Dennis Bevington

[Copyright Modernization Act, October 21st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I see this as being another issue where we would create confrontation rather than solutions, which is what I see through this Copyright Act.

The confrontation, on the one hand, would come in the form of people finding technological solutions so they would not be covered under this particular law. That is the problem. We do not want people running around trying to find ways to copy so they do not fit under the law.

What we want is to have people respect and understand that our society is ordered on certain ways. That takes more time and effort but it is still the direction in which we need to go. Therefore, amending this law without having any idea of how we are moving our society is wrong. It will not work.

[Copyright Modernization Act, October 21st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, that is part of what comes from the Canadian private copying collective. The tax on CDs worked fine while CDs were the main instrument of copying. In some ways, it was a very non-intrusive effort and a good effort toward ensuring that there was some compensation for artists because we do not have a society that respects the rights of artists to hold their works without being copied. We needed to find some way around that and we did it without going to the courts. We did it through a tax system.

I still think that underlying this is a huge need to raise the level of respect in our society for artists and creative people. That would do more for the issue and society than penalties, fines and imprisonment through the court system.

[Copyright Modernization Act, October 21st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I have not had the opportunity to speak to video game producers. My emphasis is on musicians.

If the hon. member thinks that is of particular importance, could he explain to me how the bill would protect video game producers? It may well be that this particular part of the bill would help that industry. I would like to understand that better as well, of course. We are here to debate the bill, to understand how we can make the bill better and how these issues can be dealt with in our society.

[Copyright Modernization Act, October 21st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to debate Bill C-11, the copyright modernization bill. It is very appropriate that we are debating this bill today. It has a very useful function.

This week I had the opportunity to engage in dialogue with a variety of artists in my office, led by members of the Canadian Private Copying Collective, which is a group that works on these very issues. The livelihood of its members depends on the outcome of these issues. Artists across this country can only receive revenue for and in support of their works in certain areas. Although they have certain tools at their disposal, they do not identify the bill as being a significant addition to their tool chest and in many ways do not see it as a solution.

Artists liked the idea of the MP3 tax, but the Conservatives did not, so they held it up as a red herring and it was never put in place. That is unfortunate as the MP3 format is now the main means of copying music in this country. If we look at the shifting pattern of copying activity which the CPCC provided in its fact sheet, that is the direction in which the industry and people are going. Unfortunately, the legislation is not working very well.

I admit that I have never copied anything from the Internet or any music at all. I always buy music in a medium that comes in a plastic container with the artist's picture on the front and a description of his or her work. I find that to be an acceptable way to obtain music. I have not varied much from that. It might be that I am a bit of a Luddite or perhaps I am a polite person as well.

I believe that musicians provide a relief to society. Those young people in our society who engage in music are often not as troubled as those who are not because they have an outlet for their emotions.

A young artist speaking to me in my office expressed the fact that he did not want digital locks on everything. Rather, he wanted society to recognize and respect him. He wished for an ordered society that would understand the rationale of the music industry just as drivers driving down a highway understand its rationale. As we are in a collective relationship as we head down that road we must work together to make that a part of our societal function.

Primarily, there is a need for education. However, the government uses draconian punishments that are hard to enforce and difficult for musicians to exercise. They would have to take their fans to court and fine them. As unfortunate as it is that someone would illegally copy a young musician's music, he or she could still be a fan. The thought of musicians taking people to court because they copied and listened to their music would not work in our society. That is not a remedy we want.

To create a society that respects musicians and their creativity we need to provide some education on that. The thought of detecting recordable sounds and copying them as evidence to be put in front of a court is ridiculous.

We have seen that. We have been in this modern age for quite a while. As a rule is set up, they will take it out.

We should not kid ourselves into thinking that, when we put in copyright legislation which puts the onus on the courts and the legal system to enforce these rules, it will work very well. We need to put more effort into our society, into education and into raising the standards of our society so that people understand that supporting artists is a good thing to do. We have done this in very innovative ways in the past.

Canadian artists make up 25% of radio broadcasting in Canada. That has been a mainstay of the Canadian music scene since I was a child, and that was quite a while ago. That is why musicians probably gather in $50 million a year from SOCAN. The songwriters, the people who create the music, have that opportunity, which is a good thing. It works and it is in place.

The private copying of collective work was being done as well when most of the recordings were done on CDs. When we suggested that taxing the MP3 would help this situation without going to court and without the musicians having the burden of holding on to the rights or the burden put on the courts, we thought that would have been a more acceptable pathway toward what we are trying to accomplish.

Digital locks will not work for radio broadcasts. Right off the bat, this would be another way these things would be broken down and where songs can be recorded, even though they might be under digital locks in one fashion but not in another. They would be available to the public without the digital lock. Are we really creating anything of value here? Will this solution work?

I have trouble many times in the House with Conservative legislation. The government's legislation, in so many ways, appears to be kind of useless. It does not work for what we want to accomplish. I would ask Conservative legislators to look at the legislation. Is this really what they want to accomplish? Will this really work? What are their goals in putting this forward to us today? Are they going to protect musicians or are they going to put an unnecessary burden on musicians and on the court system trying to interpret and to intervene in these copying issues?

I stand with musicians in Canada. They play an enormous and good part in our society. I have supported them throughout my life in my role in municipal government. I have always promoted music festivals. I am always promoting the opportunity for people to expand their musical abilities. It is something that the House wants as well.

What is more important is to understand that the law is not what we want to create in Canada. What we want to create in Canada is the atmosphere of trust, confidence and respect among young people, among those who would perhaps take something for free rather than pay for it, because they do not understand that they are damaging people with that act.

We need to put our efforts in other directions. This bill does not suffice. It would not create the kind of Canada that we are after. As such, I would love to see more work done on the bill. I know this issue is important and I trust that parliamentarians will come to grips with it.

[Airline Safety, October 18th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, northern Canadians have been severely challenged by a spate of plane crashes in recent weeks killing 16 people. The government has failed to live up to its plans to beef up Transport Canada's team of safety inspectors. In fact, the number of inspectors has actually declined in the last two years.

Air travel is a way of life for northerners and many other Canadians. They should not have to roll the dice when they board a plane.

Why is the government dragging its feet on air safety? When will it live up to its promises and get serious about keeping--

[Keeping Canada's Economy and Jobs Growing Act, October 6th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, what we want is for the federal government to recognize that northerners understand very well what we need to do.

The government should support our territorial government in its efforts to deal with these issues. The territorial government is moving very quickly on many climate change mitigation issues. It also has an aggressive green energy strategy that it is putting big dollars into, in the absence of any money from the federal government in that regard.

The other side of it is the federal government is being very paternalistic about the borrowing limit for the territorial government. The territorial government is saddled with a borrowing limit that is far less than what it should be. We are a burgeoning, developing territory. We need to invest, and yet we are hung up by the Northwest Territories Act which limits our fiscal ability to put money into things that will actually make our society work better.

[Keeping Canada's Economy and Jobs Growing Act, October 6th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, when we talk about climate change, we can say that we want to stop climate change and to do what we can to mitigate the advancing climate warmth before it happens. We can argue about whether or not that can happen, but the region of the country where I live probably has the fastest changing climate in Canada right now according to most scientific observers.

We do have impacts. We have problems inherent within infrastructure that will cost us more and more money in the future. We have problems with an increasing number of forest fires. We have problems with declining caribou herds.

Our whole society is having to accept that there will be adaptation. We know that no matter what we do in the next number of years we will not be able to stop many of the impacts that one or two degrees' warming in the earth's core has on northern conditions.

In the absence of this action by the government and many in the rest of the world, we need to see that adaptation plans are very clearly outlined for what is going to happen.

[Keeping Canada's Economy and Jobs Growing Act, October 6th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the budget, which I have not had a chance to speak to before. I will be sharing my time with the member for Terrebonne—Blainville.

I will divide my speech into two sections. First, I will talk about why we do need, not only debate but much more information about the direction in which our economy is going in relation to what we are doing within the budget.

The budget was first put forward in March 2011 and then re-entered in virtually the same form in June 2011. Since then, we have seen many changes to the world situation, including Canada's situation.

The budget was based on projections of an increase to the GDP of about 3% a year. We hear that the IMF has said that it will be 2%. What does the budget say about that? The Conservatives talk about it here, and it is something we should address in the debate and in the information going forward. In their plan to return to balanced budgets, they talk very specifically on page 208 on the estimated impact of a one year, one percentage point decrease in real GDP growth on federal revenues, expenses and budgetary balance.

Within that, we see quite clearly that in year one we will be short, from what we had projected as a deficit, of another $3.3 billion. Those are the figures of the Conservatives. That goes on to minus $3.6 billion next year.

We have an economic turndown. Things were not as rosy as the government was presenting in a budget delivered before an election.

Now we are in a situation where the increased deficit will likely match up to what government is proposing to cut out of expenditures, which is $4 billion. Where will that leave Canadians in the future? What pressure will it put on the government to continue to cut services, to continue to knock back on Canadians and not address the real issues, which, quite clearly, are finding ways to increase the revenue of the government in a way that would assist Canadians in righting their fiscal imbalance. The NDP has proposed that we not cut the corporate tax rate to the extent that we are.

There has been debate about Manitoba cutting the corporate tax rate. Provinces are very poor examples of a corporate tax rate. Corporations move their head offices from province to province in order to attract the lowest corporate tax rate in a particular province. I saw that phenomenon in the Northwest Territories in the year 2002-03, which upset the balance of our territorial budget by about $300 million. So I know what I am talking about.

When we talk about provinces, they are the worst collectors of corporate taxes in the country because they are under constant pressure to lower their rates in relation to other provinces. The responsibility should lie with the federal government to collect the corporate taxes uniformly across the country.

Where is the debate about what is happening to our economy and to our budget in a real good fashion? We can approve these expenditures but do we understand where they are leading the country? Yes, we should debate the budget.

I will now turn to a more hopeful sign. There was an item in the budget in March and carried forward to June of $150 million for a road between Tuktoyaktuk and Inuvik, an important part of the infrastructure of the north. It is a part of the infrastructure of the north that in 2007 I introduced the idea to the previous minister, Chuck Strahl, in a meeting that we required these roads and this particular road. I am glad to see that the government has taken this on. However, the $150 million will not build that road. The $150,000 will build part of the road. The rest of the cost of the road will be assigned to the Government of the Northwest Territories.

In March of this year, I had a private member's bill in front of the House. The government, a person, voted against raising the borrowing limit for my Government in the Northwest Territories to fund valued infrastructure projects in the Northwest Territories. Since then, the Minister of Finance has promised our finance minister over and over again that he would give us some answers on the borrowing limit so that we can invest in the north, make choices on infrastructure and support our economy at a time when the recession is hitting us.

The Mackenzie Valley Highway is a project that the whole north supports. Up and down the valley, aboriginal land claims organizations have taken a section of the highway, have done the preliminary estimates, have the material together and are ready to go, in the very near future, to environment assessment on the whole Mackenzie Valley Highway, a distance of some 1,200 kilometres from the southern part of the territory to Inuvik and then on to Tuktoyaktuk. It is a road that, over the next two decades, would open up, and I am not exaggerating, tens of billions of dollars of development that would impact all Canadians in a positive fashion.

We have a great made-in-Canada project where likely very little of what we spend on the project will escape Canada to other businesses in other countries. It will occur in Canada. It is a great project that will provide relief to many communities that do not now have roads up and down the Mackenzie Valley, that have incredibly high costs of living and have isolated conditions that are really not appropriate in this day and age.

We have a great opportunity but we need to improve the fiscal capacity of the Government of the Northwest Territories. The federal government would not support my private member's bill in that regard. It stood up to a person against it. We need it and we need to understand the direction we would take with it. The government needs to come up with a better plan for investing in that highway.

In the April election, I was proud to see that my party, the New Democratic Party, had identified in our platform $400 million over five years to invest in northern infrastructure, which is quite a bit more than the $150 million that was put forward for the Tuktoyaktuk-Inuvik road. That is the kind of investment that is needed from the federal government, as well as from the Government of the Northwest Territories.

We have a vision of what we want to accomplish in the Northwest Territories. Aboriginal treaty organizations up and down the valley are supporting this effort. It is time. This is a great opportunity for Canadians. It is a great opportunity to help our economy at time when we need stimulus in the economy.

We need to recognize what we can do in the next few years that will improve our economy, whether it is green jobs, which will return to us and make us a stronger and better society, or a project like the Mackenzie Valley Highway that is needed to serve the orderly development of very important resources. These are things that we should be investing in and talking about right now.

This is a time when we need plans and leadership. We need to understand how this country can avoid what is clearly a gathering storm of fiscal recession that will eventually fall onto the land of Canada. We need this kind of positive debate about the budget. It is a budget that, after four months, is not really accurate and does not provide all the answers, which is why we are standing here today.

[The Environment, October 6th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, two weeks ago the U.S. government issued permits for Shell Oil to release 250 metric tonnes of pollution in the Beaufort Sea, along the disputed territorial waters between Canada and the U.S. The so-called environmental standards developed by the Americans were clearly intended to apply to these Canadian waters. If we do not act now, we will be shut out of our own waters.

Has the government been involved in setting these environmental standards, or has it given up our Arctic waters and our Arctic sovereignty to the United States?

[Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency, October 6th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, since it was created two years ago, the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency has broken almost every rule in the book: out of control costs, contract mismanagement, improper use of credit cards and travel expenses, and the list goes on and on. This appalling record should put the Conservatives to shame.

Since the Prime Minister refuses to take the advice of his minister and the department, especially on the location of the head office, will he now stand and take responsibility for the mismanagement of this agency?