Charlie Angus

[Business of Supply, May 30th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the hon. member's speech and I find some of it hard to fit into what he is promising, what the delivered results will be, and the fact of being flexible. How much more flexible do we need to be when our domestic film audience in English Canada has deteriorated to about the 5% market?

We have seen in terms of cultural policy in Canada that if we do not have regulation, the private broadcasters simply do not step up to the plate as the hon. member promises. We have seen with Cancon that 30 years ago there was virtually no Canadian music being played on the airwaves by the private broadcasters until the Canadian government insisted. Cancon has created an international star system because of regulation and because we set clear rules in place.

We have not had nearly the same set of rules in television and neither have we had them in film, and our industries continue to lag. We only have to look back to 1999 and the CRTC decision which had devastating impacts for domestic television production in this country.

I am trying to get a sense of why it is that we should let the government have all the flexibility it needs to open the market without having clear commitments from it on what kind of regulations it will enforce in order to maintain a vital domestic cultural industry.

[Media, May 29th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, while the PMO has declared war on the Ottawa media, some people are saying it is a spat and others are saying it is just the intransigence of a man who cannot dare to be second guessed.

I would suggest that the Prime Minister is following through on a carefully planned out strategy, because this is about deciding who gets to ask the questions of Canada's most powerful man. It is about taking the press's power here and putting it under the thumb of the PMO's spinmeisters.

We only have to look south of the border to see the absolute failure if the media acquiesced on such rights. When hard questions needed to be asked about the Bush agenda in Iraq, the U.S. media went along for the ride. Its failure to stand up to the Republican game plan made it complicit in a lie that was used to trigger an illegal war that has led to wholesale human rights abuses.

It is not good enough to simply get the clip or the photo op. To maintain a functioning democracy, we need to ensure that the press hold politicians to account, and politicians, for their part, have to be willing to stand up to the questioning without giving intimidation or contempt for the nation's media.

[The Environment, May 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, before there were five priorities, there was one priority, and that was to build a firewall around Alberta's oil and gas industry. That firewall is the minister. Ask her about the environment and we get these ramblings about the Liberals or about economic ruin. Ask her to take a role on the international stage and she will cut and run.

I am asking her to be honest with Canadians and tell Canada that she has no plan other than something that was cooked up in a Calgary boardroom.

[The Environment, May 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, this past winter, hundreds of trucks bound for Victor Diamond Mine could not reach the site because there was no ice on the James Bay. Twenty years ago that would have been unimaginable. That is now a fact of life.

All across the Nishnawbe Aski Nation we are facing the economic impacts of global warming. We want action. We want commitments. We want stewardship. Instead we have a cheerleader for big oil and gas.

Since the environment minister is so clearly unwilling to stand up and fight for the environment, will her government at least pick up the economic tab for the cost that is impacting our northern regions?

[Canada's Commitment in Afghanistan, May 17th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Etobicoke—Lakeshore asked if the mission would change. The mission has changed. That is what we are debating tonight.

We are discussing a change in the role that Canada has played in Afghanistan, which has been a fantastic role in terms of our ability to rebuild that country. We are now involved in a counter-insurgency operation under Operation Enduring Freedom. Canadians want to know why we are under this operation.

I would like to bring to the attention of the member what happen under Operation Enduring Freedom. At midnight on May 22, 2002, two U.S. attack helicopters were brought into the village of Hajibirgit and Sten grenades were used against families. U.S. forces grabbed village men, took them to Kandahar, stripped them naked, shaved their beards and interrogated them in front of female soldiers. The village is now a dead village because the villagers have fled and have not been back. That is what happened under U.S. command.

What is the wisdom of taking the incredible work that the Canadian army is doing and putting it into that kind of action, which is counter-insurgency, and attacking villages as opposed to building villages?

[Canada's Commitment in Afghanistan, May 17th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the hon. member will agree, as would everyone in the House, that Canada has pulled its weight in Afghanistan. We have carried a major load in rebuilding that country.

The concern the New Democrats have had is whether a mission should be initiated where we continue to fly under Operation Enduring Freedom. I think the U.S. styled counter-insurgency methods of this operation are fundamentally different from where the Canadian army has gone and where many of the Canadian people are comfortable going.

I would like to bring to the member's attention the fact that right now the Canadian government has publicity ads in the Washington subways with what I think is a fairly cheap slogan, “Boots on the Ground”, ads for a Canadian website, CanadianAlly.com, where we have all kinds of nice facts about trade with the U.S.

So there is a question I have to ask the member. How comfortable is he knowing that our troops are in harm's way while the government is promoting trade by the fact that our troops are on the ground fighting a U.S. style counter-insurgency?

[Point of Order, May 17th, 2006]

I believe it is a question of privilege, Mr. Speaker, when the Minister of the Environment stands up in the House and accuses a member who is doing his job on behalf of Canadians and constituents of going on the taxpayers' dollar. That is what she said: to use the taxpayers' money. It is not his job to carry her ideological luggage when she goes to Europe. I--

[Business of Supply, May 11th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the hon. member's speech. I want to get his perspective because I am quite confused. I spent the whole last session of Parliament listening to the then environment critic for the Conservatives, who was from Alberta, give us his flat earth theories on how greenhouse gas emissions were something that had been cooked up, had never been proven. The Conservatives could not seem to understand where this had come from.

Now there is a new environment minister who is also from Alberta, by the way. First, we heard she was going to have a made in Canada solution. I have been sitting in the house wondering what this made in Canada solution looks like. It sounds to me like it was a made in a Calgary boardroom solution. I notice that this week I am not hearing anything about a made in Canada solution. What I am hearing is that we have to be honest with Canadians. It seems that a sudden switch has been made from a made in Canada solution a week ago to being honest with Canadians this week.

The Conservatives talk about being honest with Canadians. Yesterday the environment minister told us that every plane, train and automobile on the entire planet would have to be stopped if the government had to live up to any of its commitments. Today she added that we would have to shut off all the lights in the country on top of that. Then she said, and it struck me because it was so fascinating, that if we gave the people of Toronto a break on their metro passes, the environment would turn around overnight.

I am quite confused as to exactly where the government is going with this. If I wanted someone to be a puppy dog for industry, I would ask the industry minister. If I wanted big oil to speak, I would talk to big oil. We ask the environment minister of this country, someone whose job it is to stand up and champion the environment, and we get those kinds of drab answers.

Does the member have any clue as to where the Conservative Party is going in terms of environmental policy?

[The Budget, May 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, when we look back at the Liberal record, it is like looking in a fun house mirror. We are supposed to look at something that is narrow in terms of what it has delivered and we are supposed to think of it is as wide as the ocean.

I was stunned to hear the member's view of the role of government. The former government downloaded the debt onto the backs of students across Canada. We have a situation now where students come out with $40,000 worth of debt from their university educations because the former government made no commitments to post-secondary education. It downloaded the debt onto municipalities year after year while it accumulated the surplus. It did nothing except make promises in the red book, but it never delivered upon it.

We have heard the talk about what the Liberals achieved at Kelowna. I remind the former government about the years of neglect as the surplus rose. We have no national water standards on first nations. There are no health standards. There are no education standards, except those that have been deliberately pegged lower than non-native schools because the former government did not want to pay a single dime above what it absolutely had to for first nations, while it was swimming in surplus dollars.

How can the hon. member stand there without blushing when he makes such outrageous comments on what the current government's obvious lack of vision is compared to his government's lack of vision?

[The Budget, May 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am very interested in the discussion of infrastructure. The number one fact that is holding back economic development in northern Ontario is the lack of infrastructure investment over the last dozen years.

The COMRIF program, which is in place now, does not work. It does not work for northern communities such as Moosonee, Larder Lake and Elk Lake, which continually are rejected because there is not enough money in the COMRIF fund due to trying to fund such a large area across Ontario.

I have a question for the minister. The tax cuts are not going to fix the roads in Moosonee. What does the government have in place that will work for small rural communities to rebuild our infrastructure?