Dennis Bevington

[Canada-Columbia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, April 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot agree with my colleague more about the nature of these potential sidebar agreements to this trade agreement. They are not worth it. They are not worthy of consideration in this larger agreement. I have real troubles with the agreement and I have expressed them, but the nature of these side agreements that have been proposed are simply not adequate.

[Canada-Columbia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, April 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, in reality, they are very similar because the Prime Minister has asked the RCMP to investigate the minister for a very political reason, to get this political problem out of his jurisdiction.

Why are we going to bat for a country and setting up a free trade agreement with a government that has such an insidious record?

Logic has it that the most likely indicator of future performance is past performance. We have the past performance of the Colombian government, the present performance of the government, and the future performance of the government will likely be somewhat similar. However, our Conservative government, supported by the Liberals, says that we should do this anyhow. It is political. That is why the government is doing it.

[Canada-Columbia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, April 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to speak to this issue. Many of my colleagues will not be able to do so now after the shenanigans on Friday, when the opportunity for us to express our opinion on this issue, an opinion that is backed up by groups across the country, was taken away. The support for our position from people right across Canada is very strong. Our voice has been muted in the House by the actions of the Conservative Party. The government has taken that away from us.

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the bill. I would like to focus on two aspects of the free trade deal.

We have paid a lot of attention to the aspect of human rights, environmental protection and labour rights. Those issues stand by themselves. Canada should not legitimize a corrupt regime in a country where trade unionists and human rights defenders are murdered with impunity and where drug cartels and paramilitary death squad leaders have infiltrated the government. We should not be doing that. That is pretty clear. Why are we doing it? That is a good question.

The agreement is based on the much discredited NAFTA model of trade and investment that enshrines investors' rights over democratic processes. If we look at all the other countries in South America when it comes to investor rights over a democratic process we will see that they are a little different.

In its submission to the committee studying this bill, the Canadian Labour Congress said:

Authentic democracy and the respect for human rights are not the direct outcome of free trade. If human rights and the security of the person are not upheld, neither are the democratic rights of millions of Colombians. Since January 2007, there have been 115 trade unionists murdered.

Rather than being a trade agreement, this is a trade and investment agreement. Something we have to understand is that this is Canada and the free traders' toehold in South America. There is virtually no other country in South America that is going to put up with this kind of agreement.

These countries want control of their own resources. They want to build their own states. They are a little tired and a little turned off by the last 30 years of imperialism on the economic front throughout South America. That has led to democratically elected governments in many of these countries that are standing up for their rights to control their resources, to control their economies and to make the right moves so that their people can move ahead.

That is what is happening in the rest of South America. The free traders have a toehold in South America where the rules that we thought were great will still be upheld by a corrupt and decadent government that has nothing in comparison to the human rights that we espouse.

What is it that we are going to accomplish for Canada with this action? We are going to fight a rearguard action in South America against the direction the democratically elected governments of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile and Venezuela have all said they are interested in going. They are interested in controlling resources and in returning investment to their people.

Now, that is a problem for those who are free traders, who want to protect multinational corporations' investing in other countries. That is a problem and we need to strike a balance. However, the balance is not going to be struck in Colombia. The balance is going to be struck with the majority of the countries in South America. What is Canada doing with this agreement with Colombia? It is painting itself into a corner and I do not think that is correct.

The Conference Board of Canada said:

Our annual trade with Colombia is about the same level as that with South Dakota and is actually smaller than that with Delaware or Rhode Island. Compared to other markets much closer, Colombia is not really a major player. Eighty per cent of Colombia’s imports to Canada are actually duty free already. The gains from free trade are probably not as great as they would be in other cases.

It is really not about the money. It is not about the $1.3 billion that we trade with Colombia. That is not going to be much altered by that. What we are not doing is reaching out for a new future in South America as people are doing right now in all those other countries. We could talk about a better arrangement with South America. That is what we should be discussing here.

We have been accused of being Luddites or of living in the past, but we are living in today. We are not living in a past that said our goal in this world is simply to exploit other countries. It is to have other countries grow as we want to grow. That is a New Democratic position. I hope that position can permeate some of the other parties. I am sure there are many people here who support that.

There is a regional trade agreement among Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay founded in 1991. They want a common market in South America. They want to work together in that region to build their economies and to make a better future for their people. Why are we not supporting that kind of effort? Why are we not engaging with those countries? Why are we engaging with Colombia?

The countries under Mercosur are Canada's largest export market in South America and home to significant Canadian investment already. We are working there. They are the countries we should be actively engaging with. Colombia is the odd man out.

Comments have been made to me by my constituents about the nature of the amendment that has been put forward by the Liberal Party and supported by the Conservative Party for assessments by individual countries on this particular deal. My constituents are saying that they will not be satisfied with anything less than an independent impact assessment conducted by an independent third party. Reports generated by the Colombian government are not satisfactory. They are not trustworthy. We cannot go ahead with an agreement in that fashion.

The haste to move ahead with this for political purposes perhaps, with the election coming up in Colombia at the end of May are not reasons for us to move ahead with this agreement.

There is no great rush for increased trade with Colombia. There is a great rush to keep that toehold in South America.

[Canada-Columbia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, April 19th, 2010]

As my hon. member says, is it simply that they do not care? Is it a real desire to see this Colombia trade deal move ahead before the next election so that the present regime in Colombia can hold it up like a flag saying, “Canada supports us, we must be doing something right?” What is going on with this?

[Canada-Columbia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, April 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I note how the government's position is so radically different than ours in the NDP. What is the problem with understanding the nature of human rights complaints in Colombia? What sort of vision do Conservatives have over there of the situation in Colombia in which they can ignore the facts?

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, April 12th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the tar sands are an enormous environmental problem for Canada, but they also, in putting the tar sands together in a fashion that works, are a great opportunity as well for economic development.

What has happened with the tar sands is they started off as very mediocre oil development in this world and have escalated to a point where, with the price of oil, they are very profitable and everyone wants in on it. The developers have been given free licence to deal with the environment.

We need to change that now and put proper guidelines, procedures and laws in place that will protect the environment and will ensure that these tar sands, which are an enormous resource for Canada, are handled correctly. Instead the government is playing this game with our environment rather than dealing with it. That is the problem.

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, April 12th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, climate change is affecting the north in a wide variety of ways.

One of the ways that stands out today is the decline of the caribou herds, one of the major points of sustenance and cultural importance. These herds are in decline because climate change has altered the ability of breeding and has changed the landscape for vegetation. Those impacts are very difficult to deal with, but the federal government in the last six months has said that it is not concerned about that. It will leave that in the hands of northerners even though the legislation clearly puts it as the government's responsibility.

The federal government is not paying attention to an issue that it should be paying attention to under the law. If it continues to do that, perhaps the only solution is to turn it over to the people of the north so they can take care of the animals in a correct fashion.

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, April 12th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the budget implementation bill this year and to talk about a number of issues within it that I think are of some interest to all parliamentarians.

Our party is not supporting the bill. We have come to the conclusion that the Conservative agenda, as outlined, is not sufficient for the country, is not taking the country in the right direction, and as such, we have made our decision not to support the budget implementation bill.

There are many things within the bill that have come out to show how, once again, the Conservative government's agenda goes beyond simply budget and into a whole number of areas where we have concerns, where we do not see that it is making progress and in fact it is taking steps that we consider to be inappropriate in this day and age.

I would like to start off by talking about an area that I am familiar with in terms of the transport committee. As transport critic for the NDP, I have been raising the issue of aviation security. During the prorogation break, we had the opportunity to conduct a forum on aviation security. We brought in many different experts, joined together with the transport critic in the Liberal Party. It was a very successful effort in understanding the nature of aviation security in Canada.

What we have seen over the last number of months from the government is a rather knee-jerk reaction to aviation security. Over Christmas, because of an incident in the United States, the minister decided in a late night session to purchase the new full body scanners, technology that was tested out briefly in an airport in Kelowna this year, with mixed results. When we talk to the experts, this type of equipment seems to be rather inappropriate and seems to take the security system in a direction which will not really result in more security, but just more cost. We see this playing out with the air travellers' security charge. We will see an increase in the cost of delivery of every flight in Canada, for the travellers' security charge of between $3 and $9 per flight, per passenger.

Canada already spends per capita more than most developed countries on aviation security. It is $1.5 billion over five years to provide those services, plus the additional costs that we pass on to the consumer. As well, the government has decided to cut out the professional police force that is put in place in most major airports. It has passed that cost on to the airlines as well, which will eventually be passed on to the consumer.

We see additional costs in aviation security which are not borne out by the experts in terms of the threat assessments and the actual results that come from our system. The aviation security system at most of our airports is like the Maginot Line. It looks very impressive, but it is very easy to go around it and very easy to circumnavigate the types of security that are in place. They are mechanical, very much simply to assure the travelling public that we do a good job. We need to move to a different system. We need to reassess aviation security to understand what the threat is and what the appropriate response is to this type of activity, and not simply add a cost on to the consumer.

This is something we will be moving ahead with on the transport committee if we can. We will be looking at these things. It is something I hope to work with the government on to change its direction. I do not see it as being something on which we have to act in a partisan fashion. Aviation security affects every one of us in this building, all our families and all our friends. We need to ensure that we are doing the right thing. Rather than simply add costs to the system, we need to ensure that what we do is adequate to cover the needs of aviation security.

Another item that has caused a lot of trouble in my riding is attached to the end of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. This program, successfully evaluated by the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, should have gone ahead. We should have continued that program. Instead, funds were turned over to Health Canada. The ability of aboriginal people to guide their own healing following the residential school traumas and abuse was taken away.

This flies in the face of the apology that we all shared in the House of Commons, that wonderful moment when we stood together as MPs and said that we were sorry, that we wanted to do it better in the future, that we wanted to fix the problem, that we wanted to work with them to fix their problems and that we wanted them to fix their problems. That is not the direction we are taking here and that is a sad fact.

This is something the government has failed at in this budget. We should go back and reassess what is being done and really understand that the programs aboriginal people use to heal themselves and the directions they take are the most important. They are the ones we want to support.

The other item I want to touch on is the changes the government is proposing to regulatory systems of environmental assessment. In the North, they take two forms. One of them was something that was inserted into this bill. It involves changes to the federal environmental assessment, taking away certain triggers that would start a federal environmental assessment and changing the law so the minister could set the scope of federal environmental assessment.

These are really large issues for people in the North. So much of our land and resources are shared with the federal government. We are also the receiver of so many of the impacts of resource development in provinces. The impacts of interprovincial transfers of water and air on our systems are great. We cannot afford to see federal government renege on its responsibility to create environmental assessments that speak to all Canadians.

We cannot turn environmental assessment into a regional issue when it is a national issue and expect that we will get the results we want for the country in the future. We may get more convenience for provincial governments. We may get more convenience for large corporations that want to play provincial governments off each other in the development of resources.

All of those things may occur with a decline in federal environmental assessment, but it does not solve the problems of the environment. We as legislators, members of Parliament and Canadians are here to protect the environment, not allow it to be degraded. What is happening with the federal environmental assessment in this budget implementation bill is wrong.

When it comes to territorial environmental assessment, when we talk about the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, the government has put $11 million in there to change the act, and act that has never been fully implemented. Everyone from the McCrank report through all the boards to the people there have said that the act must be finished off. They want the land use plans in place for the people of the North. Before we judge how an act works, we must finish it and make it whole.

What we have now is a situation that is not whole. We have to move that forward, not find ways that we can circumvent the legislation, that we can streamline it so it does not work. We need something that is going to work for northerners.

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, April 1st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for a really excellent presentation today. I am really enjoying hearing his point of view on this, but I want to go back to the corporate tax cuts.

In looking at this issue, I looked at many of the countries that have higher corporate tax rates and some of the rationale behind it. One of them is that setting a corporate tax rate much lower than the high personal income tax rate will encourage a slippage among the high personal income earners to corporate positions. That is one reason that economists in other countries are saying that there is a danger in making too large a separation between the large personal income tax rate and the corporate tax rate.

How does that fit with these $10 million salaries for the CEOs of these large banks?

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, April 1st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I want to get the member's comments on some of the larger economic issues in front of us.

The Conservatives are claiming that this country is doing well with its banks. The record through the 1990s shows that the NDP stood up vociferously against deregulation of the banks. Heroes like John Rodriguez and Lorne Nystrom were people who stood up in this House over and over again and worked to block those types of moves, which would have left our banks in similar situations to those in the rest of the world. Clearly the NDP does well for banks; Canada does well for banks in 2010.

Now I see that the Liberal Party wants to follow us on another policy, which is to stop the erosion of the corporate tax base in this country. Provinces have spiralled down the corporate taxes and now we see the federal government doing the same. It has changed its mind on this. It is very rapid change—