Charlie Angus

[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.

[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?