Charlie Angus

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, May 27th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I think my colleague really laid out for people back home what is so wrong with what is happening here. It is about the abuse of Parliament, the abuse of process and contempt for the systems that have been put in place in this Parliament going back right to the beginning. What we see time and time again with the government are the actions of the schoolyard bully, which is that it is the government's way or the highway. The Prime Minister has these tantrums if he does not get his way. We saw this when we were promised that we would have someone who would actually vet the appointments but thePrime Minister did not get his buddy, so he tore it up.

Now we see with this budget bill an absolute abuse of process where the Conservatives are trying to push through stuff that will help their friends in the oil industry by ripping up environmental regulations.

What does my hon. colleague think the opposition should be doing in order to stand up for the rights of parliamentarians and the rights of due process and to ensure a full study of some of these very controversial and bizarre plans that are hidden in the budget bill? What should we be doing, as Liberals, as Bloc and as New Democrats?

[Petitions, May 27th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I present today a petition signed by hundreds of people in the Timmins-Kirkland Lake region. It is apropos on a day when the United Steelworkers from Sudbury are here on the Hill, 11 months into a strike by the corporate bandit, Vale, which was able to buy one of the greatest mining companies in the world because of the failure of the government to do due diligence.

In particular, the petitioners are concerned about what happened with Xstrata. This month we have a thousand jobs being lost in Timmins. Our copper refining capacity in Ontario has disappeared. Our zinc refining capacity has disappeared.

The petitioners are calling on the industry minister , who should have been doing due diligence but instead was out hawking cleaning products for companies in his riding, doing commercials, to do due diligence on the foreign takeover.

Given the negligence of the government and the resulting damage that has been done to our base metals industry in Canada, the petitioners are calling on the government to open up section 36 of the Foreign Investment Act, to make clear the secret deals that the minister has signed with companies like Xstrata and Vale, so that the public can know that the government is actually on their side, that the government actually has a vision for resource development in this industry and in this country.

We call our ministers to a higher standard to represent the interests of Canadians rather than hawking products and doing infomercials in their ridings.

[An Action Plan for the National Capital Commission, May 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, if I were watching this at home, I might feel that I was having a case of déjà vu or maybe that CPAC had run out of interesting things to cover and was showing us reruns, because we are dealing with a bill that was already dealt with. We had hours of debate. We had testimony. We had witnesses. We had parties working clause by clause to present a bill that should now be law. Yet the Conservatives, as has become their style, flushed the bill down the toilet because they did not want to answer any questions on the Afghan detainees.

Therefore, what we are living here in the House right now is akin to the extras in the movie Groundhog Day, where we come back every day and usually see the same dumb tough on crime bills and the government denouncing this and that. Yet I have seen this pattern since 2007, where the government has flushed its entire legislative agenda and then started everything from the beginning. It did that just this past January.

A legislative agenda is usually the pride of a government. It is something that it shepherds through the House. It is something it believes in. It does not just rip the bills up, throw out all of the witness testimony, spend millions of dollars and then say, “Wait a minute. Now we are serious. We are going to do it over again”.

We are looking at Bill C-20, which was Bill C-37 previously. We are having to go through the same process for something that should have been done. I have never seen a government with such a meagre standard for legislative results.

My hon. colleague spent many years in a provincial parliament and has seen many governments in action. Has he ever seen a government with such little interest or regard for the fundamental job it has as government, which is bringing through legislation, actually seeing the legislation get voted on and bringing it into law?

[An Action Plan for the National Capital Commission, May 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly know the region of Gatineau is within the provincial jurisdiction of Quebec and that parts of it are within Ontario but the member never once mentioned the Algonquin Nation. I raise this because I think it is very important. The Algonquin Nation never ceded any territory within Quebec or even within its territorial interests in Ontario. The Algonquin Nation has a very specific, historic and spiritual connection to the Outaouais and the Gatineau region.

I would like to hear from my hon. colleague about efforts that have been made to include the Algonquin Nation in discussions.

I remember the situation on lac Témiscamingue in the 1990s when Parks Canada was going to rebuild the old fort at Ville-Marie and it excluded the Algonquin Nation. The Algonquin Nation was not making any outrageous demands. It just wanted to be part of it because it had been a historic trading centre for the Algonquins for thousands of years. At that time, they were completely left out and many bad decisions were made by Parks Canada in terms of the development and it ended up becoming a confrontation. To settle it all, Parks Canada finally ended up having to make the Algonquin Nation part owners of this historic site.

I think we could do a lot to end any misunderstanding by ensuring that there is consultation from the beginning.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague how he feels about consulting with our first nations peoples, in particular the Algonquin Nation which has such a historic and traditional interest in this territory?

[Employment Insurance, May 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps the minister did not understand the question.

We are talking about the cuts right across Ontario to the jobs for processing EI claims in 15 centres, in Brantford, Peterborough, Oshawa, Kenora, Timmins. This is about choice. The government gave massive tax cuts to the big banks and the oil companies while the Canadian government was bleeding red through the worst recession in memory, and the government is going to pay it off by slashing the civil servant jobs that are helping the unemployed.

Workers paid into employment insurance. Why is the government shutting down the offices across Ontario that are processing their claims? It is a simple question.

[Employment Insurance, May 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, 1,000 people have lost their jobs in the Timmins area over the past month. Across Ontario people are still feeling the effects of the recession. Yet the government's response has been to close 15 employment insurance claims processing centres in Ontario.

The Conservatives decided to give tax breaks to oil companies and big banks, and have completely ignored the needs of workers.

Why is this government abandoning unemployed Ontarians?

[Copyright, May 11th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am certainly proud to vote against any initiative that is brought out by the flat earth society.

Let us look at the issue of copyright. Under the last copyright bill, the government particularly focused on attacking long-distance education by forcing teachers and students to destroy their class notes at the end of every semester. Criminalizing students might be a Tory strategy, but it is not a digital strategy.

With round two of copyright under way, will the government continue its practice of targeting students, educators, innovators, consumers and artists?

[Broadband Access, May 11th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, when the Conservatives came to power, Canada was the world leader in broadband access. Under this government we have fallen to the back of the pack of OECD countries. No wonder, because after ragging the puck for four years, the Minister of Industry kicked off a digital consultation by announcing that two, count them, just two projects in northern Ontario would receive funding for broadband upgrades. No wonder we have fallen off the digital map.

The government had four years to upgrade our rural broadband infrastructure. Why has it been missing in action?

[Petitions, May 10th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by hundreds of citizens from northern Ontario. The petitioners are very frustrated with the way the government completely blew the negotiations between Falconbridge and Inco, which would have emerged into a Canadian super giant.

The government rubber stamped corporate raider Xstrata and now we see the results. There has been the shutdown of mines in Sudbury. The copper refining capacity and zinc refining capacity is being shut down in Ontario. There has been no net benefit to Canadians from this corporate raider.

Frustrated communities in the mining belt call for changes to the Investment Canada Act so we can see the kinds of commitments these foreign takeovers will be subject to, if any, and that they will be open and transparent so we can learn from the debacle of Falconbridge and Inco, which is now being seen in the mining industry as the Tories' modern equivalent of the Avro Arrow.

We need to learn lessons from this debacle under the Conservative government, which is what the citizens of northern Ontario say, so it will not be repeated in other industries that are opened up to foreign takeovers.

[Harmonized Sales Tax, May 5th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the impact of the HST is becoming clear and the news is not good. Working families, seniors, people on fixed incomes and first nations will all be the losers.

This is how it breaks down. Every time we turn on a light or the Internet, every time we fill up with gas and every time we try to save for our retirement, we will get dinged. Heating a house in the winter is not a luxury for a senior citizen. It is a necessity.

Speaking of luxury, the Cadillac Conservatives are giving another $1.6 billion in tax breaks to wealthy corporations. The McGuinty Liberals gave $2 billion in corporate tax breaks.

What we are seeing is a massive shift in the tax burden. We are making average citizens carry the weight of large corporations.

The government shut down debate on the HST and turned its back on senior citizens and first nations people. The HST is regressive, unfair and it will be remembered.