Charlie Angus

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, November 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I could say I am surprised at the question, but I am not, because it looks like one of those funny little 10 percenters the Liberals spread across northern Ontario in an attempt to change the facts.

The reality is that the member's own former government went on the nation's television to plead with the Canadian public when the Liberals were caught in one of the most disgraceful scandals in Canadian history, promising an election 30 days after the Gomery report which would have put the election in March 2006.

Suddenly in the great Liberal rewriting of history there was this betrayal, this secret night of the long knives where the heartless NDP stood up with all the poor peasants and tossed the member's party out on its royal petard. Before the Liberals went, they crossed the country promising things they never delivered in 12 years. It was the great red book of all red books, the great mother of red books.

The Liberals came into my riding on the eve of the election and they had the nerve, they had the gall to tell people, “Vote for us. Keep us in power and we will give you money”. Meanwhile, our communities had been down here time and time again asking the former prime minister to work with the forestry industry and they got nothing. They got zero. But on the eve of the election it was like, “Stick with mama Liberal and we will feed all you little children”.

Now there is this hilarious rewrite that allows the Liberals to send their 10 percenters into ridings across the country saying, “Under the Liberal government we created all the great child care spaces; under the Liberal government we saved the environment; under the Liberal government we were there for the forestry industry”. The Liberals did nothing for the forestry industry and thousands of jobs went down. When we were asking for the money to be put up front they did nothing. That is when the jobs would have been saved.

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, November 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I feel very chastened by that. The fact that the seat that was empty, but will not be mentioned, is no longer empty makes my point moot, so I will start over again.

When I was listening to the member's speech, it reminded me of being in a madhouse funhouse with the distorted mirrors of who said what and positions were upside down when they were really flipped over, and what was really black was white. It seems to me that we would need a political Emma Peel and a political John Steed to actually work through the labyrinth of Liberal misconceptions being perpetrated.

The biggest misperception, and I do not take it personally, is that when I and my colleague went to Thunder Bay to take part in a public debate, it was characterized as some kind of low grade character assassination, that it was completely outrageous for a member of Parliament to do his due diligence and engage in debate. I feel I have to clarify that just for the folks at home to understand the kind of political chicanery machinations we are dealing with in the language here.

The hon. member had stated that the NDP had initiated this public meeting and we tried to set it up as some kind of publicity stunt, when the fact was that we were invited. We were invited by members of the member's own constituency. We were invited by CEP. We were invited by the United Steelworkers to a public meeting and we agreed to come. The fact that they were unavailable or chose not to come is beside the point, but it was made very clear at the public meeting held by CEP in Thunder Bay, to which we were asked to go along with the members from the Thunder Bay region, that if they were not able to come, we would be more than happy to go back to Thunder Bay to debate them in an open forum.

I do not see how that could be characterized as character assassination to any extent, unless of course one group doing its job and another not doing its job is somehow character assassination of those not doing their work.

To bring the point home, I will read a letter that was written in the Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal on October 31, 2006. The people who put on this event felt it very necessary to clarify the spin being put out by the member who had not been there at the time but who is now sitting in his seat right here.

Joe Hanlon, president of the United Steelworkers in Thunder Bay, said that he was publicly responding to the letter from the MP for Thunder Bay--Rainy River. He said that if that member and the other member from Thunder Bay would like to come before the people of northern Ontario to discuss why they have voted in favour of a sellout softwood lumber deal, he would invite Roger Falconer from the Steelworkers, Cec Makowski from CEP, as well as the two NDP MPs, and MPP Howard Hampton, the provincial NDP leader, and ask them to come back to Thunder Bay. He went on to say:

Even though these individuals, two of whom are MPs from other ridings, came to attend our meeting here in Thunder Bay last Thursday, our two MPs couldn't or wouldn't take the time or effort to show up. [The member for Thunder Bay--Rainy River] states that he is listening to his constituents. It would be nice to know who he listens to because I know that a lot of people have sent him letters asking him to vote against this bad deal. If you look at the recent issue of [the member for Thunder Bay--Rainy River's] “Report to Constituents”, there is not one mention of forestry.

That is the word of constituents from Thunder Bay, people who are involved in the industry and who are concerned. When I went to Thunder Bay to speak to them, I went there because I am a northerner and I had been invited there. He had been invited there. I would like to meet him anytime in Thunder Bay. I will meet him here, but to say that I was involved in character assassination when I was fighting for the rights of people in northern Ontario, I think it goes without saying that it is very typical of what we have been seeing here.

We see other members standing up and trying to create a solid Liberal front, standing up to softwood, when in fact they have shut down the debates. They have shut down the public hearings. They have accused our attempt to have public input as some kind of waste of their royal time. I find that very shameful.

There are many issues that have to be addressed with this deal. I would like to refer, for example, to the comment of the member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River, on May 17 in Hansard, where he said that this deal was a “stab in the back”. Why is it a stab in the back? It is a stab in the back because this deal accepted the fundamental American argument from the beginning. The deal says that we in Canada agree that we have unfairly subsidized our industry, which is a falsehood, and that we must completely change how we deal with forestry in order to please the Americans.

I would say that the member is correct. It is a stab in the back. It is a stab in the back to our industry that tried to maintain a solid line and looked to government for help.

On September 25 the member stated that the constant shifting position of the Prime Minister has caused much confusion about what it is we are voting for or against. I would actually infer that as confusion within the Liberal Party in terms of whether it was going to stand up or sit down. He said:

Now that the actual motion has been presented and we see what it actually says, on principle, I must now vote against the deal. The motion spends more words punishing Canadian companies than it does trying to achieve a positive agreement.

That is what the member said and on that point I would certainly agree with him because we were in an unprecedented situation where the Parliament of Canada was being asked to act as a predator on its own industry. We were being asked within this House to impose illegal penalties that we had won in trade dispute mechanism after trade dispute mechanism. They were recognized as illegal, but we were going to add on penalties to our own workers and on top of that, we would add on a further penalty for the companies that did not buckle under.

Of course I would say that it is a stab in the back and a deal that is attempting to please the Americans rather than help our own industry. Why the member three weeks later stood up and gave the big two thumbs up to the agreement, I am still not quite sure.

There are many issues about this agreement that need to be examined. We have talked with industry. We have talked with the workers. We have talked with the communities across northern Ontario that are going down. The question is, the government had the ability under the Liberals and it did not do it. It had it under the Conservatives in order to give some funding up front in order to alleviate the cashflow problems that industry was facing.

We now see that for the companies that have signed on, the government is flowing taxpayers' money to them through the EDC payments. That money could have been flowed before and it would have allowed our companies the necessary financial breathing room because they really are at the end of their ropes.

What is amazing about the deal is the notion we have accepted here of crippling our own markets, of putting export taxes on the value added for wood products. Many of our companies have their head offices in the southern United States. It is very clear that an American company looking to invest would not invest in a crippled market. Companies would not invest where they would be paying higher export tariffs if they create value added in their wood. They will be investing south of the border. Why? Because they have $450 million of our money. They are our direct competitors. Plus they have another $500 million given to the George Bush administration to do with what it wants.

There was not a penny, nothing, rien, nada for our own communities that have gone down right across the country. They were pleading for help. They were pleading for retooling. They got nothing. The message given to the people of Smooth Rock Falls, Opasatika, Red Rock and communities like them was that they were being cut adrift from the economy of this country and that they are on their own.

There are moments in the House when we do need to stand up and speak to the bigger principle. The bigger principle here is the fact that we have a situation where a government looking for a quick photo opportunity signed off on an agreement and accepted everything that the American trade interests wanted, and sold our own industry down the river. One of the prime economic engines of our country was sold down the river. Thousands upon thousands of jobs are dependent on it. Communities across northern Canada are dependent on this. Where was the government? It sold them out. That is unacceptable.

As the New Democratic Party, we will continue to fight in the House to make sure that every single amendment that affects our communities and our jobs will be heard.

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, November 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak today. I find it fascinating and very telling that the member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River made his statements and then scrambled out of the House before questions and comments. I will be speaking to an empty chair but that has been the sort of situation that we have been facing in northern Ontario.

I listened to the hon. member's speech and what it--

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, November 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising because the former member had made a number of personal attacks on myself and my colleague, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster, and I was hoping he would be here to respond. However, it appears that he cut corner and ran. I would be very concerned about having to use the time for my speech to actually to respond. I was really hoping I could ask him a question.

Mr. Speaker, would it be possible to get the unanimous consent of the House that I could speak to the member's empty chair, which is what I have had to do when I go into his riding?

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, November 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I heard that response but I can see that he is almost blushing after saying that.

The member talked about not wanting to listen to a discussion that was not constructive. Why was it that the Liberals were not interested in hearing from people across Canada? Is it that Canadians from across Canada might have something to say about this that he says we were filibustering and wasting the Liberal's time.

The member can talk to his own colleague from Thunder Bay. The committee would have had hearings in Thunder Bay but the members from the Thunder Bay area support this agreement.

For the member to stand up in the House and say that the Liberal Party adamantly opposes the agreement is not true. Because the Liberals cancelled the hearings across the country so people could not have input, is he saying that the people of Canada would be wasting the Liberals' time by giving their concerns?

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, November 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with the news from back home that Tembec in Timmins is gone. One of the fundamental mills in our region has gone out of business. Smooth Rock Falls is down. Opasatika is down. Red Rock is down. Ignace is down. Kenora is gone. Dryden is gone. Across the line from us in Quebec, Malartic is down. Grand Remous is down. Béarn is down.

I have spoken to workers in so many of those communities. They understand very clearly that there is a fundamental disinterest on the part of the government about the future not just of their industry, not just of their jobs, but of their communities. That is very clear.

What was very confusing to some of the people I spoke to, particularly along the Highway 17 corridor into northwestern Ontario, is why the Liberal Party has worked with the Conservatives to force through these amendments to cut down debate in committee to 60 seconds so that the effects of this would not be reviewed. Why was it that the Liberal members in committee worked with the Conservatives to ensure there would be no public hearings?

When we got to Thunder Bay everybody knew that Thunder Bay was going to be one of the main areas where we would have committee hearings. Lo and behold there were two Liberal members in that community who broke ranks with the rest of northern Ontario. They were standing proud for the bill and standing proud for this sellout. I was wondering at the time whether the Liberal Party was trying to stop hearings in northern Ontario to save the embarrassment of their own members who signed on to this bill.

The hon. member has been in Thunder Bay as well. He has spoken to the workers. Does he think perhaps that the Liberals are going along with the Conservatives in order to try to protect ridings in northwestern Ontario where members have sold out their own workers and sold out their own communities?

[Federal Accountability Act, November 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my hon. colleague's speech with great interest because there are major steps that need to be advanced.

Picking up on what the Treasury Board President has said about shining a light into dark places, I would be very interested in seeing if he would be willing to shine the light just a little to the left of him and down one row because there are certainly lots of questions being raised in that direction in terms of the heritage minister and her key links with lobbyists.

I refer the House to a speech given last week by Glenn O'Farrell, president of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters. He stated that there was:

--an unprecedented level of regulatory review, from telecommunications, to radio, to the future of television in Canada...we need to pick up the pace.

The message from that industry is clear. It wants the government to move on its little wish list. I am sure the hon. member already knows that Glenn O'Farrell ran a large fundraiser for the heritage minister when she was in opposition last year. In fact, it was run in the boardrooms of Corus Entertainment.

I would like to follow up on this with a newspaper quote where it states:

This cloud over Canadian Heritage policy could not come at a worse time. With the need for a new CRTC chair, the prospect of a new policy initiative to address the future of Canadian broadcasting and content rules, and the focus on copyright reform, the department promises to be in the spotlight in the months ahead. These initiatives may now be forced to share that spotlight with a regular stream of questions about [the heritage minister's] fundraising activities that could leave Canadians asking whether there is a hefty price tag associated with key government policies.

The hon. member comes from a city that is dependent on broadcasting. There are thousands of jobs in the television industry in Toronto. I would like to ask if she has any suggestions that this government might want to look at in order to help keep the heritage minister on the straight and narrow, to have her listen to all groups and not just key lobbyists who meet with her at fundraisers. Is there a way that we can work with the heritage minister so she could have a broader input apart from the people who write cheques for her?

[Federal Accountability Act, November 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to my hon. colleague. I do not know if I would call this a discourse. I might actually call it an anti-discourse. In the normal form of ordered debate, after 20 minutes one should actually get a sense of where the member is going.

I would say that it was almost brilliant in the way he laid out the initial issue, which is the need for accountability. By accountability, we could use the word transparency, transparency like a pool. We could look through that pool to see the problem.

The problem for the people of Canada was making the recalcitrant Liberal Party accountable so it would stop stealing people's money. We had this job before us in Parliament and this was the order of the bill. It started out that we were looking at the pool and it was a very transparent pool. Everyone agreed on the need to do this work.

The member began with a vague movement through the waters. We tried to follow the rational course of logic of where he was going until the sheer turbidity of word volume left it so vague and cloudy that we actually lost sight of the original problem of accountability, which was to make his party accountable to the people of Canada, and why we had this bill brought in.

What struck me, after hearing the hon. member's speech, was that he seemed to be very concerned that we were rushing the party into accountability, that by the end of this session we would actually deliver the goods to the people of Canada and that we should have more reflection. He talked about how the governing party had to work with other parties to force this disobedient party to actually get the bill through.

If he is so concerned about that, I would like to ask him about another bill, the softwood lumber bill. On the softwood lumber bill we had asked for national hearings because the passage of the softwood lumber bill will affect every forest community in the country. It was the Liberal Party, in collusion with the government party, that ensured there would be no hearings. It was the Liberal Party at committee that worked to ensure that debate on the major amendments that would affect the softwood lumber industry were limited to 60 seconds in its haste to get this off the political agenda.

I guess I am flabbergasted that the member is upset that we are actually trying to get something done with this accountability bill, a bill for which we have waited many years. His own party has put such brutal restrictions on the ability of members of Parliament to review legislation on softwood lumber that they will have profound implications for the future of our forest dependent industries.

[Federal Accountability Act, November 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleague's speech about the threat posed to the Wheat Board. Like him, I recognize that the government and that party have done shameless things in the past to interfere with the work of the Wheat Board, but I would like to ask the member a question.

If we manage to get the Wheat Board exempted from access to information, will the member's party support this accountability act to ensure that corruption is not endemic to Ottawa and to ensure that there is some kind of accountability? Would he work with the rest of the House to ensure that the unelected senators, many of whom flipped pancakes for the Liberal Party for 30 years as their ticket to the good life, will not further interfere with our attempts to bring accountability to the House?

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, November 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this bill because the issue of boundaries has had a profound impact on the region of northern Ontario.

My own riding was taken out in the last redistribution. Arbitrary lines were drawn on the map which divided up rural regions that had long been a homogenous whole and a patchwork of ridings were created instead. This was done with no input from the people in the north. I am very aware of the sense of disenfranchisement that exists among people in the north.

What disturbs me when we discuss this issue is to hear members of other parties stand up and say all votes should be equal and everything should be fair. The reality is that all votes are not equal and have never been equal. In ridings in northern Ontario the average population is about 85,000 to 90,000 people. The average population of a riding in Saskatchewan is 69,000 people. We need to apply the same standard to northern Ontario as that applied to Saskatchewan. Let us apply that to Yukon where there are 35,000 people per seat. Why is it that Prince Edward Island has four seats? Is that 25,000 people per seat? These were guaranteed seats and I do not object to that. My colleague from the Bloc is of course opposing this bill as I expected she would. I am surprised in some ways because Quebec has also been guaranteed a certain number of seats.

The problem in Ontario is the major dislocation between the needs of the rural north and the needs of the urban north. One of the fundamental principles of democracy is the availability of a member of Parliament to his or her constituents. I lived in Toronto for awhile. I could walk 15 minutes one way to an MP's office and 15 minutes the other way to another MP's office. The riding of Timmins--James Bay is larger than the United Kingdom. I have gone into parts of my riding that no other member of Parliament has gone into before.

Talking about disenfranchisement, we just need to look at the James Bay coast where upward of 30% of the population does not have birth certificates. They do not have SIN numbers. They are not even on the map. They live in terrible conditions. I am talking about places like Kashechewan, Attawapiskat and Fort Albany. Health Canada has never provided proper health services to these communities. It just has a MASH unit available.

If a child gets sick and has to be flown out and that child does not have a birth certificate, the cost is charged to the regional health authority. The regional health authority in James Bay is swimming in debt because the federal government will not accept the fact that so many people who live on that land even exist. A major deficit has occurred in terms of health and education dollars.

Some may ask why these people do not have birth certificates and other documentation. The federal and provincial governments have written these people off. Their officials never go there. Our office is there all the time. We are the ones filling out the birth certificates and the other forms. A member said we should get a little more organized and do what is done in southern Ontario. We run five offices out of our region and our staff are on the road all the time.

This is not just about constituency service. This is about political service as well. I sit in the House and listen to members talking about how unfair it is that Saskatchewan does not get to keep 100% of its non-renewable resources. I hear about the need for Newfoundland to maintain rights to its non-renewable resources. Northern Ontario is entirely dependent on non-renewable resources and none of that money has ever gone back to the region.

Kirkland Lake is a struggling gold mine community. In the 1930s right up until the 1960s, Kirkland Lake was keeping the economy of Ontario alive. None of that money went back to the community. Across the border in Rouyn-Noranda and Val-d'Or there are communities that created one-quarter of the wealth that northern Ontario created and they have proper cities with proper infrastructure.

There have been years of neglect in the resource-based communities of northern Ontario. We need to ensure that a fair system is in place similar to southern Ontario. We need to ensure that when these other communities expand and prosper that their prosperity is not at the expense of communities in northern Ontario that are stretched out over a vast area. These communities face major infrastructure problems, major economic problems, and have massive youth out-migration.

We need to maintain a strong political voice for those people. It is only fair. That is what we have in other parts of Canada. We are not asking to go down to 68,000 or 69,000 population size type seats that we see in Nova Scotia. No, we will live with our 85,000 plus that we have in northern Ontario.

The city of Sudbury, which has a bigger population base than Prince Edward Island, has the same amount of political representation as P.E.I. We recognize that we will do without, but I find it absolutely astounding that members from southern Ontario stand in the House and say that by allowing the people of northern Ontario to have the same fair voice as rural regions and the rest of the country, it is somehow disenfranchising 905 and is somehow ripping off people in Markham by preventing them from having their elected representative in the House. It just does not make sense.

It does not make sense when there is a need to have voices articulating the issues of rural based people, people living in forest and mining economies who understand the issues of northern Ontario. We have a right to be heard in the House the same way that people in Yukon, Prince Edward Island and Quebec have a right to representation, and the same way the rural regions and the rest of the country are given that clear exemption.

We are not asking to go down to their levels of 69,000, 35,000 or 25,000 persons per constituency. We are willing to accept what we have, but we are saying if southern Ontario continues to grow at an unchecked rate, it should not be coming on the backs of communities like Red Rock, Iroquois Falls, Sudbury and Timmins.