Charlie Angus

[Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act, June 19th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I notice my colleagues from the Conservative Party are taking it personal when we talk about megaprojects. I have never met someone who would be personally slighted about something like the Athabasca tar sands, but perhaps they are.

I wonder again if the member has a sense that this is again a government that will do anything to protect the mega energy boondoogles and yet, it would not cry a tear for the hundreds of thousands of workers who have been laid off in Ontario and Quebec during this manufacturing crisis. Does he see this strange duplicity that will bend over backwards and cry tears for the Athabasca tar sands and yet say nothing about the hundreds of thousands of jobs, particularly in southern Ontario in the auto belt, where our Conservative members have run and hid under their Prime Minister's desk rather than meet workers who have been laid off in Oshawa, the London area, and Windsor?

These are very serious issues. We are talking about the complete extinction of an entire industry in Ontario and yet, we see Conservative members who will not even go and meet their constituents who are seeing the complete loss of, say, the GM plant in Oshawa. At Ford, I met with the CAW workers in London. They said that the Conservatives are completely missing in action.

Does the hon. member have any thoughts on why this strange duplicity?

[Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act, June 19th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, Conservatives are trying to walk the clock down here. They say there is no reason we should be talking about a plan for conserving energy because we should be talking about liability. That strikes to the very heart of why there is such a mistrust of the Conservative government.

Conservative members are so into promoting big energy projects at whatever cost. They are basically opening up Canada as the energy powerhouse for the U.S. market despite serious concerns as opposed to what my hon. colleague was talking about. He spoke of the need to move energy away from one or two huge megaprojects projects and diffuse it where it would leave a much smaller environmental impact and would actually be more sustainable.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague what he thinks is behind the Conservative lust, whether it is the pillaging of the tar sands, or whether it is the selling of the nukes to any private company that comes along to create these megaprojects that have a massive impact? The average citizen has to wonder whether the Conservative Party is basically just a hand puppet for the oil and gas sector and now the nuclear industry.

Perhaps my colleague could explain to us why he thinks there is this particular predilection for big energy and irresponsible energy projects in the Conservative mindset?

[Points of Order, June 19th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, during the cut and thrust of question period, as you have pointed out, the Minister of Industry used very unparliamentary language. He used the street vernacular that referred to questions I asked to be of little more than animal excrement. I understand that perhaps he was a bit frazzled or thrown off his game, but it certainly lessens the tone of Parliament.

The reason I am asking this personally, Mr. Speaker, because I know you did raise it, but you will remember well the case when over the issue of Kashechewan, when he was the Indian affairs minister, I challenged him and I used that exact term. He demanded a personal apology in the House because he said that it cheapened his work. At the time, I felt what I said was totally correct. However, I did think about it, I spoke with you, I came back and I apologize to the House. I do believe we have a role, as parliamentarians, to maintain a certain decorum.

I would like the Minister of Industry to do the same thing, to come back and make a personal apology because we cannot have this kind of cheapening of debate and this kind of language.

[Petitions, June 19th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am very honoured to rise on behalf of the good citizens of the region of Timmins—James Bay, which, by the way, is the only geographic region in the country that does not have walk-in passport service, unlike, for example, northwestern Ontario. There are hundreds of signatures on this petition and add to the hundreds of signatures that have already been presented of people who are very concerned about the lack of walk-in passport service, particularly the needs of people in regions that are dependent on mining and exploration and who travel internationally.

They are looking to the government to address the shortage of passport services in rural areas, particularly northeastern Ontario. This is very much in line with the report that the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates has just delivered to the House. I am very pleased to present this petition on behalf of the citizens of my region.

[Copyright Act, June 19th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the minister for eight tracks needs better speaking notes from the U.S. ambassador because he was speaking about the digital law provisions that are leaving average Canadians open to predatory legal action.

Let us look at the American record: lawsuits against 10-year-olds; subpoenas delivered at schools, against stroke victims and against dead people. We cannot put locks on citizens.

The New Democratic Party will fight every step of the way to protect innovators, consumers and artists from this predatory bill and the provisions that are within it.

If the minister will not stand up for Canada, why does he continue to act like a private butler to Ambassador Wilkins?

[Copyright Act, June 19th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the government's made in the U.S.A. copyright legislation actually represents a radical rewriting of Canadian copyright policy because the absolute legal protections for digital locks deliberately blurs the distinction between private use and counterfeit.

From here on in, the only consumer rights we will have are the ones the U.S. industry gives us. If we try to protect our rights, it will come after us. It will be legal to back up a movie to VHS but not to a video iPod.

How many 10-year-olds go around with a VHS recorder in their backpack? They are not criminals. Why has the government declared war on Canadian consumers?

[Main Estimates, 2008-09, June 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, to give my hon. colleague two straightforward responses, when I talk about four levels of government, I am talking about municipal, provincial, federal and now we have the upper House. On top of that, we also have the courts which play a very large role. How governed do we need to be in this country, especially when members of one level of government, as I said, are friends of the party?

In terms of the question of these attempts, these baby steps, by the Conservative Party, the conundrum is that it cannot actually move to the electing of senators, because that will trigger a constitutional challenge, so it has set up a consultation process.

The problem with this process, at the end of the day, is that participatory democracies in any country in the western world, in fact anywhere in the world right now, recognize that there is no such thing as a consultation for an election. We are either elected or we are not. We cannot ask people if they think these six candidates might be good, and then it is at the desire of the Prime Minister whether to accept them or not. That simply does not pass the smell test.

When we talk about democratic reform, we are dealing, I think unfortunately, with the old Reform Party, but not democratic. Democratic has to be a voting proposition. It has to be mandatory. It cannot be at the whim of the Prime Minister. That is the problem. That would trigger the constitutional challenge.

I get back to the Gordian knot that we are facing. It is an outrageous situation we are in that Canadians cannot have reform of the Senate without it becoming a major constitutional challenge. It will basically return us to the old status quo, which is that friends of the Liberal Party and friends of the Conservative Party, who have done favours over the years, get dumped in the Senate.

We are in a real conundrum, so I understand where the Conservatives are coming from, but at the end of the day, if it is to be truly democratic where these elections are binding, we will end up with a constitutional challenge.

[Main Estimates, 2008-09, June 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise to speak to the motion. The heart of this motion is a cry from parliamentarians for accountability and transparency, as I said in my earlier remarks, for a body that has been defiant in its refusal to be accountable to the Canadian people.

When we talk about democratic reform in the Senate and where to take the upper House, we have to look back at the roots. It is not as if the Senate ever went wrong somewhere along the way. The Senate was founded on fundamentally wrong principles.

If we look back 141 years, when Canada was a fledgling community and it was still very much under the colonial influence of mother England, the belief in England was that commoners could not be allowed to have too much control. There had to be someone of peerage and title above them who could temper the vote of the common people. That belief was similar in Canada at the point the Senate was developed.

The difference in Canada was it did not have a history of the peerage system. It had the swamps of cronyism. The belief then was we had to put in a body that could be chosen from the backrooms of political parties, the hacks, the friends, the pals and the bagmen, to limit the ability of elected members who represented the common people.

One of the great myths and mistruths of what the Senate perpetuates today is that the Senate represents the rights of minorities. John A. Macdonald, as a founding father, said that we needed the Senate to be there for minorities. We will hear this from senators all the time, but they never say the second part of Sir John A. Macdonald's statement. He said, “We need a body to represent the rights of minorities”, because there will always be more poor people than rich people. That is why the Senate was put in place. It was not there to represent minorities as we understand it today. It was to represent the minority view of the rich so there could be a counterbalance to democratic voice.

Ever since then, we have been on the wrong path. The problem with democratic reform of the Senate is we have a body that simply will not allow itself to be reformed. I can understand my colleagues in the Conservative Party. They are certainly making attempts to find a way to reform and work through this Gordian knot of self-interest, but, at the end of the day, I believe the latest attempts will fail like all other attempts have failed. The fact is nobody, in 141 years, has asked the Canadian people what they think.

Many things have changed since 1867 in terms of representation and counterbalance to the weight of Parliament. Provincial governments have much stronger responsibilities. The number one relationship most Canadians have with government would be with their provincial government, not so much the federal government. The relationship between the provincial and federal governments has changed dramatically.

Then there are the courts. When we talk about the role of defending minorities, I have yet to see the Senate play any role. Yet the courts are clearly playing a very strong role as a counterweight to Parliament.

We have four levels of government right now. Do we need another level of unaccountable, unelected people who simply refuse to meet the most basic requirements?

So the folks back home will have a bit of a sense of what we are paying for, we are talking about the money we are spending year after year on an unelected, unaccountable group of senators who can sit in the Senate until their 75. Whether they show up or do not show up, whether they work or they do not work, they are there in perpetuity, maybe because some of them flipped pancakes for the Liberal Party for 30 years and were considered perfect people to be sober second thoughts for the democratic voice of the House.

Last year the Senate sat 62 fewer days than the House of Commons. Many senators missed at least a third of a session. Where else can people miss work day after day and still receive a paycheque? In the Senate. Senators do not have to worry about constituencies. When MPs are not in Parliament, they have to go back to meet their constituents and work for them. Senators do not have to do that.

That is nothing to disparage. There are very good senators and less good senators. but the difference is, at the end of the day, members of Parliament, whether lazy, brilliant, good or bad, have to go back to their people. They have to get the seal of approval from the people, and some great members of Parliament have lost their seats over the years. Senators do not have to do that.

Since 1993, the gross pay of senators has increased 70%. Senators get paid for working 30% fewer days than members of Parliament. Senators are allowed to miss 21 days without a penalty and this does not include the times that they are out working for the party during elections.

In my riding we talk about the senator is there for regional interests. I have the great Frank Mahovlich, I say great because he was number 27 and from Schumacher. The only times I get to see Frank in my riding is during elections, when he comes up to try to have me defeated. I do not know if he is on the Senate dime or not.

I will not mention the former Montreal Canadien who the Liberals brought up as well to have me defeated. The press asked me why, in the middle of elections, the Liberals were bringing up hockey players. I said that whenever their campaign started to go south, they were clearly had to rely on hockey players. I said that if the press ever saw them bringing Kenny "The Rat" Linseman into Timmins—James Bay in the middle of an election, it would know I was in trouble. I expect the next time I will see Frank is probably in the next election.

However, this is the big issue and this is where we have to be serious. Senators have phenomenal conflict of interest guidelines that allow them latitudes that would never be allowed even at the lowest municipal level or school board level. For example, they can sit as the heads of a board of directors of major corporations and still vote on issues in which they have a pecuniary interest. This is simply appalling in the 21st century. It is not accountability.

Senators are sitting on the boards of income trusts and telecommunication companies, where these issues are being debated and being brought forward to the Senate. This is not the kind of democracy and accountability that Canadians expect.

There is a whole list of senators, such as the hon. Michael Meighen who sits as a director and trustee on 25 different companies and trusts. He still gets paid, he still comes in and he is supposed to discharge the business of the country. That is perfectly okay when people are senators because they do not have to disclose their financial interests. They can participate in closed camera sessions, as senators, and as long as they tell their pals in the Senate that they have a pecuniary interest, they can participate in the vote.

As I said earlier, I was a rural school board trustee and we were not allowed to discuss any contract that had to do with hiring or firing of anyone, whether it was custodial or teachers, at a school board in Ontario. If any of us had a relative anywhere in the province of Ontario working in any school board in any capacity, we were not even allowed to talk about the contracts. These are the rules in place for small town school board trustees, yet senators sit on private health consortiums and talk about the future of health care. Whenever the Liberal Party gets whatever private member's bill on income trusts through the House, we will have senators who represent income trusts voting on that.

I do not think that passes the smell test for accountability and transparency in the 21st century. Therefore, we have a real problem. We have a body that simply refuses to reform itself.

Our colleagues in the Conservative Party would like to find other ways to do it, but we all have to deal with the fact that we have a very large mountain that is so high we cannot get over it, it is so low we cannot get under it and it is so wide we cannot get around it. It is the constitutional limitations on our ability to actually reform that.

The response of the New Democratic Party is quite simple. After 141 years of cronyism and patronage, we say put the question to the Canadian people. Why not let the Canadian people say what they think should be the future? That would certainly guide provincial leaders, if we saw a clear movement to say we have had enough of this, we do not need this in a 21st century democracy. I think it would actually impel our provincial leaders to come together and then move forward to the real steps of reform.

As much as I understand where the Conservatives are coming from on trying to reform this bunch, at the end of the day, we will end up in court. At the end of the day, we will have a Senate simply refusing to grow up and take responsibility as accountable citizens. The reality is they are not accountable because they are appointed. Always at the end of the day, they are friends of the party. In the 21st century we have to move toward a better standard of democratic involvement.

[Main Estimates, 2008-09, June 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague. We have certainly clashed on almost every issue under the sun, although I do not know which hockey team he supports.

However, I think he would agree with me that part of the problem in our dealings with the Senate is it is a group that is defiant, militant and belligerent in its refusal to meet the most basic elements of reform. We have tried many times to drag this group out of the swamps of cronyism and into the 21st century in terms of democratic obligation. Yet it seems continually to refuse the most basic steps forward. Part of the reason for this motion, is to put pressure on it.

We have clear conflict of interest guidelines as members of Parliament. If one is a municipal councillor, one has very clear conflict of interest guidelines. There is transparency and accountability. If one is a school board trustee, as I was in a rural region, there are very clear obligations in terms of pecuniary interest.

Yet senators can sit and participate in a debate when they have financial interest in it. Senators do not have to disclose that. Senators can sit on the boards of directors of income trusts or telecommunications companies and participate in debates where laws are made regarding these.

Family members of senators do not need to disclose any financial dealings with government unless there is a direct contract. Senators are allowed to participate in debates where their family members have personal private interests. Most of all, members of Parliament and cabinet ministers must disclose their bank accounts. Senators do not have to this. They have been defiant in their refusal to meet the most basic conflict of interest guidelines that any other democratically elected person, whether it is on town council or a member of Parliament, has to meet.

I understand the government is trying to take these steps to reforming 141-year-old anachronism, but time and time again we see this body absolutely refuses to be accountable and transparent in a 21st century democracy. How can we get those simple reforms through this group? Does he have any ideas how this could be achieved, other than us putting the question to the Canadian people about simply getting rid of this anachronism?

[Business of Supply, June 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, what is concerning about this case is that as part of our work as legislators, we do have to raise allegations. We do have to accuse. That is one of the fundamental roles we have in Parliament. Certainly we have parliamentary privilege within the House.

If we are doing our duty at committee, whether it is accusing a government official or whether it is cross-examining how moneys are being spent, we do bump up against private interests, we do bump up against corporate interests, we do bump up against political interests, where we do take a certain amount of risk. We understand that risk. When we go out and speak we have to be somewhat judicious, but at the end of the day, we have to make accusations.

My concern with what is happening here is that if someone decides to initiate a lawsuit against a member, the precedent has been set: that member then should not be on a committee; that member should not be able to speak to an issue.

If a member is making an accusation, whether it is in a procurement business deal or whether it is against another member in the House, if a member continues to attack, that will be something that is dealt with in the lawsuit. We do know very well that lawsuits can carry on for six months, a year or two years, long enough past the period that it is a political threat. Then it can be dropped quietly at that point.

What is being done here is taking a member, a key member on a committee or a key member in any party out of the picture for the length of time that the member could do political damage.

I would like to ask the member, in his long experience, what kind of threat that poses to us in being able to do our jobs, and also whether or not we set the precedent—