Charlie Angus

[Aeronautics Act, June 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague has nailed the discussion here. Deregulation is based on the principle that there is enough of a market to allow more competition. Areas not being adequately served right now will actually be better served with increased competition and increased deregulation.

The reality is there are very few profitable sectors in terms of airline transportation in Canada today, where there are enough numbers to generate the kind of capacity building needed. With large level deregulation, we will end up with one or two giant carriers that pick up the key routes and the smaller ones will be left by the wayside. This is the way markets work, but is that necessarily the work of government?

The vast majority of our country, in terms of land mass, does not exist between the Windsor-Quebec City corridor, although certain politicians believe that is the full extent of our country. In fact, the vast majority of our country is composed of outlying regions that are harder to service. Those areas are not economically unviable. For example, exploration is key in my region, with its immense resources in diamonds, gold and copper. To bring in either value added or new business, people have to be able to fly there. It is not good enough to fly them three hours away and then have them drive the rest of the way. That does not work.

We had excellent air service in northern Ontario. The air service covered off all the key communities so people could travel and businesses could develop. That was lost by a decision made by then Premier Mike Harris and by the government when it walked away on its obligation, not to continually fund airports but to ensure a basic infrastructure program so municipal, rural and regional airports could access it.

I want to get back to the issue of the Earlton airport and the Kirkland Lake airport. These are key examples of the kind of airports across the country, which serve important links. Right now they are fending for themselves. They have been downloaded to the municipalities and their ability to continue to provide needed service is highly questionable.

Where is the government vision for rural airports across the country?

[Aeronautics Act, June 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am very interested to speak to this bill and I am very pleased to be following my colleague, the Sault Ste. Marie. When we are called upon to look at legislation, we inevitably look at it through the prism of our region and our experience. What I have seen in northern Ontario, which reflects rural regions across Canada, is the general abandonment at the federal level of a vision for transportation in our country. I want to speak to that first because it ties into the bill.

We have three key areas of transportation in northern Ontario. We have rail, we have a very thin ribbon of highway, which masquerades as the Trans-Canada trucking route but often it is two lanes for 18 wheelers on icy roads with rock cuts on either side, and we have a series of airports. A number of years ago two decisions were made. One was at the provincial level and one was at the federal level, which cut loose key airports from the economic life of our communities.

One was a decision by then Premier Mike Harris that we did not need the norOntair air service, which was a vital service linking all the communities in southern Ontario. The private sector could step in. The private sector did not step in and key airports were left without carriers and without service.

At the same time, the federal government was making a decision to walk away from its traditional role of supporting the infrastructure of airports, leaving these airports on their own. In my region, the airport at Earlton has always played an essential role. Also the airport in Kirkland Lake played an essential role in terms of medevac services, connecting the communities in the central Témiscaming region with southern Ontario. The loss of carrier service and the loss of federal support for those airports has seriously challenged economic development. If we are trying to bring new business, new families and entrepreneurs into a region, and the best thing we can offer them is two lanes of highway and icy roads, they are going to think twice.

We have asked again and again where the government plan is to ensure that not every single airport, but key airports in key regions are given some level of support in order to maintain themselves. Clearly the issue of the Earlton airport and the Kirkland Lake airport speaks to a lack of vision in the country and about the need to ensure we have infrastructure to support airline service and airline access in all regions, including our rural regions. The lack of support for Earlton and Kirkland Lake is indicative of a lack of vision for the larger transportation issue.

At the same time, we see in northern airports that Transport Canada and the federal government no longer mandate the same level of emergency services. For example, at the Timmins airport, which is very busy serving the James Bay coast and the De Beers project with numerous flights in and out, there is no longer the obligation to maintain fire services there. Therefore, this is a question of risk management, that we believe the odds are with us and that nothing will go wrong. If something does go wrong, if we do not have fire services at those key airports, the tragedy would be immense.

I want to speak to this bill because the New Democratic Party members have looked carefully at the transportation agenda being brought forward by the government and by the former government. We have a number of concerns that link to the larger issue of the abandonment of the federal responsibility to set a certain level of standard to ensure the transportation links, whether they be rail, road, or by air, are maintained.

We brought forward a number of amendments to Bill C-6 because we found it fundamentally flawed from the get-go. At the end of the day, we still believe those problems remain. As far as we can see from having gone through this legislation, this is about allowing industry to set the level of risk, not government.

That is a fundamental problem for us. Look at the Jetsgo situation. Jetsgo was considered a model. Any upstart airport business is considered a great thing when it happens and we support that, but there were major problems with Jetsgo. I can refer to the Toronto Star investigative report that said when it was offering fares as low as $1, a price was going to be paid and that price was in safety, training and maintaining a level or standard with which all Canadians would feel comfortable.

Canadians assume the federal government is taking that role. However, we saw Transport Canada do very little to address serious issues. In fact, over a two and a half year period it dismissed the troubles being brought forward on safety. It said that it was part of the growing pains of a start-up operation.

It would be quite the growing pain if something did go horribly wrong, and they can go wrong. Given the risks of airlines, being much greater than any other form of transportation, we have to ensure we have the standard in place. This will ensure that either a start-up airline or a long-standing airline has to meet a certain standard of safety.

We believe the issue brought forward in Bill C-6 is that we will let companies set their level of what is acceptable risk, and that is simply not good enough. We are concerned about why the Conservative government would bring this forward right now. There are key areas that the Conservatives campaigned on. One was access to information, which they said would bring accountability. They also talked about whistleblower protection, again for accountability. Then there is the larger issue of simple accountability.

If we look at the bill and the flaws in it, the New Democratic Party's research on the bill has found that instead of allowing for access to information on flight safety, it heightens secrecy. It restricts access to information on the safety performance of airlines. Canadians will be left in the dark when it comes to important safety information. Public access under the Access to Information Act to safety information and reports to Transport Canada by air operators will be totally unavailable.

That is not acceptable, especially for a government whose members, for example on the issue of accountability, are running around saying that they are going to give out every Wheat Board meeting note, yet on the issue of Canadians of being able to ask clearly for the records of what is happening with airline safety, they are not going it to give them that.

On whistleblower protection, we have always thought we would believe it when we saw a government commit to whistleblowers. However, for airline safety, whistleblower protection is vital. We need people to come forward to tell us if there are problems. Otherwise we only will find out the problem after the fact. While some form of whistleblower protection for employees has been introduced, there is no effective redress mechanism for employees who have had reprisals taken against them, other than a warning or a possible fine of the offending employer. We believe there has to be really clear and committed protection so people bring forward problems.

On the overall issue of accountability, we believe the safety management system in place is not acceptable to the larger issue of public safety. We are allowing the airline industry to increasingly define what its comfort level is.

As members of Parliament, we fly a great deal, and I have learned a lot more about flight safety from flying. I fly on the large jets, but I also fly on the little puddle jumpers like the little Bearskin tube planes that fly into Sioux Lookout and Thunder Bay. There are also the little planes that I take to the James Bay coast. Therefore, I have begun to reflect a great deal more about the issue of safety. As travellers and passengers, we always assume safety is the first and foremost requirement. However, when we are dealing with an extremely competitive market, when we are dealing with the extreme high costs and the need to get into markets, any industry is going to be challenged.

The issue of safety perhaps does not become an issue of negligence, but cutting a corner here and a corner there can lead to problems. This is why we need that objective body. We need a really clear presence of Transport Canada acting. In terms of railway safety, it has failed to act. We have seen the incredible number of rail accidents that have taken place in the last three years. Clearly this system is not working. We need greater accountability and a greater sense of protection for the public

That brings me back to the whole Jetsgo issue. We looked through the reports that were done in the media on it. It was very disturbing that a key maintenance document was more than a decade out of date. There were no engineering orders to demonstrate that three safety orders relating to engines had been complied with. There was no evidence that a quality assurance audit, due in the latter half of 2004, was ever completed. The review uncovered a 2004 internal Jetsgo audit that found numerous examples of missing or inappropriate entries on maintenance release forms that allowed the planes to fly in the air.

[Canada Transportation Act, June 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the member has not articulated anything to do with this bill. That question had nothing to do with the bill. I would like him to strictly go back to the issue, which is the bill. This question I find is again leading us down the garden path. I would like to hear him speak about the bill and no more—

[Canada Transportation Act, June 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with fascination to my hon. colleague's use of a dictionary for the last 20 minutes. Like my colleague, I did not find anything of substance in it whatsoever.

I find it absolutely amazing that he now says that if we actually want to find out what is in the bill we will have to go back and study all the committee notes. He says we will have to listen to all the witnesses because he simply cannot stand up and articulate a clear position, so that people can see where the Liberals stand.

I do not want to be personal. There is nothing personal here. My granny never voted for the Liberals when she was alive. She certainly would not want to vote for them after she was dead, whether the member contacted her through the Ouija board or he signed her up.

I have gone back and I have checked the grave to make sure that it has not been tampered with, so I am certainly sure that none of my deceased relatives have voted for him for the leadership.

I do not want him to take that personally, but I do think it is incumbent upon him to be able to stand up in the 20 minutes he had, the 15 minutes, the 10 minutes, whatever, and give us an articulate, simple answer on where the Liberal Party stands on this, unless of course it is like so many things about the Liberals that they do not really stand anywhere.

We might have to go through all the old red book promises to actually find an articulate position that might change from year to year. However, I did not hear it tonight. I think that it is incumbent upon the member, if he is going to speak for his party, to be able to stand up and give us a nice simple, concise explanation of what the Liberal Party actually does stand for, if anything at all.

[Criminal Code, June 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague's explanation of the position the Bloc has taken on Bill C-23. I agree with her that it is a very technical bill, so I am certainly not going to get into the specifics of the numerous recommendations that have been brought forward.

I was interested in the discussion on treatment programs because in another life I worked with people coming out of jail who were living on the street. My wife and I lived with them in the city. We dealt with the issue of recidivism all the time. I have to say that many of the criminals we dealt with were not particularly malignant people but they repeated dumb crimes time and time again.

We found they fell into a number of classic categories. There was the issue of mental illness, people who were basically unstable, and there was a lack of treatment programs for people who needed treatment for various addictions. An issue that we found much more prevalent was the lack of community support. Many who were basically free falling through life ended up repeating criminal acts because they knew it. There were even people who ended up back in jail because when they got out onto the streets they did not know any community, home or family.

What we tried to do in our community was provide some kind of support structure. Time and time again there was the issue of the need for treatment. Once people received treatment, especially for addictions, the ability for them to become participating citizens suddenly became a reality in a way that it could not matter how many times they returned to jail.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague what her thoughts are. If we are going to be dealing with people coming through the criminal justice system, we have to ensure that we deal with the need for community support in order to deal with them and their treatment problems, so that we can stop recidivism and turn them into citizens in our society.

[Nunavik Inuit Land Claims Agreement Act, June 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I found the last comment by my colleague to be very interesting.

We have seen case after case where the federal government signs agreements and then breaks them. For example, in 1998 the federal government under the Liberals at that time signed an agreement with the people of Barriere Lake to rebuild a community that was absolutely shattered. As soon as the agreement was signed, the government walked away and the government has done nothing in that community since. The levels of poverty and the tragedy that is Barriere Lake remains an open sore today.

My colleagues in the Conservative Party sit and snicker because they have not stepped up to the plate to address this long-standing breach of the federal government's obligations.

I would like to ask my colleague what she thinks about this.

[Nunavik Inuit Land Claims Agreement Act, June 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague's discussion on this land claim issue.

I know from my time working with the Algonquin nation in Quebec on what was unceded aboriginal territory never covered by treaty, we had spent a great deal of time working on land claims research to deal with the outstanding land issues. One of the problems the Algonquians faced, and in fact one which first nations across the country face, is the government says it wants certainty, and what it means by certainty is the extinguishment of all land rights in exchange for a dollar figure or a certain amount of land. Yet these rights are guaranteed, first under the Constitution section 35 rights, and in court decision after court decision, including Delgamuukw, Haida, and Taku River.

We are now finding in our region a growing concern from industry. Industry wants to work with the first nation communities. Industry wants to work on the territories, but it is in a position where it cannot negotiate because the first nations cannot negotiate because the federal government as well as the Crown under the province are not at the table and they have been holding up these agreements. The tradition of the federal government with first nations was that if the first nations did not like it, they could take the government to court. Land agreements that could have been signed and moved forward were not signed. In fact there have been all kinds of question marks right across our northern territories.

Now industry is actually trying to move ahead in the vacuum where government should have been, as its fiduciary responsibility, trying to make agreements with first nations. There are first nations that want to move ahead because they need economic development as well, and yet they find themselves in a bind because the federal government and the provincial governments have been basically obstructing the process to resolve the issues.

I would like to ask the member whether she has seen this pattern across the country. What steps do we need to take to have a proactive government finally move forward so we can have not just certainty on the land for first nations maintaining their rights, but also proper economic development that they can partake in?

[Criminal Code, June 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague hit the nail on the head. Copyright has always been an issue of balance. It is the balancing of competing interests and it is messy. It is not an easy way of going forward, but it is possible. From previous legislative attempts, we saw there were major concerns about access for universities and schools.

The principle we need to start with, and I will it put forward to the House, is a simple one. We have to get over our fear of the big, bad Internet. The Internet has provided possibilities for development for cultural expression, which were unimaginable 10 years ago.

When I first came into Parliament, we talked about the threat of the Internet, the threat of digital culture and how it would wipe out all our protected little Canadian industries like some big terrible cultural tsunami. We have to find out how we can start to use the digital culture so our immense cultural value that is being created can get out there. Again, I refer back to the Canadian Music Creators Coalition. It is starting to show some really interesting business models for success of Canadian artists internationally, based on the new music digital trading.

We have to look at where those successes are. We have to look at the issues of piracy. We have to deal with the issues of bootlegging. However, we need to start a serious discussion in order to ensure that our film, television and our audio visual content, which is very expensive, can be monetized at a value that can bring some return to our artists, but also ensure access for anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world.

[Criminal Code, June 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to the bill in cooperation with my colleague, the member for Windsor—Tecumseh.

New Democrats are pleased the piracy bill is before the House. It seems to me that it took a visit from The Terminator and pulling of all Hollywood films out of Canada to get the government to finally move on this, but I am pleased it did move.

A number of elements need to be examined in the legislation. One is the message it sends and the other is the efficacy of the legislation.

In Canada we do not support the illegal proliferation of bootlegged products, which are sold and undermine the intellectual investments and the massive investments that are made to make good films in Canada and around the world.

In terms of the efficacy of the legislation, my colleague, the member for Windsor—Tecumseh, raised the issue of how much this legislation will cover. I do not doubt that there has been piracy with camcorders, but I have questions about the numbers that are thrown around such as 20%, 40%, 70% of all bootlegged products go out of Canada. I do not think that will stand up to serious second scrutiny. Once the legislation is in place, it will give us a better chance to look at that.

Consumers do not want to watch something that was shot under a raincoat with a hand-held mic and a camera. They want quality. The quality of many of the bootlegged products out there is very high, which leads some to say that these movies are being cut much closer to source. Once this loophole in the legislation is filled, Canada will no longer be the whipping child for so-called piracy. The issue of where high quality bootlegged products are coming from will have to be addressed.

We also need to address copyright legislation for the 21st century. Piracy and bootlegging are different than the issue of remuneration of copyright, but there are overlaps. Sometimes the overlaps are confusing, but they are instructive.

Canada is in a position to come forward with copyright legislation for the 21st century. The biggest danger would be coming forward with legislation that was perfect for 1996, meaning that it would be all but irrelevant in the incredible changeover of digital technology that we see right now.

At this juncture in history, the movie industry is on the cusp of what happened to the recording industry back in the early part of this millennium. The band width now available on the Internet is almost at the point where people can start to stream movies quickly and efficiently. That will raise serious questions as to how we start to monetize this grey market exchange of intellectual goods on the Internet.

One model has been put out for us and that is the DMCA, the digital millennium copyright act, which was brought forward by Washington. Washington's trade representatives will do as much as they can to ensure that Canada signs on with a very similar restrictive copyright regime. However, there are a number of problems with that legislation.

Just a few months ago, I was in Montreal at an international conference on copyright and Bruce Lehman, who wrote the DMCA, was there. He was one of the key legislative planners who saw the legislation as a way of protecting the intellectual property of the United States. The message he gave in Montreal was that the legislation failed. His message to law students in Montreal was that Canada needed to learn from the U.S. mistakes and be ready to move forward. This is again talking about building 21st century copyright policy and not 20th century policy.

The fundamental issues that came forward came out of the 1996 WIPO treaty, which was supposed to deal with all the millennium issues. Unfortunately, the legislation was brought forward when the FAX machine was cutting edge, so a number of changes have happened along the way.

One of the fundamental principles of WIPO is the ability of the copyright holder to place a digital lock, the DRM, on top of the product, so it cannot be used without permission. The digital lock model is definitely a model to be considered, but what we have seen in many places is the locks have been broken. In fact, in many of the key areas in music, Apple for example, say that if it is to compete, it cannot put the digital locks on because nobody will even buy the legal product.

Therefore, there is a question of how to deal with this. In the United States, the issue was if people broke the digital lock, the company would sue them. Then we had the instance of a bunch of 13-year-old kids being sued for downloading songs. At the end of the day, has that changed anything about the massive trade of songs and other merchandise on the Internet? It does not change anything, yet it creates a black eye for the music industry, which is trying to protect its property.

In Canada we saw the rise of the Canadian Music Creators Coalition. It said that there had to be another way to do this.

We need to start looking at how we monetize. The traffic is out there. Some very interesting models have come forward. With the peer to peer mechanisms out there, there are companies that can actually track how often a song is traded. They do not necessarily have to decide to look at which door it goes from, from whose house to whose house, but they can get a general sense of how many times a song has been traded on the Internet. That technology exists now. If we know how much product and what artist's music is being traded, then it is possible at some point to monetize this in the same way for radio play and for any other use of songs.

Therefore, the question is this. How do we start moving forward in the 21st century to monetize the value? The biggest threat we could have is to have outmoded legislation that will not address the problem. Once the bandwidths on the telcos reach the point, and we are almost at the point, where movies can be streamed at any point to anybody without any remuneration, then we will be into a serious problem.

The movie industry must be commended because it has begun to anticipate this. We have seen video on demand take a number of steps. It has seen a number of the mistakes that were made by the record industry. I am not kicking the horse when it is down, but the it really believed it could ride this out and it would go back to business as usual. It lost the market and that market will not return. However, the movie industry is it is starting to anticipate how to learn from those mistakes.

I will conclude with this comment. We saw the recent partnership between Warner Bros. and BitTorrent, where it allows them to do massive peer to peer trading. When Hollywood is saying that it cannot fight these guys forever so it should start working with them, it raises again the question of how to monetize this into the 21st century.

The New Democrats support the bill as it stands. Let us deal with the issue of piracy and with the issue of bootlegging, but let us start an honest, open discussion on how we can copyright in the 21st century that works for everyone.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, June 6th, 2007]

With regard to Canadian private broadcasters: (a) what is the estimated financial value of the benefits that Canadian private broadcasters derive from the laws and regulations of the government, including, but non limited to, simultaneous substitution, tax write-off exclusions for Canadian companies' advertisements on U.S. broadcasters, and protection from foreign competition; and (b) what is the estimated financial value of these benefits for each private broadcaster?