Charlie Angus

[Canadian Heritage, November 7th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, next week, the heritage minister is holding a major fundraiser and, for the price of a ticket, one gets access not just to the heritage minister but to the industry minister. The woman who is flogging the tickets for the minister just happens to be Charlotte Bell who is head of regulatory affairs for CanWest. She just happens to be the go-to gal for industry trying to influence the upcoming regulatory review affecting both heritage and industry.

The broadcast review happens in two weeks. The cash grab happens next week. Why is the minister using her office to trade political access for political contributions?

[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, November 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, 70 years ago today CBC went on the air. For seven decades it has been a public commons for the social and political discourse of our country from coast to coast to coast.

Yes, CBC is about hockey, sure it is about comedy and it is definitely about top-notch journalism, but fundamentally it is about creating a dialogue and that dialogue is what we need to create a nation.

We have only to look south of the border where the privatized airwaves have turned political discourse into the beating of political jungle drums and attack ads.

I would like to congratulate employees of Radio-Canada and of the CBC for their exemplary work in all regions of Canada. For example, in northeastern Ontario, they play a vital role in the life and culture of the north.

Now it is time for Parliament to do its part. We need a long term stable commitment to funding. We need a clear mandate. We need an end to the political patronage appointments out of the PMO. If we do that, it will be another 70 great years--

[Business of Supply, November 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, while I was visiting my local legion in Timmins, Legion Branch 88, the other day and talking with some of the people there, it occurred to me that the legion was not an old folks' home, a golden age club, but the repository in every community across the country that protects our future veterans. The young ones who are there now will be the legion 20 and 30 years from now protecting them.

While I was at the legion, a Korean war vet came up to me and said, “You know, Charlie, we went over there to a war and we fought in a war. We were still young when we came back and we didn't understand everything we were being told. But when we got home, we found out we weren't in a war, we were in a police action, and because we were technically in a police action, we weren't eligible for the same benefits that war veterans got”. He then said, “So, Charlie, when you see the Prime Minister on television saying this isn't a war in Afghanistan, this is a police action, or, yes, we're in a war but it's not a war”. He said, “You know why they're doing that? Because these young men who come back to our riding, 30 and 40 years from now ,when they need help, they will not be getting the same level of benefits that they deserve as veterans”.

Because the member has done such strong work on raising issues about Afghanistan, what obligations do we have as a nation to ensure that our Afghanistan veterans are given the full protection as veterans of war?

[Business of Supply, November 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I find it ironic to hear the numbers being floated. On the record I would have to say that I think they are absurd in terms of what it is costing us.

I would like to give members an example. A senior in my community who grew up in the Depression asked me if I knew what it was like in the Depression when the kids were hungry and the government said there was not a cent for them. The government had no money for them.

When they went through the Depression, he said, there was no unemployment money and there was nothing for them, but when the war came, boy oh boy, cost was not an option. We got the boots on them and we sent them off. We sent them over by the thousands. Cost was no option. The government did not consider it. Most of them never came home and the ones who did have had to deal with a parsimonious response from government year after year.

In my own riding, there is a widow who was given a pension of $3.25 a month. There is no problem with feeding us at lunch every day in the House. What everyone in this House gets fed at lunch is worth more than the $3.25 a month we were giving that widow, and this is in 2006.

I would like to ask the member why she thinks it is that the Conservative government stands here and comes up with such outrageously inflated figures when we are dealing with the simple fact of coming up with an honourable conclusion for what our veterans and their widows have lived through.

[Business of Supply, November 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for bringing this motion before the House today. Since I became a member of Parliament we have discussed all manner of issues from the profound to the tawdry in this House, but this is the first time I can remember that we will spend a day dealing with issues concerning veterans.

As members of Parliament we owe our veterans, past and present, a great obligation. Yet, it seems that the glaciers are moving quicker than we are in terms of dealing with their needs and the needs of widows, and in dealing with the clawbacks to their pensions and the taxing of their disability payments.

I have question for the member. What do we need to do in the House of Commons to show a clear commitment to our veterans right across this country? What are the steps that need to be taken?

[Questions on the Order Paper, November 2nd, 2006]

With regard to the Canadian Heritage program announced in December 2002 that allocated $172.5 million in funding to establish and operate a new Aboriginal Languages and Cultures Centre: (a) what were the year-by-year funding totals to this program; (b) what was the status of this program when the current government came to power; (c) what funding changes have taken place since January 2006; (d) what, if any, future plans are there for this program; and (e) what initiatives is the governement currently undertaking to help preserve Aboriginal languages?

[Petitions, November 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition I would like to bring forward today concerns the need for an auto policy in Canada, particularly the rise in concern over current free trade negotiations with Korea and what that will do to our domestic auto market, because we are very dependent in this country on our auto industry. There has been major bleed-off in this sector and we are not seeing any replacements for the lost jobs.

The petitioners call upon the Government of Canada to, first, cancel negotiations for this agreement with Korea, which would worsen the one-way flood of automotive products into our country, and second, to do as we in the New Democratic Party have called for some time, which is to create an automotive trade policy. Part of this would require Korea and other offshore markets to purchase an equivalent volume of finished autos from North America as a condition of its continued access to our market.

I am very pleased to present this to the House.

[Petitions, November 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to bring forward to the House today two petitions.

The first is signed by people from right across this country in regard to developing new copyright legislation that recognizes the careful balance between the rights of the creator and fair public use. Given that digital technologies have recently given copyright holders the ability to upset the traditional balance in the Copyright Act by preventing Canadians from accessing works that they should have fair access to, the petitioners are asking Parliament to ensure that users are recognized as interested parties in any future copyright decisions and to ensure that any material changes in copyright legislation preserve the concept of fair use and the rights of users to fairly access works.

[Committees of the House, October 23rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's math. We have the government telling us that it has to stand up for the taxpayers on this 35¢, as the member said. We had the other member from the heritage committee saying that we should be arguing about terrorism rather than culture when, again, he is on the culture committee and these are fundamental cultural issues.

I do believe that this is round one of a series of major cuts, because we have yet to hear from the government serious commitments in terms of a cultural vision. In terms of Radio-Canada and CBC, Canada is already pretty much near the bottom, except for the United States, in terms of how much money we put into our public television and public radio. We are almost at the bottom.

We are almost at the bottom on key sectors in terms of arts development. There is no other country in the civilized western world that does not feel that having a strong domestic cultural voice in terms of its television, its magazines, its development and its outreach is a laudable and fundamental goal. Other western countries know, as the government does not, that it is not just the creation of an identity that holds people together, but these are also very important industrial sectors.

They are industrial sectors. It is not charity we are talking about. We are not robbing the poor taxpayer to give to these indolent, wasteful museums that are sitting on their rear ends when they should be working. These are industrial sectors that draw tourists, just like our other industrial cultural sectors, and we need a government that is willing to stand up and work with them instead of feed off them.

[Committees of the House, October 23rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I find it highly enlightening that the parliamentary secretary for heritage is, first of all, accusing me of saying that I will never form government so how dare I speak about policy. But his party did form government, and what did it do? It turned around and took a campaign commitment that it made to museums to deal with the chronic underfunding and ripped up that agreement.

Then the Conservatives turn around and have the gall to stand in this House and say they are delivering value for taxpayers, the gall to hide behind the taxpayer as an excuse for the fact that they raided the museums fund. They did not raid the treasury. They knew that museums were underfunded and they took that money.

They also raided the treasury while they were at it because they took $13 billion in surplus and are putting it specifically on the debt when they could have put money into reinvestment and education. They could have put money into infrastructure. They could have put money into literacy. They raided the illiterates of this country.

My God, that man there is supposed to represent culture in the House, and I have yet to hear him stand up and defend culture. We asked for a champion of culture and, as for what we got, I will not use the words “pack of ideological buzzards” because I could be ruled out of order. What we have is a bunch of yes-men to Bay Street.