Denise Savoie

[Child Care, May 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I want to salute child care workers in my riding who are doing outstanding work in difficult circumstances with poor pay and no benefits.

While the Prime Minister recently recognized extraordinary teachers like Kim Atkinson of Victoria and others, his government is undermining their work by offering a piecemeal approach to the national child care crisis. In Victoria alone, 13,000 child care spaces are needed. Across the country, waiting lists for day care spaces are years long. Meanwhile the government's inaction is opening the door to big box child care.

How can the government justify the hypocrisy of recognizing the excellence of well trained teachers, yet allow big box operators to enter Canada and specify in their ads that people without training can apply, as one company is doing in Air Canada's May issue of enRoute magazine?

What Canada really needs is a national child care system with standards that protect our children and ensure workers have decent working conditions.

[Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act, May 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative government's handling of the Chalk River incident shook the confidence of many Canadians with respect to our nuclear industry. Many of my constituents expressed their concerns to me. I think we would all feel more confident if we were to leave it to nuclear scientists and engineers to decide where nuclear safety resides rather than leaving it up to politicians.

Given the firing of the president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission by the Conservative government, I am wondering, as are my constituents, does Canada still have an independent nuclear safety regulator? How accountable is it now? How transparent are the mechanisms to ensure the safety of the operations of the nuclear industry in Canada?

[Canada-EFTA Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, May 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member seems to have glossed over the issue of supply management. He said that dairy farmers, for example, were consulted and were not concerned. He said he is supportive of fair trade, but he and his party seem to be advocating free trade. I do not know if he missed the comment from the National Farmers Union before the standing committee, where it stated that the most critical and highly negative aspect of this deal from its point of view is its impact on supply management, for example in the dairy industry, by eliminating the import tariff.

It seems to me that supply management should be part of the architecture of fair trade, to help ensure food supply and food safety around the world. It is really key to the model upon which cooperative agricultural trade should be built.

I am wondering if the member would comment on that, because in this agreement, although it has some positive aspects, we seem to be certainly going away from supply management. It has no resemblance to the fair trade practices that he referred to.

[Canada-EFTA Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, May 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, as a member of Parliament who represents a coastal city, I am keenly aware that Canada has the largest coastline in the world and yet has no strategy for its shipbuilding sector. This sector is very important in my riding.

I listened carefully to the hon. member and he seems satisfied with the tariffication system that is being proposed in this agreement over a 15 year period. Given that the United States has managed to carve out shipbuilding from NAFTA through the Jones Act, I am wondering why he thinks that what we have managed to negotiate is adequate, given what the Americans have insisted on to protect their shipbuilding industry. It seems to me that after that period of time there would be absolutely no protection. In the meantime, there seems to be no strategy to develop and support our shipbuilding industry.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, May 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to continue on the same train of thought. Food security is an issue that is very important to me.

I wonder if the hon. member could explain what measures the government could take to provide additional help to farmers to better meet this emerging yet recognized need, namely, food security. That is, crops must be grown in a sustainable manner, instead of encouraging the large multinationals.

I would like to hear the member's comments on this.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, May 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, one of the largest pools of potential energy is that which is wasted through inefficient use. My colleague raised an excellent point, which I did not get an opportunity to cover, about the number of jobs that could be created from an advanced, solid energy retrofit program for homes and buildings, both government and commercial buildings. If we set a target of 200,000 homes per year, and it could be any number, we would begin to see some real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

On the issue of wasting energy, I heard about standby power or vampire power. The growing number of appliances contributes to this phenomenon. Today's average home contains more than 20 appliances, including computers, stereos and other equipment. Even in standby mode these appliances use more than 10% of the electricity in our homes. The government could take action to prevent this kind of waste, as could Canadians themselves. The government could set higher standards, which would be a good start. It could also provide greater incentives and greater help to Canadians to buy higher efficiency appliances.

The Prime Minister recently said that nothing could be done to help Canadians with soaring gas and heating oil prices, but he is wrong. Not only could the government take action to help Canadians reduce their consumption, but jobs would be created which would help our flagging economy.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, May 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her question. It is an important point.

I believe that I tried very quickly to make the point that it is possible to develop a biofuel program while also helping farmers. But my colleague has raised another point, which relates to the issue of food security and sustainable farming.

In that regard, the government could help even more. Earlier, I alluded to the energy programs that the government could set up to help ordinary Canadians who are trying to reduce their fuel consumption. However, I did not have time to discuss what we could call sustainable farming. I know that in my community, Victoria, more and more farmers are growing organic produce and increasingly selling it in smaller markets. This is becoming more profitable.

In my opinion, the government could help. It could offer concrete support that would promote local markets and regional development instead of continuing to help multinationals to the detriment of small farmers who make every effort possible. It must be repeated that this is not about blaming small-scale farmers who want to earn a living. Basically, that is the problem. They are being offered subsidies to make a lot more money instead of incentives for sustainable farming. That is what is inconsistent about the bill.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, May 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak about Bill C-33, An Act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 and about our amendment, which proposes that the bill not be read a third time but be referred back to the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food for the purpose of reconsidering Clause 2 with a view to making sure that both economic and environmental effects of introducing these regulations do not cause a negative impact on the environment or unduly influence commodity markets.

The New Democrats support the use of biofuels and will continue to do so. A well-managed biofuel program in Canada could have a positive effect on climate change while also helping farmers. We refuse to simply give the Conservatives a blank cheque on this. We have asked that the bill be referred back to committee so that the members of the House can take a second look at it.

I have many constituents who have written to me about the bill, none of whom were supportive of the bill in its present form, which just does not have the controls to limit the reach of the bill. Here is an example. A constituent said:

I worked in Tropical Agricultural Research for 25 years in Asia and Africa. I find this new bill that gives a $2 billion subsidy to biofuel a crime. Following in George Bush's path will lead to a whole range of second and third generation problems. Once big business gets on this technology integrated in its system it will change the market so even more hunger and death will ensue.

I want to give members an idea of the range of comments that I have received. Another constituent said:

I was very disappointed to learn that Canada is now joining the 'food for fuel' club with its vote to mandate ethanol content in gasoline. Never mind the dubious environmental merits of such a move, with food prices spiraling out of reach of the world's poor, such a decision seems morally repugnant at best.

I'm not sure if there is an opportunity for this bill to be revisited.

However, there is an opportunity.

I will not go on, but the emails and the letters I have received are all of this type.

Despite these legitimate concerns, the NDP's proposed amendments to the bill were defeated. Therefore, I urge the members of the opposition in particular to reconsider and to think about our responsibility as parliamentarians to do no harm.

Our amendments would have served to introduce accountability and sustainability into the bill: two essential elements that are clearly lacking in Bill C-33 in its current state.

As it reads now, it will have several impacts. I would like to list some of them.

One of them was raised in one of the emails on food security. A number of governments, in conjunction with large multinational corporations, are pushing farmers to grow crops not for food but for fuel. That has had devastating effects. The Convention on Biological Diversity Alliance states in a recent media advisory:

Agrofuel plantations are already destroying the remaining rainforest reserves in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia pushing farming communities to abandon food production. Agrofuel production is irreversibly displacing agricultural biodiversity.

On this subject I would also like to quote Darrin Qualman of the National Farmers Union. He stated recently:

“There's a misconception that the world has a surplus of food--that we have food to burn. But the truth is, in seven of the last eight years, humans have consumed more food than farmers have produced”.

In that short time, the international supply of food has dropped from 115 days worth of food down to just 54 days worth. If we continue this trend for even one more year...food prices will skyrocket and incidents of food riots and rationing will become commonplace.

We have already seen the beginning of this.

Mr. Qualman goes on to say:

It's irresponsible and unrealistic to call for increased agricultural production from a system that is already unable to produce enough food for people, never mind cars. According to the experts, we need to concentrate on fixing what's broken rather than adding more stresses to an already overburdened system. It's critical that we halt the drop in food stocks and begin to reverse the hunger trend....

Mr. Qualman's words highlight the NDP's concerns about pushing ahead with this legislation without having thought it through.

It is impossible to speak to the bill without talking about the effects of agrifuels on biodiversity, because this bill as it stands ignores this potential problem.

Today, experts estimate that biodiversity is being lost at a rate estimated to be 100 times the rate of natural loss, and this despite the fact that in 2004 some 192 signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity agreed to reduce the rate of biological diversity loss by 2010.

Governments like ours have failed to act decisively to counter this loss. They continue to commit to biofuel quotas without regard for that diversity and the global food supply.

It is clear that increasing energy use, climate change and CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels make switching to low carbon fuels a high priority. According to Science magazine of February 2008, biofuels are indeed “a potential low-carbon energy source”. This is why we do support the concept of biofuels, but the magazine article continues, saying, “but whether biofuels offer carbon savings depends on how they are produced”.

I would like to quote from one of the articles, which says:

Increasing energy use, climate change, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels make switching to low-carbon fuels a high priority. Biofuels are a potential low-carbon energy source, but whether biofuels offer carbon savings depends on how they are produced. Converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce food crop–based biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and the United States creates a “biofuel carbon debt” by releasing 17 to 420 times more CO2 than the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions that these biofuels would provide by displacing fossil fuels.

This is why my colleagues proposed amendments to consider the impact on land changes, as well as the amendment that we are now proposing to refer the bill back to committee for a second look.

Scientists are calling on the international community to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% over the next 40 to 50 years to reverse climate change.

Substituting biofuels for gasoline would indeed reduce greenhouse gas emissions because biofuels sequester carbon through the growth of feedstocks, but they also say that these analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forests and grasslands to new cropland to replace the grain diverted to biofuels.

Using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land use change, they found that corn based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% saving, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for many years to come.

The government's strategy to limit the effects of climate change is more than inadequate. In fact, with this bill it could cause new damage. As the Science magazine article described, if we allow centres of biodiversity such as rainforests, grasslands and other agricultural systems to be cleared to grow biofuels, biofuel production actually increases the global greenhouse gas emissions it is supposed to reduce.

Clearly, all biofuels are not equal. The way this is done is key. In an analysis of the Ontario biofuel options, a report recently concluded that solid biofuels offer the least expensive biofuel strategy for government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Ontario. The report's major discovery is that government incentives applied to large scale solid biofuels would surpass even the most effective existing subsidies, such as those for wind power, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

These findings suggest that a solid biofuels policy would be an effective and sustainable means to develop the Ontario and Canadian economies in that area. Such a program would support market opportunities for the forest industry and for farmers with marginal farmland.

It is clear that these are the areas that we think the government and members of committee should explore in giving the bill a second look, and they also should impose some restrictions to move away from the food for fuel approach.

There is another element that I wanted to speak to as well. That element is the increasing corporate control of the agrifuels industry. It is alarming to note that small scale food producers and harvesters are being eliminated through the centralization and control of the food chain, from seed to sewer, by large multinationals, including Monsanto, Cargill and others.

This has happened in the United States. It has been demonstrated through the use of commercial contracts, seed laws, patents and intellectual property rights, not to mention proprietary genetically modified seeds. These corporations are rapidly gaining a stranglehold on agricultural biodiversity and in the process are removing the livelihoods of food producers worldwide.

Therefore, it is important to move ahead with this kind of legislation, being attentive to meeting the needs of farmers but also protecting some of the key issues that I have raised.

I also want to raise an issue that has not been much discussed in this process. That is the government's mediocre program with respect to energy efficiency. This is an area where the government, if it were serious about really taking action to reduce the impacts of climate change, it would put in place more solid programs to help Canadians reduce their consumption of fossil fuels.

With the recent announcement by the B.C. government of its energy program, I was comparing it with what the federal government is offering at the moment to Canadians who use fossil fuels to heat their homes, for water and/or with all the electrical appliances we use. The incentives are so minimal.

This is where the federal government really could set some objectives to help Canadians retrofit their homes and actually make savings. At the moment, the potential for low income Canadians, for example, to retrofit their homes is so limited. This is precisely the group of Canadians that should receive some help.

I want to give a couple of comparisons that I noted in regard to the difference in the subsidies. In British Columbia, for example, on an air pump B.C. is offering something like $1,450, while the federal government is offering something like $400. It gives us an idea of the difference in the magnitude of interest that the federal government is putting into energy efficiency.

Indeed, one of the most important sources of potential energy savings is in the energy that is being wasted at the moment. A serious energy efficiency program would have multiple positive effects.

Let us consider the amount of energy that is being used. Recently British Columbia provided a breakdown of the way we use energy in our homes: 46% goes toward heating and 30% goes toward water. Let us think about these two sources we use in our homes and consider the kinds of programs. If, for example, the government decided that each year hundreds of thousands of homes would be retrofitted, ensuring that Canadians had the support they needed at all income levels, this would be a beginning to actually reduce the use of fossil fuels before jumping into programs that may or may not be effective. As an example, an efficient clothes washing machine or dishwasher uses less power and less water. Efficiency also provides a higher level of comfort, so it is not a question of sacrificing quality of life.

In conclusion, I would like to speak to a couple of issues which, in my opinion, are important to consider in this bill. The government has undermined and indeed has reversed the efforts of individuals and groups on environmental issues. The government's track record on environmental issues is shameful. That is the only way to put it. How then can we simply give it free rein on the question of biofuels? That is the question all opposition members should be asking themselves.

With the kind of record the government has, can we give it free rein on this question? Canadians have made it clear that we simply cannot. Any solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss must be complementary, not mutually exclusive and must not undermine each other. Above all, our guiding principle must be, as I said earlier, to do no harm because, as decision makers, we are responsible for the harm that we cause through actions, as well as the harm that we fail to prevent.

With this in mind, I urge all of my colleagues to reconsider the harm this bill could cause if we do not apply some provisions to control its reach.

[Official Languages Act, May 13th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-482, concerning the Charter of the French Language.

This bill proposes a number of changes with the goal of increasing the use of French as the language of work. It also proposes an amendment to the Canada Labour Code to protect the language rights of francophone workers in the federal sector governed by the Canada Labour Code.

My NDP colleagues and I believe that this bill deserves to be examined in committee. Our primary interest is to protect French where there is the largest group of francophones—in Quebec—and then to focus on the need to increase and promote the use of French at work. Of course, that does not mean that we want to reduce the presence and influence of French elsewhere in Canada. On the contrary, everyone wins when we strengthen Canada's uniqueness and truly try to respect the spirit of bilingualism.

We are all aware that there are still numerous obstacles preventing many Canadians and Quebeckers from truly learning French. Several reports suggest that the use of French is declining even in Quebec. Is this true? We do not know. Further study and discussion are required. A few months ago, the writer Roch Carrier spoke about the high rate of illiteracy in Quebec. That is disturbing. This bill should be examined in light of that kind of problem.

After listening to the comments of my Liberal colleague, who seems to simplify the problem, I believe that we should stop fueling the separatist cause. In a recent interview, the Commissioner of Official Languages expressed his disappointment with the Conservative government's policies pertaining to official languages. I am thinking of the appointment of judges and others, the abolition of the court challenges program— which truly helped francophones exercise their rights outside of Quebec—or the lowering of standards for French in the public service and the military. All these actions taken by the Conservative government undermine this type of educational programs. Yet, the Prime Minister himself is an example of the success of these programs. So why refuse to study a bill that seeks to protect the right to use French as the language of work?

Affirming the language rights of francophones does not at all diminish the rights of anglophones. On the contrary, these actions provide all Canadians with choice and, in this way, ensure the continued growth and vitality of the French language throughout the country.

We know that this is an important issue for Canadians living outside Quebec as well. For example, in my riding, French immersion programs are in high demand and are probably the most popular education program in British Columbia. That is definitely the case in my riding.

On a personal note, my own experiences growing up in Manitoba showed me the importance of promoting French there.

French was banned from the education system for an entire century. I even remember being a little girl, taught by nuns, and when the inspector came into the classroom, we had to put away our French textbooks and hide them. Imagine such a situation. It really created a feeling of being attacked. We had the impression that we did not have the right to speak French.

And if we believe that the French fact enriches Canada as a whole, it must be given the support it needs to fully develop.

However, it remains to be seen if this bill could do that, if it could really achieve those goals, given that we are talking about areas of federal jurisdiction. That is one of the main reasons why we are suggesting further deliberations on this bill in committee.

In addition, the issue of how the provisions concerning federal institutions and companies will be imposed still has yet to be resolved. My hon. colleague from Acadie—Bathurst already raised this question in his comments. What impact will this bill have on companies such as Air Canada, VIA Rail and many others?

The business administration of these federal institutions, and particularly the promotion of French in those settings, will be a focal point of the committee deliberations, if the bill is in fact referred. That is another reason this debate is necessary. It would be one way of assessing the health of French in those federal institutions.

I am convinced that if we keep an open mind, both in the House and in committee, we will successfully make decisions that will allow us to achieve the following goals: first, to allow Quebeckers to express themselves fully at work in their mother tongue and, second, to preserve and encourage the use of this rich, dynamic language, which we are fortunate to be able to use anywhere in Canada.

[Family Homes on Reserves and Matrimonial Interests or Rights Act, May 13th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, a few weeks ago, I met with about 25 first nations students who were doing their post-secondary studies. I talked with them about some of the issues they had faced in getting there. Some of the issues were very similar to many other Canadian students, such as the financial burden of a huge student debt. However, they did mention something very specific, which was the need for a model through a mentorship program that many of them were exposed to.

It is interesting that many of the students who spoke with me were themselves mentoring their younger brothers, sisters or cousins. Most of the students told me that the program needed more resources. In many cases, they felt overwhelmed by the issues that they were asked to deal with through the mentorship program.

One of the recommendations that the human resources committee made through the employability study that we were conducting over the past couple of years was to build that capacity through mentorship programs. I am wondering if the hon. member would comment on how that kind of mentorship could be expanded and improved with the understanding that he brings to these issues. How can we support those young people who are themselves now in a position to provide mentorship to their brothers and sisters?