because they knew we were right and they supported us. The Conservative government has nothing to offer, otherwise it would have a Conservative member in northern Ontario--

[Keeping Canada's Economy and Jobs Growing Act, November 21st, 2011]

Wow, Mr. Speaker, I have just been floored by one of the greatest performances I have ever seen in democratic history, or how about not. I was actually expecting Annie Oakley to ask me the question.

A member from Manitoba actually came to my riding and had maybe 15 people show up.

If the member knew anything--

[Keeping Canada's Economy and Jobs Growing Act, November 21st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, as always, it is a great honour to stand up in this House and represent the region of Timmins—James Bay and the people there who I have such great faith in their common sense.

I am debating a bill on the economy, which is crucial at this time when we see that 700,000 jobs have been lost. The outlook for growth that we are seeing for Canada is not nearly as rosy a picture as the Minister of Finance is presenting.

What we are seeing here from a government is a Minister of Finance who, under his tenure, has been like the cartoon character, Mr. Magoo, who continually steps outside the window and, as he is falling, manages to get onto another plank. He thinks that his rosy forecast will somehow get us through.

What I am hearing in my riding contradicts the spin that comes from the government. For example, when I was at the Tim Hortons, I met a 68-year-old man who told me that he had to go back to working underground at the mine because his Canada pension was not sufficient.

We are in a national pension crisis. The New Democrats have been raising the alarm bells about that. The government stalls, studies, stalls some more and now it has this pooled resource pension poodle plan that will do nothing to help the fact that we need to overhaul the CPP. The CPP is much more efficient, and it knows that, but it would rather that the money go to its friends in the banking sector. It will not go to help people back home.

We are hearing about the need for serious investment in doctors in northern and rural areas. Most Canadians are already realizing what the government does not know, which is that we rank 26 out of 30 in industrial countries in terms of doctor per capita and that we are looking toward a 60,000-person shortfall in terms of registered nurses by 2022 if nothing is done.

The government has no desire to invest. That is one of the commitments. Its idea is to give a tax break by moving people around. It will simply move some doctors from urban areas or small communities into rural areas and that will somehow alleviate the problem. People know that will not alleviate the problem.

What we are seeing are a series of smoke and mirror incentives. The government promised incentives that it actually never delivers on. For example, the compassionate care benefits program has a budget of $190 million annually and yet it only spends 5%. There are people back home who need compassionate care, and it is not as if they are not applying. What the government does is it promises but it does not quite deliver.

In order to keep us not focused on the economy, it throws out the red meat to its base. All day long, I have heard about how it is a principled party that does not believe in subsidizing partisan schemes with electoral dollars, taxpayer dollars, that it is the party that opposes subsidizing the electoral machine.

However, among the first two senators picked was Mr. Gerstein, the Tory bagman, and Doug Finley, who ran the Conservative campaign. The Conservatives put their people in there, people who worked for them. They get paid by the taxpayers until they are 75 years old.

I will quote Mr. Gerstein's opening speech in the Senate just so people know what a great politician he is. He said that he was proud to be a bagman, that he proclaimed it. He went on to say, “Oh, by the way, I love politics, I just never had the time to become a candidate”. He said that on November 27, 2010. He just never bothered to become a candidate. He never bothered to go out and actually participate in the democratic process. Senator Gerstein is a bagman. What he does is he collects money for the party.

I do not have a problem with him being proud of it but it is funny that he gets paid by the taxpayer until he is 75. What are Mr. Gerstein and Mr. Finley's great contributions to Canadian political life? They were two out of the four who were charged and had to plea bargain in the biggest case of electoral fraud in Canadian history.

Let us look at what they were involved in in terms of ripping off the taxpayer. They would take these dead dog ridings the Conservatives had out in the middle of nowhere where they could not get any votes and they would funnel money from the central party through those ridings. Then they would get those ridings to go and demand the rebate, so that the taxpayer was paying for this scheme.

That is not to say that all Conservatives are corrupt because a number of Conservative riding associations said that they did not want to participate in money laundering, that it was not something they were going to do. However, a number of them did.

They had to plea bargain when they finally ran out of road. Both Mr. Finley, who again we pay for until he is 75, as well as his staff and his benefits to work for the Conservative Party, and Senator Gerstein, who we will also pay until he is 75, as well as all his staff, had to plea bargain. The Conservatives have never answered the question about when they will pay back all the money they received from the in and out scheme before they were busted. That was money that went directly from taxpayers.

When we see this party get up and talk about how its members will be clean on this, when they had to plea bargain in the biggest electoral fraud scheme in Canadian history, it is a little rich. It is a little too rich for the Canadian taxpayer who is having to support and subsidize this party in its continual undermining of the parliamentary system.

We have talked about the Conservatives' lack of plan for pensions, health care and jobs. Of course they have no vision with respect to real investments, so they are making massive across the board tax cuts. In a time of recession we are seeing very large corporations sitting on their cashflow. They are not moving it.

The New Democratic plan was to actually target our investments, so that corporations would get tax incentives if they actually create jobs. If they reinvest in the economy, they would get an investment from us in support. However, if they just want to sit on that cash, then they would not get any.

The Conservatives' idea of job creation was to build a pipeline and ship raw resources to a refinery in Texas. This was such a crackpot idea the Americans did not want anything to do with it. Our colleagues over there had no clue that the Americans were not interested. They wanted to ship raw bitumen to a refinery in Texas and tell Canadians that this was somehow to their benefit.

We saw the government's lack of plan for resource development. I saw it in my own region in Sudbury and Timmins. We saw it in Thompson, Manitoba, when the now Muskoka minister allowed the takeover of Falconbridge and Inco. The first thing that they did was to start shutting down the refining capacity, just like they shut down the refining capacity in Montreal, because they didn't want the competition.

Now in Ontario we do not have any copper refining capacity left. It was shut down. The government thought that was a good idea. It thought that allowing one of the greatest mining companies in the world, Falconbridge, that had an international reputation, to be taken over by a corporate bandit like Xstrata was all right. It allowed Inco, the greatest mining giant Canada ever produced, to be taken over by Vale and have the resources stripped and high-graded.

Now what we are seeing is this lack of plan for investments. Therefore, we should not be surprised that the government would think that the best idea for job creation is to build a pipeline to ship raw bitumen to Texas where it will be refined to the benefit of Americans, and that will somehow build an economy.

We believe that we have an immense ability, with our resources, to create jobs and if we are to create those jobs, we need to develop and refine the resources here. We are not like the Conservative Party who believes that the idea of being open for business is, “Come and take us for a ride”. That is the Conservatives' notion toward all resources. That is why they rolled over on the softwood lumber deal when Canada had won trade after trade disputes at the WTO. We found ourselves completely handcuffed by the fact that they undermined our position. That was back at the international trade level.

This is a government that believes resources should be given away for free. In a country as rich as Canada is in resources that is not a long-term strategy.

We need to reinvest. We need to do it in job training. We need to support businesses that actually want to reinvest in our economy. We need to make the most out of our resources. We need to ensure that our northern and rural areas have access to doctors. We need to ensure that every Canadian has a proper pension plan; not some kind of makeshift plan that the Conservatives have come up with but something that will ensure that CPP is there for the next generation just like it was for the last generation.

I am more than proud to take any questions.

[G8 Summit, November 21st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the new Mr. Nobody does not have the facts right. The civil servants were not allowed to review it. It was reviewed by the three amigos. There was the minister who got to play Daddy Warbucks, the hotel manger who got a $2 million renovation right before the property was flipped for $26 million and there was the mayor who walked away with two giant white elephants.

When will the member stand, be accountable and show us the documents that allowed this boondoggle to come forward?