Dennis Bevington

[Criminal Code, June 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am certainly glad to get a chance to ask a question, but I think I will have a chance to speak later on, so I do not want to take away all my thunder.

It was an interesting comment that the hon. member made about the 16,000 licences that were not issued. Is the hon. member confused between certificates for the possession of specific firearms and the licences that will remain as part of the system? Which one of those was he referring to when he said “16,000 licences”? The ability for police to turn down licences will remain after the bill passes.

[Phthalate Control Act, June 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to Bill C-307, the phthalate control act, introduced by the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, who takes the environment very seriously.

I have followed the progress of my colleague's work on this bill, in the drafting process and in getting ideas together. This bill should be supported by all parliamentarians and all Canadians because it will reduce the risk of cancer and other diseases in a vulnerable part of our population. There is no appreciable downside to the bill. It is all good. It meets all the tests for developing environmental legislation in this country. As such, I hope that the bill can receive reasonably speedy passage.

As soon as things like this bill are put in place, the cumulative impact of the products on people's lives will be taken away. As soon as we start to reduce that cumulative effect there will be a reduction in the serious and debilitating illnesses and diseases that are a real plague in modern society.

Some of the statistics that come out about the rate of cancer in our society are truly frightening. We need to confront things as soon as possible. We need to take action. We need to take away the risks of living as much as possible. Preventing disease is much more practical and reasonable than trying to deal with it once it has happened.

When we understand that a substance can be harmful to humans, then surely we should follow the precautionary principle and take it out of manufactured products. There are substitutions. There are other products that are just as good. These are the things that drive the bill forward.

I congratulate my hon. colleague for putting forward this bill. It is not something that will catch the headlines, but it will help Canadians in the future. It is something we can all support to make a difference in the lives of Canadians.

If the principles that my colleague has put forward in this private member's bill are carried forward with many other substances, we would be much better off. We all make compromises in what we do in this society. If we understand that products that we are using are harmful to people's health sometimes we make compromises and allow it to continue which is a real detriment to our society.

Before I was elected to Parliament, there was a Conservative member who put forward a private member's bill regarding taking the compound out of cigarettes that allowed them to stay lit when they were not being smoked. I was impressed that a private member's bill could make such a dramatic change to people's health in terms of things that some people were ingesting through their use of tobacco. Cigarettes play a major role in people's lives. We know of people who have died in bed because of smouldering cigarettes.

That private member's bill from the last Parliament will have a major impact on people's health. I see Bill C-307 in the same light. It is something we should all be behind. It is something that means something to Canadians in a very positive and progressive fashion. The bill can set a pattern for how we deal with similar substances in the future.

We all care about children who are at risk. Canadians care about children, how they are treated, how they grow up and how they are socialized. We should be involved with doing what we can to prevent contact with substances that can lead to cancer and debilitating disease.

I trust that Parliament will push this bill forward and that we will see it in place as soon as possible. It will make a difference for Canadians forever more.

I thank my hon. colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley who has worked so hard to bring this bill forward and to put it in a form that everyone can support.

[Natural Resources, June 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, obviously the minister does not know the difference between a subsidy and ownership, and he should learn it.

In the same speech the minister said that the Conservative government would want to do the same thing the Liberals wanted to do, give away the royalties that really belonged to the average people of the Northwest Territories.

The northern royalty rates are already so low they constitute a giveaway of the oil and gas.

Will the minister please explain how following the discredited Liberal plan to give away the royalties will benefit the working people of the north?

[Natural Resources, June 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the June 7 speech to the natural gas conference in Ottawa by the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development is creating confusion in the Northwest Territories. In his speech the minister said, “It may be necessary to reconfigure and reinvent the project”. The confusion the minister is creating through this piecemeal approach is just one more reason that Canada must have a strategy on energy security.

Will the Conservative minister clearly state once and for all what his government's real position is on the Mackenzie Valley pipeline and end this confusion?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, June 12th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, that question really does speak to something in my speech, which is that I talked about the formula and the recognition that population is not the way to determine costs. We have incredible costs for health care in the Northwest Territories. They are exacerbated, of course, by distance, transportation costs and our inability to maintain professionals in the north. These things are all real problems for us.

The wait times we are faced with are sometimes about getting diagnoses. In many cases, people are sitting in little communities and waiting months simply to see a nurse or a nurse practitioner so they can get the first analysis of what is going on with their health. That is the real situation of health care in many places in the north.

Yes, if we take a per capita allocation of resources for these important things in terms of health care, our wait times will not decrease. Our wait times will become not better but worse, and the ability of the northern health care system to provide decent service across the north to all the very remote communities will remain one of our biggest concerns.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, June 12th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that I have heard the hon. member's question before in this House at a different time. The people of the north understand this royalty game that is going on here in Canada. I am sure that I have great support when I stand here and say that we do not want to continue to be ripped off for our royalties. This budget does not identify how that is not going to happen.

When we talk about the equalization formula and the arrangements between provinces and territories, sometimes we in the north feel like second-class citizens, like the government is giving us something. The government is saying to us that it is giving this to us and we should be grateful.

We want our own way in the Northwest Territories, just as it is in the other provinces. We do not want to have government officials and politicians telling us that we should be grateful for something that every Canadian receives. I have no doubt in my mind that the people in the north will support me in what I am trying to say for them in this House.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, June 12th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak in this shortened debate. I guess I am privileged to speak to the budget, no thanks to the Bloc members. Over the years when it has been in their interests, they have always spoken against closure and here they are supporting closure. I find that to be rather self-centred.

Yesterday I was amused to listen to the hon. member for Fort McMurray—Athabasca castigate me for supporting political games on the budget. We should consider that against what the Conservatives have been pulling in the House, particularly their little stunt last Friday.

If the member is looking for examples of bad news, I suggest he should talk about the Conservatives' treatment of Atlantic Canada. He might also talk about his support for the Conservative climate change plan which exempts the tar sands in his own riding from meeting the air emission standards that are so desperately needed in that part of the country. That to me is a real example of how a member is not supporting his constituency. The hon. member's statement yesterday was like much of what we hear from the government, not the complete story.

I am opposed to this budget as a whole, both as a Canadian and a northerner. My opposition is based on the fact that average Canadians do not get much help in the budget. My opposition is based on the fact that aboriginal people do not get much help in the budget. My opposition is based on the fact that it is an incomplete deal for northerners in the budget. My opposition is based on the fact that only large corporations really get help in the budget.

By taxing average Canadians to death while allowing their corporate friends to pay less and less tax, the Conservatives, like the Liberals before them, have ended up sucking an extra $14 billion from the pockets of Canadians. They have dedicated $9 billion of that to debt repayment even though Canada has the lowest national debt of any of the G-7 countries.

Our economy continues to produce good numbers resulting in huge government revenues largely by increasing the tax burden on ordinary Canadians. Working Canadians have paid over the last decade to put the government's fiscal house in order. That job is done and the benefits should flow back to average Canadians.

The numbers are staggering. We have the opportunity now not to increase the prosperity gap as has been going on for the last 15 years, but to bring it back to the way it was in the past where the middle class, the average Canadian, had a much better chance of success in this country.

The Conservatives say that the budget returns benefits across the country. They point to the revamped funding formula provided to the three territories this year, the so-called fiscal rebalancing. To be honest, the new formula funding arrangement is better than the formula imposed by the Liberals. I am glad to see the base amount has been increased so we are no longer using 1985 numbers. I am glad to see a more fair system for calculation of the formulas being used, unlike the perverse system imposed by past governments, but I am concerned that the new formula still uses population in its calculation. Multiplying the average southern cost of a program or service by the territories' population does not reflect the real cost for the provision of that service in the north.

The government as well has agreed to raise the NWT borrowing limit from $300 million to $500 million, a move that was long overdue and was really essential in providing just the basic tools for our territorial government to operate. Our present borrowing limit is strained with utility and mortgage debt. In reality the capitalization costs in western Canada have almost doubled in the last five years. This amount still remains inadequate for what the north has ahead of it with the scale of development potential.

Yesterday the member for Fort McMurray—Athabasca went on and on about how I was delaying a one time payment of $54 million to our territorial government. This amount is simply an accounting correction, what in business is referred to as a credit note. The amount that the new formula increased the actual transfer of funds is listed in the budget, $10 million over what would have happened. We can see that the amounts are not that generous or that significant.

To northerners, there are many things missing in the budget. For starters, where is relief for northerners from the high cost of living? For some time we have been calling for an increase in the northern residents tax deduction. When I asked over a month ago whether the government would bring some tax fairness to the people of the north, this was the response by the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development:

At this point we are focused on economic development in the north. That is the key to create jobs and employment opportunities. There is the Mackenzie Valley pipeline in particular and the $500 million socio-economic fund.

Creating jobs that cannot be filled by northerners does not help the working families of the north one little bit. It does nothing to build the north. From his response it is clear that the minister is more interested in helping the oil companies of Calgary and the Petroleum Club than the working families in Old Crow or Tuktoyaktuk or Pond Inlet.

In the budget speech, the finance minister stated that the capital gains exemption was in need of an immediate increase because it had not been changed in 20 years. The same thing applies to the northern residents tax deduction. It has not been changed in 20 years. It is not keeping up with inflation. It is not fair to northerners, but of course it was only average northerners who wanted this change and not necessarily the business elite.

The northern residents tax deduction did change a bit. The change is a cynical pork-barrelling addition of the southern part of the government whip's riding. The government members knew what was going on but chose to do one small shameful thing.

The NWT got no action on resource revenue sharing. The resources of the NWT rival those of nations such as South Africa or the United Arab Emirates, but not one cent of those royalties has helped the people of the north directly.

For more than a generation Canada has been saying that it is willing to hand over control and ownership of these riches. However, the government is just like those of the past and it continues to delay. The current excuse is that we need to restart negotiations. Every day Canada delays fulfilment of this promise is another day that millions of dollars, whether from the diamond fields or the oil and gas fields, are lost to the people of the north.

I hear the minister offering up royalties to the oil companies for the pipeline. To promote this pipeline, he is offering up the royalties that the people of the NWT have a share in. I would say to the minister that he should offer up something that is his to offer. He could offer something in the way of subsidies to a multinational oil company, and that is his to offer, but not the royalties that northerners will need to develop their territory and their region of this country, just as every other region has used its own royalties in the same fashion. The people of the Northwest Territories do not mind hearing “mañana” when on vacation in Mexico, but they are tired of hearing it from Ottawa when it comes to ownership of resources.

Another budget item that is quite worrisome to northerners is on page 186. On that page the Conservative government lays out its plan for negating its commitments under the land claim agreements and for silencing the voice of northerners when it comes to environmental assessments.

According to the budget, a law written to implement the portion of land claim agreements whereby aboriginal people are granted a say in how their land is used must be changed, because the pro-industry minister feels it is too restrictive to large corporations. It is clear that the minister's purpose is to gut the very little protection that aboriginal people and other northerners have under the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act and make it open season for rampant development. It is clear from this statement in the budget that the Conservatives will not let anything get in the way of exploitation, even if it means going back on the word of the Crown.

The Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board has recently turned down an application by Ur-Energy to prospect for uranium in the Thelon Basin, an area of the north for which there is unanimity among northerners about the need for its protection. This decision has been roundly attacked by the mining industry, which is spreading the falsehood that the board overstepped its bounds.

However, subsection 64(1) of the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, which created the board, is an act of this Parliament and the responsibility of this Parliament, and it states:

A board shall seek and consider the advice of any affected first nation...respecting the presence of heritage resources that might be affected by a use of land or waters or a deposit of waste proposed in an application for a license or permit.

The board did what it was constituted to do. The minister should do his job and support the interests of the people whose land is under threat. He should forget about the arrogant statement in the budget on the government streamlining the regulations, going against the word of the Crown and not playing fair with the constitutional rights of aboriginal people across the north.

This is all in the budget. How can I as a northerner support these kinds of things in any document that comes before this House?

I have to admit that I am not hopeful this government will keep its word to the working people of the north, because it did not keep its word of the Crown on the Atlantic accord. This is a budget that is not for everyone, and it is not for me.

[June 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the figures surrounding the territorial formula financing are one thing, but the cost of living to northerners remains the same. When we look at the cost of living in comparison to other places, then we begin to understand why the system was initiated in the first place. It has not kept up with inflation, which means more of a burden on northerners. It has been more of a burden on employers up north.

In every case, economic development is being stymied in the north because of the lack of employment in some cases. The opportunities in economics have to reside with the individual taxpayer—

[June 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on an issue that I raised in question period a number of weeks ago. I have raised this issue many times in the House of Commons. It deals with the fairness in the tax system as it applies to the northern residents tax deduction.

I have made the point over the year that this northern residents tax deduction, which was put in place by the Conservative government in the late eighties to assist northerners with the high cost of living, has remained at the same level throughout 20 years.

The benefit from this program has degraded over that time. We really need to see some fairness put into this program and see that the northern residents tax deduction be brought forward and raised at least by the amount of inflation over the period of the 20 years.

I would note as well that in the federal budget this time the issue of fairness was raised as it concerned the capital gains exemption for small businesses. It, too, had been in place for 20 years and was put in place at a half a million dollars. In the new budget, it was raised to $750,000 under the policy of fairness to the people who would of course get the benefit from that capital gains exemption.

So, we have seen that fairness is a part of the Conservative rhetoric on the budget. I would hope that the Conservatives would consider it when it comes to this very important part of the tax system to northerners.

When I speak of northerners, I am not speaking simply of my riding, the Northwest Territories, but also Yukon, Nunavut and of course many of the northern ridings that stretch across the provinces in the north. There are quite a number of ridings that have residents who are affected by and take advantage of the northern residents tax deduction.

When it was introduced, the policy objectives of the northern residents tax deduction were to create a stable and trained resident workforce in the north. The disincentives to this were, of course, the high cost of living.

I do not have to raise this too much here, but the cost of living in the north, across northern isolated communities across this whole country, is extremely high. In some cases, it is twice that of southern Canada and even higher than that in many cases.

Although there may be high wages for some people in northern situations, those wages have not made that much of a difference because, as the progressive tax system in Canada works, the higher wages, the more taxes paid.

Due to the high cost of living, northerners are also taxed more through the consumption tax known as GST. The cost of goods are more. Northerners are paying more for the basic cost of living, so they are paying more for the taxes that are applied to that cost of living through the GST.

There is also reduced access to goods and services. So, when people do purchase items in the north, when they look for services, they by and large have to pay much more than southern Canadians.

Of course, the additional costs that come from the extreme climate conditions in the north, for example, in Tuktuyaktuk--

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, June 4th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps I will touch on the forestry issue, because the NDP was not in favour of the softwood lumber deal. We saw that as a job losing proposition, which is exactly what it was. The investments that forest companies are making now are in sawmills across the border in the United States. Raw log exports are on the way up. The Canadian worker is going to suffer as a result.

We did not see anything in the budget that could change that rather alarming state of affairs in the forest industry in terms of employment. There was nothing in the budget that could possibly curtail that, other than perhaps a quota on raw log exports or offering up incentives such as making these raw log exports tariff free and putting them under the same tariff as lumber. That might have changed the nature of the softwood lumber deal. It might have made it one that was more in favour of keeping production in Canada.