Charlie Angus

[Business of Supply, April 24th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague's discussions about how we need to start looking forward. As a member from the Arctic I think he would understand the complete failure we have seen over the years in terms of a government response to the need of finding alternative energy sources, particularly in our first nations communities.

Along the James Bay coast, my communities are dependent on diesel generators. We are sitting beside massive potential in terms of hydroelectric power and yet the federal government downsized the responsibility for paying for the diesel fuel that is being flown in at exorbitant rates to communities with 80% unemployment. In the community of Peawanuck, for example, hydro bills were as high as $1,200 and $1,600. I have visited families who bathe their children once a week because they cannot afford to turn on the hot water. These are unsustainable rates for power that are being utilized. Yet, we are sitting right beside massive resources that would create sustainable energy.

The communities have asked government to work with us. We could get these communities off the diesel costs and move to long term sustainability. Yet there never seems to be any movement from the bureaucrats at the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. It is always put off until next year for another budget that never comes.

I would like to ask the hon. member this. Does he have recommendations on how we can start to build sustainable communities in the north which are not dependent on the cost of resources that we simply cannot pay for?

[Business of Supply, April 24th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague's dissertation. I have heard many of them from the Conservative Party.

It seems to me that some people are leaders in history, some people are led by history and others are dragged kicking and screaming by it, which seems to be the policy position of the Conservative Party right now.

When we saw the Conservative-Reform Party initially it said that there was no such thing as greenhouse gases. This was, in the words of the Prime Minister, a “socialist” plot to suck money out of Alberta.

Then we saw the Conservative-Reform Party became the home of every flat earth theory going on the environment. It was sunspots. It was El Niño It was the flatulence of the dinosaurs that changed the heat in the last millennium.

Then, in this new Parliament, we have a minister who has said that if we do anything we will shut down every plane, train and automobile and turn out all the lights, so we cannot do anything.

That did not work either.

Then the Conservatives had Bill C-30, although that has been shelved. Now they are telling us not to worry. They are telling us that they will actually do something but we have to give them more time.

I am wondering when they are actually going to get serious, just stop protecting the oil patch and get down to doing what Canadians are asking for, which is to take action on greenhouse gases now.

[Ontario Municipal Board, April 24th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the Ontario Municipal Board voted today against the people of Iroquois Falls and contrary to the public interest of northern Ontarians. At stake is the future of the dams on the Abitibi River.

The power from these dams belongs to the people of Ontario. The dams were given to Abitibi-Price to facilitate low cost paper production. It is one thing for Abitibi to walk away on a public covenant, but it is a whole other thing for northern Liberals to sell out the interests of northerners and walk away on their obligation.

Minister David Ramsay abandoned the people of Iroquois Falls. He refused to come and meet with the community and he hid behind a partisan political appointment who was parachuted into the board, a failed Liberal candidate no less, who ignored, overruled and dismissed the preponderance of evidence that was in favour of the community.

Anyone who participated in those hearings knows that the people of Iroquois Falls were sold down the river by a minister who was too lazy to show up, stand up or fight for the north.

We will remember.

[Business of Supply, April 24th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I found my colleague's speech this afternoon very interesting. I am very interested in the direction we are now taking in Parliament. However, I do remember the 38th Parliament, when the plan that was given out then by the environment minister for the Liberal Party was for voluntary emission standards. That was the message we heard from the Liberals: let us have voluntary emission standards for industry.

At the time, New Democrats said that we do not have voluntary drinking and driving rules. We do not have voluntary seat belt rules. We do not have a voluntary gun registry. The Liberal Party seemed to think voluntary standards for industry was the way to meet targets, and that we would have a one tonne challenge and all the average folk like me and the folks back home would turn off their light bulbs, but we would not do anything to deal with industry.

Does the hon. member now admit that for the last 13 years the Liberal policy in dealing with the environment was a complete utter failure and an embarrassment?

[Railway Continuation Act, 2007, April 17th, 2007]

I will be very quick, Mr. Speaker. We are talking about CEOs making $56 million a year. That is $9,000 an hour. For the folks back home, that is $216,000 a day. If we have a CN derailment every three days, that is $648,000 for a derailment.

We have been talking about safety and the fact that the government refuses to—

[Railway Continuation Act, 2007, April 17th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I cannot stand here and have our party accused of being ignorant of farmers. We work with farmers all the time. I would ask the member to retract that.

[Railway Continuation Act, 2007, April 17th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague's discussion because it raises a number of the issues that the New Democratic Party has been trying to get out on this bill that we are dealing with now.

This is an issue of accountability. It is an issue of accountability with regard to the CN management that is making record profits. The CEO is making $56 million a year, yet we have seen cutback after cutback along the rail lines, the rail lines that run from one end of this country to the other and link so many of our communities.

There is also the issue of safety, an issue that has been raised by the workers on the front lines. It is an issue that seems to be irrelevant to the government. It was also irrelevant when the Liberals were in power. There are serious safety issues. We have seen such an increase in trains jumping the tracks, derailments and spills in the last five years, and there has been very little oversight.

Yet these issues are not being addressed by government, so in this debate what we are having is really a chance to speak to the failed management policies of CN and the need to restore labour peace. How do we restore labour peace? As my colleague pointed out, we need to have a commitment to ensure that there is proper investment along the lines and that there is safety, including safety for working families.

I would like to follow up on another element. My colleague pointed out how the government is trying to make this a debate of pitting one set of working families against another set of working families. The government is obscuring the fundamental issue. These workers were locked out. They were locked out by the CEO, who is making $56 million a year. They were locked out by the company that is setting an abhorrent record for numbers of accidents while it is making profits to send off in dividends to shareholders all over North America.

These workers were locked out. Now we are being called in as parliamentarians to stay all night if necessary to bring in legislation that would impose on them what has been called a baseball arbitration settlement, whereby management will then get to basically write the blank cheque for how it wants to write the rules for the agreement that will be imposed on the workers.

It seems to me that everything right now is in favour of this company that is run by a guy who is making $56 million a year. Let us think to back home and what it would cost a person to earn that over an entire lifetime. The average citizens back home would never even come close. They work hard for their money. They are accountable. If they do not produce, they will lose their jobs. If this man does not produce, who knows what kind of golden parachute he will be given?

In terms of production, as we see the horrific level of accidents that have been happening over the last number of years, there obviously are serious questions about the accountability of CN management. Yet these are the people who locked out the workers, the workers who have been speaking out about the safety problems and the lack of investment along the rail lines.

Where does my hon. colleague feel we need to go in terms of a railway strategy in this country to address these issues of safety and the necessary investment in rail infrastructure and to have a healthy economy for the 21st century so that no family is pitted against another?

[Railway continuation Act, 2007, April 17th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague really spoke to the heart of the matter, which is the fact that this strike, this lockout has raised issues about the failure of a national strategy to deal with transportation.

For the viewers back home, I would say that one thing we learn when we come to Parliament is that it is a bit like Dorothy at the end of the The Wizard of Oz. We come into this auspicious chamber and we think we are dealing with people whose whole focus is how to make an economy work in the 21st century. Then we look behind the curtain and see that little wizard and think, is that how economic policies are made and designed in this country?

I will quickly give an example of how policies are done in this country in terms of short term versus long term.

The Conservative government, and it could have been the Liberal government before it, will announce in the budget that it is going to give a special tax credit to parents to buy shoelaces for their kids' hockey skates. Then of course it can announce that by allowing a tax credit for those who want to buy shoelaces for hockey skates the government is helping young people stay off the street and therefore, it does not have to worry about crime so much because the kids are skating. And by giving a tax credit for shoelaces the government says that it is doing something about health and for all the issues of wait times, and it will not have to worry about wait times in the future because the kids are skating now. Of course the government will make sure that the lace manufacturer has a factory in the minister's riding. That will help as well because that of course allows the government to show that it is looking after those constituents back home.

Those are the kinds of decisions that these governments come out with. They are short term, driven by a headline and press release and no substantive response. Meanwhile, a long term plan for how to make an economy work is ignored.

We have spoken today of a horrendous record of accidents in this country within the last year and it has barely caused a ripple from the two main parties in here. They would say it is just the cost of doing business. What, an accident every three days is the cost of doing business?

There are serious problems at CN. There are serious problems with having a country that does not have an industrial plan for transportation like our country does not have right now.

I would like to ask the member if he could explain to this House, to some of the Conservative and Liberal members who might not really understand the difference, why it is that we need to start taking these long term infrastructure issues seriously instead of just playing short term politics.

[Railway continuation Act, 2007, April 17th, 2007]

Exactly. It is simply a party that, once it is done, we spend years trying to rebuild the damage it has done from its shortsighted interventions, hopefully short lived interventions in our national political life.

[Railway continuation Act, 2007, April 17th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague makes an excellent point. Where I live the rail line now runs from Moosonee to Toronto. It is a dedicated line for freight and passengers as well. It runs through blizzards. When the highway is shut down, trains can still travel, if they are maintained and the lines are kept up. This is an excellent form of transport.

My house sits in front of highway 11, which is the national transportation route for trucking. Many people who have driven it comment that it looks like moose pasture. There are two lanes all the way up basically from North Bay to Nipigon. It is insufficient, given the amount of rock cuts and turns, to be hauling transportation goods along that corridor.

My colleague brings up a really interesting point. It was the Conservative government under the former famous prime minister, Mr. Mulroney, who had pretty much given up on rail transportation. It was so 20th century and it was time to move on. “We do not need a national dream any more; in fact, let us get rid of our national dream and sign on with the Americans. Let us get rid of our national passenger rail service across this country”. That was the pointy headed view of the Conservative Party. It thought that the free market would step in and suddenly there would be all kinds of other transportation.

In the city of Timmins where passenger service was no longer available, the idea was to rip up the tracks because tracks were yesterday's news and a road could be built where the tracks were. For 20 or 30 kilometres coming into the city of Timmins there are no tracks any more. Now we are finding there are some things that were so much easier to transport by rail than by truck.

In many parts of the country the tracks were pulled up because we were told that rail was no longer relevant and truck traffic would cover it and it has not. In many areas where the rail lines were pulled out and where passenger service was let go, there is now a real awareness that this is something we should have been investing in and building because this is what the 21st century economy is moving toward.

In Europe there are high speed trains and in Canada there is a patchwork of services, most of them inadequate for covering great distances. Yet Europe and Japan are moving forward with trains. We have let so much of this lag because, as I said in my speech, there has been no vision for transportation infrastructure in this country.

A laissez-faire attitude in a country the size of ours is simply unacceptable. It is an example, I would suggest, of the fundamental lack of vision we have seen in the Conservative Party throughout its history, whether it was the Avro Arrow, whether it was the shutting down of all the military bases under Mulroney, whether it was the shutting down of the national dream and our passenger service, whether it was killing the Wheat Board today.