Erin O'Toole

[Business of Supply, January 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, my friend and I have worked on trade together. He has worked on moving the NDP into somewhat more modestly of accepting trade, and I applaud him for that.

On the wedges the member talked about, it is not this motion today. The motion today is brought because of comments by the Prime Minister, and then days later by the mayor of Montreal. As I said, I am concerned that the Prime Minister has set that tone, suggesting that the resource economy is not as important as other parts of our economy. As I said, diversity of our economy is our strength and it has helped us. That is why we are bringing this debate.

The Prime Minister needs to lead the national interest. He needs to have faith in the NEB and has the right to enhance it, but should he champion projects done responsibly and reviewed when he knows they are in the nation's interest, and when he knows that provinces like New Brunswick are struggling and knows we are importing oil to those refineries. This screams national interest, which is why I used Frank McKenna's example.

[Business of Supply, January 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, that is exactly what the National Energy Board does through the prisms he discussed.

The concept of social licence has grown out of Canada's robust regulatory regime, which in its early days dealt with property rights and environmental concerns. However, in the last generation, the last 25 years, with decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada, like Delgamuukw and others, it has involved consultations. All of those things together become social licence. The concept actually comes from a regulatory process, and it is the right of the government to enhance and build upon it if it wants.

However, my concern is the Prime Minister's abdication of leadership in the national interest. He is not a traffic cop between mayors. He has to tell Canadians why energy east is so important.

I would put it in the context of the member for Niagara Centre if over a century ago there was such nimbyism or parochialism around the Welland Canal. It was an important route that travelled through a lot of towns and boroughs to allow commerce in the region and was of national interest at that time. I am sure the member would agree that it is a boon to his riding. This is even bigger. For a province like New Brunswick, which is struggling, it is critical for its future.

[Business of Supply, January 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour for me to rise in the House to speak on any important matter of debate, and this is such an important matter. Ironically, we are a few months away from the 60th anniversary of a similar debate on pipelines that rocked the House at the time and led to an election and a change in government.

Ironically at the time, it was the Liberal Party that was advocating for a pipeline to be built across Canada and it was Prime Minister Diefenbaker who was looking at options on whether it could go through the United States or how that government would proceed. However, I think everyone involved knew the importance of that project to Canada and its economy. It was the way it was being implemented in the nation's interest.

We are back here today because my hon. colleague, the natural resources critic of the official opposition, brought this debate to the House. In debates like this I also think of a quote that a mentor of mine once related to me. I have not been able to find the attribution, but one of my political mentors when I was living in Nova Scotia was the late Henry David MacKeen, who was very close to Robert Stanfield, the leader of the official opposition and Conservative leader in Ottawa. Stanfield once said that it is far easier to unite one part of Canada against another part of Canada than it is to unite all of Canada. Sadly, we are having this debate today because our new Prime Minister seems to have forgotten that point and the role of the nation's leader in guiding our economy.

The Prime Minister speaks regularly about diversity, which I like him doing. Diversity is our strength, but diversity is more than just our peoples. It is our geography and our economy. Those three things are linked, because it is the geography of regions, whether it is Atlantic Canada with our fishery or western Canada with our resources, that the people of those regions and all of Canada benefit from the economy involved. That is the diversity of our country, the second largest in the world. That needs to be the focus of the Prime Minister of Canada, not pitting one region or industry or sector against another, because by doing that we are dividing Canadians.

Our economy is diverse. We sometimes hear voices in the media suggesting that we are only an oil and gas exporter, that that is all the previous government focused on. People who say that have no clear understanding of our economy. The resource economy is very important to Canada, but it represents about 8% of our GDP and not all of it concentrated in a few provinces. Petrolia, Ontario was where oil was first produced in Canada. It is no longer produced there, but almost $1 billion in manufacturing jobs in southern Ontario are attributable to the resource sector in western Canada. There are as many manufacturing jobs in southern Ontario attributable to the resource sector as to auto assembly. The success of that region and part of our economy benefits all.

Canada receives $17 billion through all levels of government as a result of the resource industry. This diversity is what has helped us weather the global recession of 2008-09 better than any of our main allies. It was that economy that helped as Ontario, Quebec, and other provinces' economies slowed. Now the Canadian way would be to embrace the diversity of that economy, and as resource prices are depressed, hopefully other aspects of our economy from high-tech, to manufacturing, to agriculture, to fisheries, can help take up some of the slack. That is what a family does. That is what a confederation does. We cannot pit one industry or one sector of our economy against the other, because that pits Canadians against each other.

The resource industry is much more than just the trees, the minerals, or the oil and gas. We have innovated in this sector probably better than any other country. From exploration, to extraction, to processing, these are high-tech knowledge-based jobs that help us also mitigate environmental damage. Millions of dollars are being spent on that.

For a number of years I had the pleasure of working in Toronto in the so-called Bay Street area. The Toronto Stock Exchange and Bay Street would not exist in the form they do today were it not for our resource sector. In fact, our exchange remains one of the best places to raise capital for mining exploration in the world. That is what put us on the map.

There are a lot of Liberal MPs from Toronto. If we were to look at the office towers in Toronto, those jobs would not be there if we were not a global centre for mining finance. The capital markets and banks that have fed off of that for generations have now placed us as one of the best and strongest G7 economies in the world. There are jobs in every part of this country and resources coming to all levels of government because of the resource sector. To demonize that sector or pit it against another is an abdication of leadership.

In the last year, both before and after his election, the Prime Minister made comments that make it appear to many that he plays favourites among the sectors. Because sectors, geography and our people are so closely linked, picking favourites pits one part of the country against another. We saw this when he said that parts of Ontario need to move past their manufacturing heritage. The auto industry in Canada grew up from Oshawa, a part of which I have the honour of representing. There are still thousands of jobs in the auto assembly and auto parts industries in my area and tens of thousands in southern Ontario that we cannot move past. The Prime Minister should be asking how we can secure and expand these employment opportunities. Not every community across the country can pop up a BlackBerry or an OpenText or a Hootsuite. Those are tremendous innovators. However, one should not pick those innovators over our resource sector, not as the Prime Minister.

In case the Prime Minister does not know, we are resourceful now. However, he said in Davos that resources were in our past, as if the Canadian innovations in the in situ work in mining, oil, and gas were not an example of resourcefulness, as if mitigating the water use in the oil sands was not resourceful, and as if raising capital for mining operations or exploration around the world was not resourceful or meaningful. The role of the Prime Minister should not be to pick favourites. He should be a champion for all.

I worry about the tone he is setting, even in his early days as the Prime Minister of Canada, which is one that other levels of government are following. The mayor of Montreal, his former parliamentary colleague, appears to think that it is okay, when he knows full well the opportunity that energy east holds for New Brunswick and western Canada, and that the National Energy Board is seized with that matter to ensure that energy east is in the national interest, alongside environmental, aboriginal, and community concerns, which, writ large, have developed into the concept of social licence. The Prime Minister has set a tone that is allowing division to start in our country.

The Prime Minister of Canada should not be a traffic cop for other levels of government but a dispassionate referee, when there are tens of thousands of jobs on the line and we, 60 years later in the House, are having another debate on pipelines and how they are in our nation's interest.

I will end with a quote from 2014 with respect to energy east by Frank McKenna, a tremendous Canadian and prominent Liberal leader, who said:

Our country has always had its regional differences, and the Energy East pipeline is not going to change that by itself. That said, following the National Energy Board’s due diligence and further input from various parties (including First Nations and environmental organizations), I would hope that one thing becomes abundantly clear. The Energy East project represents one of those rare opportunities to bring all provinces and regions of this country together to support a project that will benefit us all, and that is truly in the national interest.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, January 26th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member on returning to the House. We are both passionate about the Durham region and I appreciated his first speech.

I was rather startled that the member would use the approach that we learn from the lessons of tobacco as we make marijuana more accessible to more Canadians. Our lessons from tobacco have been dealing with the serious health impacts that we have come to know as a society over the last 50 years. Therefore, we have made it harder, we have restricted access, and enforced more programs to stop young people from smoking. The government is about to embark on the opposite course.

If we were about to learn from the lessons of tobacco, we would not be legalizing a substance that clinical studies have shown can actually hamper brain development in young people. Why would we be making it more accessible to young people?

How can we actually not truly learn from tobacco by keeping this an illegal substance?

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, January 26th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is good to see you back in the chair and working for this Parliament in 2016.

I would also like to congratulate the new member for Niagara Centre on his election to Parliament and on his speech in which he focused heavily on the economy, which certainly in the Niagara region is very critical and reliant on trade. With respect to the member's Pierre Trudeau quote on “the past is to be respected and acknowledged”, I agree.

Those trade linkages, particularly in the Niagara region—both the one with the U.S. and the NAFTA from a Conservative government of the past, our European trade agreements, the South Korea agreement, and the TPP—are very important to a trading nation like Canada. As well, our manufacturers, our wine growers, and all of those jobs in southern Ontario are attributable to them.

Would the member stand in the House and acknowledge that his government will build on these new and important markets that Conservative governments have opened up to them as part of their economic plan going forward?

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, January 26th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member on a very effective maiden speech in Parliament. He is a natural politician. I think he named every town in his riding in the course of his speech. It was very well done.

There is one thing I would like the member to comment on. I listened to his remarks about how some people in Pontiac feel that cities have been getting ahead but not parts of rural Canada or suburban Canada. I said this to one of my colleagues who spoke earlier about the problem of pitting one industry and one future against another, or saying that Canada is moving past manufacturing and resources and will only rely on high tech or IT and the information economy.

Representing a riding that has a mixture of rural parts, would the member comment on how we could build a plan so that both rural Canada and urban Canada respect the various industries and move forward together?

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, January 26th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from British Columbia for his passion and his remarks here today in debate. I was struck by a particular section of his speech where he talked about the vision previous governments have had to build a better country together. He talked about vision, but the new government seems to be based on division. In his speech in Davos, the Prime Minister was flippant about the role the resource economy plays in Canada. From B.C., with forestry and mining, to oil and gas throughout the country, to potash, these resources help fuel the programs Canadians enjoy. To mock or play off one sector against another is not leadership.

The other thing we see is division between provinces. The seed is already being sown. The Prime Minister had to go to Montreal this morning to ask his former parliamentary colleague, Denis Coderre, to stop halting the progress and opportunity for New Brunswick and for western Canada.

Could the hon. member please talk about the role vision plays, having all industries play a role, from B.C. to Newfoundland, in our economic success?

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, December 11th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, it is our final day in the House in 2015, so we will all cut you some slack. You do an exceptional job in the chair and it is appreciated by all sides.

I would like to congratulate the member for Vaughan—Woodbridge for his first speech and his passion to serve the public.

However, what I find most ironic about the government and the Minister of Finance, in particular, and this member, given his experience on Bay Street and Wall Street, is that the deficit is now running out of control. The hope is that it will be somewhere between $10 billion and $20 billion per year.

Would the member not agree with me when I say that a deficit is either one of two things: it is either future tax increases or future cuts? If the government is sincere about getting to a balanced budget by the end of its mandate, it will have to do one of those two things. It will either have to raise taxes dramatically or cut services.

I would ask the member what he favours. Does he favour higher taxes or cuts to services?

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, December 11th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my friend on her speech. I enjoyed being on political panels with her in the last Parliament, and I enjoyed her speech here today.

I am going to make an unfortunate prediction that in the course of this Parliament, 5 Wing Goose Bay will be part of the leaner Canadian Armed Forces that the government has already intimated. I fear it will close that base. I base that upon the fact that the member made a passionate plea to have 5 Wing involved in the Syrian project and it was not selected. Also, in the last Liberal government, the NATO low level flying was ended at that base.

Our government kept 5 Wing alive and invested in its infrastructure and other needs. However, the throne speech said clearly that the military is going to be a leaner military; we know on this side that means cuts. The Liberals almost closed 5 Wing Goose Bay in its last government, and I truly fear, despite the member's passion, it is on the chopping block already. Could the member confirm that to the House today?

[Business of Supply, December 10th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, it concerns me that her question is very similar to the approach the Prime Minister brought to the House earlier this week, in that we cannot talk about ISIS because we are somehow going to be promoting their propaganda.

I recall last year in October when we had the terrible attack in Ottawa. Some of the early pictures of that episode were from ISIS sources. This is a group that is engaged on social media and is radicalizing people online and through the media. To somehow feel we can divorce ourselves from discussing the threat they pose is absurd.

What we have been doing is the original mission to degrade and destroy the ability for ISIS to take more ground. As I said in my remarks, as a result of the air strikes, they control 25% to 30% less territory in Iraq and in parts of northern Syria than they did before. We have contained and controlled them.

The debate in the U.S. and France and other countries right now is about a ground commitment. That is the second phase to this response to a growing and real threat to Canada, and we are withdrawing from the first phase, in our modest contribution to it. It really is a backtracking from the traditional, global, multilateral actions that the Liberal Party of Canada supported for 50 years.