Charlie Angus

[Criminal Code, June 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on the member's last answer.

There is a concern that the bill would not survive a charter challenge. There are many unanswered questions and we are being asked to vote on a bill that will have profound implications for the dispensing of justice right across this country.

Does the hon. member think that the government, in its haste to fulfill an election promise, has not done the appropriate due diligence to provide adequate legislation that will withstand charter challenges and actually be useful to courts and to people in the various provincial jurisdictions across this country?

[Criminal Code, June 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the hon. member's speech. I am concerned about the issue of how the conditional sentencing changes will affect the aboriginal population who are incarcerated at rates much higher than anyone else in the general population. In Saskatchewan 64% of conditional sentences are being handed out to aboriginal offenders.

Does the member have any thoughts on the implications of this for further incarceration of aboriginal people who need preventative programs to work with and conditional sentencing circles?

[Criminal Code, June 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague's speech, because one of the things that I have come to realize is that legislation is a very blunt instrument. When we want to respond to a specific incident that has happened in the community and we propose legislation that runs across Canada, it has profound implications.

For example, as a former school board trustee, I dealt with the issue of zero tolerance. It seemed that every politician in Ontario at that time was jumping up with plans for zero tolerance to take all the discretion away from the school principals, to the point where I was at meetings where grade twos and threes were referred to as repeat offenders.

I would like to hear the hon. member's response on the necessity of having some level of discretion in this. If we put a blanket prescription on the judiciary, has the hon. member thought of the kinds of costs we are going to see in court battles that will be dragged out and in terms of incarceration that will be downloaded to the provinces, because there will be costs picked up by them? What about the costs to communities of the increased maintaining of jails? Has the hon. member looked into the implications that are going to result from the legislation we are talking about?

[Aboriginal Affairs, June 1st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, he can blame anyone he wants. He has had ample opportunity to find the money and come up with a plan. He has done nothing.

I would like to read into the record today what the member said in the House. He said Canadians were “sickened by the squalor of Kashechewan...the third world squalor, filth and poverty...their children with scabies”.

The people of Kashechewan met with the Minister of Indian Affairs, they begged for his help and he did nothing. These are the man's words. These are the words by which he and his party will be judged.

[Aboriginal Affairs, June 1st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, for months the people of Kashechewan have tried to work with the government to implement the agreement for a new community on safe ground. They have supplied study after study and they have jumped through hoop after hoop. Yesterday they were told that there was no money, that there was no plan and that there was no political recognition of an agreement signed by the Government of Canada.

I have one question for the minister before a single refugee flies home to that rathole on the coast. Will he stand up in the House and tell the people of Canada that he respects an agreement that was signed by the Government of Canada and the people of Kashechewan First Nation?

[Business of Supply, May 30th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, definitely this cuts to the heart of where we go with broadcast, which would be AT&T delivering broadcast television over the Internet and bypassing any domestic cultural rights.

I am somewhat confused. There is the fear that if we do not kneel before capital all the time, it will pick up its toys and go someplace such as the Caribbean. That is fine. Bell Globemedia can move to the Caribbean, but there still will be a market here, which people will want to access.

I do not see our domestic radio, television markets or media saying that because they cannot provide us ABC news all the time or FOX news instead of Canadian news, that they will pack up and go someplace else. That simply is not a reality. The reality is our broadcasters will respond to the regulations that are put before them. What we must put before them are clear rules. Some of those rules must be an obligation for domestic, regional Canadian voices.

[Business of Supply, May 30th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it is a very germane question because we are perhaps 21 million anglophones spread across 4,000 kilometres. We know our biggest trading partner and our number one ally sees culture as a product, the same as Tide soap or GM cars.

We know the necessity of maintaining a sense of culture. I represent an isolated, rural area in the north. My constituents do not hear their voice very often. They do not hear their own cultural expression. Therefore, there is a necessity for government to play a role in maintaining a fabric. Otherwise, if we do not see the importance of maintaining a cultural fabric, then what are we other than 21 million potential shoppers at a Wal-Mart?

With regard to the success of English cultural production, where there have been regulations, we have been able to compete internationally. Where there have been no obligations for regulation, we have been almost wiped off the map. When comparing film to music, there have been complete diametric positions.

Quebec and the francophone regions of the country have been somewhat more placated because there is an insulation factor. We see the success in Quebec of a domestic film industry that is maintained by the province, with support from the federal government. It also is because of the sense of having a language difference from our number one trading partner. The other parts of the country are very envious.

[Business of Supply, May 30th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Parkdale—High Park.

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to once again rise in this House and represent the people of Timmins--James Bay and the New Democratic Party in a discussion on the importance of maintaining cultural diversity.

I appreciate the motion put forward by my hon. colleague, the member for Ottawa—Vanier, because it is clear we need to give direction as the majority in this House to the government on where we need to go in terms of our obligations with UNESCO. Certainly over the last dozen years we have seen a mere lip service paid to cultural programming in this country. While we had some of the biggest surpluses in Canadian history, we saw steady cuts to the Canada Council, the CBC, regional programming and other arts programming.

In Timmins—James Bay, for example, under the Liberals, organizations that worked to promote Franco-Ontarians' language and identity lacked support. These organizations—the ACFO, ARTEM and the La Ronde cultural centre—fought for the vitality and heritage of families living in rural, isolated northern communities. The government must make commitments to these communities and these programs.

There is an obligation for governments to be committed, but we have to look at this in terms of a larger issue which is taking place right now, which is the trade component and foreign ownership issues related to cultural practices. All over the world countries are struggling against an ever-decreasing gene pool of cultural experience. They are fighting in every country to maintain a sense of regional identity and regional voices in the face of this mono-cropping Disney culture.

What we have seen in Canada is that paying lip service is not enough. Clear policies have to be in place. It is meaningless to talk about our support for UNESCO if we as a Parliament do not, number one, support our cultural policies very clearly on the ground, and number two, give very clear direction to our trade negotiators to insist that our cultural rights will not be traded away. What is very clear is that after UNESCO the United States has moved much more aggressively to get cultural issues on the table in terms of bilateral agreements. The U.S. does not support what is happening at UNESCO, and we see at the GATS in Geneva the ongoing efforts to undermine these rights.

The negotiations on the General Agreement on Trade in Services run counter to our commitments to UNESCO. For example, why offer Quebec a seat at UNESCO when the Conservatives have already eliminated our cultural diversity?

The ongoing negotiations taking place at the GATS right now will have profound implications on our ability to maintain a cultural identity. For example, in March, when the industry minister received the recommendations on changes to telecom, he said that it would take weeks and months to study and to come back with recommendations on lifting foreign ownership restrictions. Yet we know that at the same time he was receiving that, Canadian trade delegations in Geneva already had been given very clear instructions.

Canada is part of a pluri-lateral request to the countries of the GATS to strip foreign ownership restrictions on all telecom industries. The trade request, as put forward by the Conservative government, is a radical change in telecom policy. It runs counter to present Canadian law and it will have profound implications on our ability to maintain domestic cultural policy in Canada. The Conservative government has already begun pushing ahead with these talks without a debate in Parliament, without input from stakeholders and without telling Canadians what is on the table.

We must look at the Conservative agenda for restrictions on media, telephone and cable ownership. I think that the Conservatives will want to open the markets to foreign ownership.

The NDP recognizes that Canada must support cultural industries. It must support broadcasting, the arts and magazines because they are vitally important to Canada's identity and its survival in a privatized global market.

When the telecommunications review was going on, questions were asked. We have not heard answers. GATS discussions are ongoing, but we have not heard any answers.

We have to look at who are the main people on the file. We look at the industry minister. Before he was elected, he was with the right-wing Montreal think tank that was committed to the complete free market deregulation of telecommunication. The other key player on the file is the member for Vancouver Kingsway. The pluri-lateral request had to have been initiated when he was the Liberal minister in charge of the review of telecom. Now he is the key figure on the trade talks on deregulation of telecom. Perhaps he did not have to cross very far on the ideological floor to fit in with the Prime Minister's agenda.

The question that has to be asked is, what do changes to telecom have to do with our ability to maintain cultural policy and our obligations at UNESCO? Given the convergence of telecom, the same companies that are open for foreign takeovers in terms of cable television and Internet services are the same companies that provide most of our radio, television and even newspaper services. Would we expect that these companies will divest themselves of their broadcast obligations if we change the foreign ownership restriction. It is a joke to suggest that somehow we will be able to maintain domestic Canadian content quotas, build a firewall around our domestic industry, if we allow the sellout of the ownership of that to U.S. giants.

In light of this, whatever promises we get from the government in terms of its support, it is meaningless. At this point Canada is on the receiving end of a GATS pluri-lateral request in Geneva in the area of audio-visual services. The ongoing discussions, which we are not privy to and which we have no idea what mandate the government has given its negotiators, include questions of stripping domestic content, erasing the favourable tax policies that have encouraged the domestic film production in Canada and ending all foreign ownership restrictions in the delivery and production of audio-visual services.

Parliament has set very clear limits on foreign ownership in broadcast and telecom. We need to insist that our trade negotiators, who are undertaking to represent Canada on the international level, understand that they have to be in compliance with present Canadian law. If the government wants to come forward with an agenda to change our laws on broadcast and telecom, it should then come into the House and open it to debate, but it cannot partake in this in Geneva and then bring it back as a fait accompli.

Any changes to domestic ownership in Canada, any changes to who controls telecom or broadcast, has to be brought before the House. I am very pleased that the motion has opened up this issue because it allows us for the first time to bring these issues forward to the Canadian people.

Therefore, I would like to put forward an amendment to aid us in our discussions and I think also aid the government in understanding its obligations to Parliament. I move:

That the motion be amended to insert the following immediately after “that the government”:

“provide direction to trade negotiators to ensure that domestic cultural rights are not undermined in any trade talks and”

Then we continue on with the motion “the House insist that the government...”.

[Business of Supply, May 30th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up on the question the parliamentary secretary posed in terms of choice. We see in this world of privatized culture often the choice of do we want a Coke with our fries or do we want a Sprite with our fries.

The question being put forward with the example of the cars is that we have now mandated in Canada a notion of choice where of 100 stations that the CRTC gave licences to, how many were set aside for Canadian programming? Perhaps eight or ten. How many of those were francophone? Perhaps four. There was no obligation to provide aboriginal radio programming. There was no obligation to provide any kind of real consumer choice.

At the end of the day, when the consumer buys a Chevy car, turns on the radio and there are 92 stations playing all America all the time, for the parliamentary secretary to suggest that is choice is a complete abdication of the fundamental rule that we have maintained in Canada, that our airwaves belong to the people of Canada and the people of Canada have a right to hear their voices on their airwaves.

I suggest to the member if he is being accused of being pie in the sky, what is pie in the sky when we have five or six stations in French across the entire country? I am being very generous with my examples of how many stations are being set aside for Canadian francophone content, because there is no real choice on the stations that are being offered right now.

[Business of Supply, May 30th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the hon. member for at least one or two particulars. He is talking about platitudes and saying that this is some kind of meaningless exercise that undermines the Lincoln report.

I would remind him that the parliamentary secretary for his party opposed the Lincoln report. I am confused. Is he saying that his party will now support the recommendations of the Lincoln report when the parliamentary secretary, chosen by the Prime Minister, was against the Lincoln report?

I am looking at the report to see what particular platitude bothers him so much. We are asking the government to ensure that we maintain or enhance existing Canadian cultural content requirements. Is that some kind of outdated platitude that will affect our artists? We are asking to maintain current restrictions on foreign ownership in the cultural sector. Is that the issue? We are asking for continued financial support for public broadcasting in both official languages is that the platitude that is bothering him and that he thinks is handcuffing Parliament and his party?

He seems to be bothered somewhat but I cannot quite get my finger on what it is exactly he feels is so outdated and restrictive that it is taking away the mandate that was won by the Conservative Party on January 23.