Gerald Keddy

[Softwood Lumber, June 5th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, on May 21 the government assured the Maritime Lumber Bureau that Atlantic Canada's duty exemption on softwood lumber would stand. On May 22 the Minister for International Trade removed Atlantic Canada's exemption and proposed a quota regime. Yesterday the Maritime Lumber Bureau resolved to take legal action against the government. Today the minister is meeting with the Maritime Lumber Bureau.

Will he reverse his decision to betray the softwood lumber industry in Atlantic Canada?

[Softwood Lumber, June 5th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister for International Trade was unable to name a single province that supports his softwood lumber proposal. The government claims it has consulted with the provincial and industry authorities, but the facts suggest otherwise. They suggest the government ignored the interests of entire regions, regions like Atlantic Canada.

If the Minister for International Trade cannot name a single province that supports this proposal, why will he not withdraw it from the table?

[Public Service Modernization Act, June 3rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the Progressive Conservative Party will be recorded as voting no.

[Public Service Modernization Act, June 2nd, 2003]

Either inside the House or outside the House, and I have a couple of questions, Mr. Speaker. The questions are fairly simple.

The Department of Finance introduced regulation 5907(11.2) in February 1994, which supposedly would close the loophole for foreign tax breaks. This was said after the same minister already had amended that regulation in June 1994. It was amended to create a special exemption only for foreign owned shell companies, keeping the loophole open for those foreign owned shell companies.

So I have three questions. If the minister at the time knew the advantages that his amendment would create for his own company, how is it not a conflict of interest? If he wanted to close the loophole, he had nearly 10 years as finance minister to close it, yet it is still there. How much in Canadian taxes were saved that benefited him directly?

[Public Service Modernization Act, June 2nd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to continue a question that I asked back on April 2, 2003. Just so the viewers out there understand exactly what that question was and to remind the parliamentary secretary, since no one ever answered the question, the question was:

Mr. Speaker, the 1994 budget boasted about taking measures to prevent Canadian based companies from using foreign owned affiliates to avoid paying Canadian taxes.

This is a very serious issue. The question continued:

These measures did not affect Barbados. The Auditor General estimates that Canadian direct investment in Barbados has swollen from $628 million in 1998 to $22.3 billion in 2001. She estimates this loophole has cost Canadian taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

My question directly to the Minister of Finance was, “Who decided to keep Barbados open when it closed down Liberia?”, which was another foreign tax dive, so to speak.

The issue is simple. In 1994 the Department of Finance introduced a regulation that would close the Barbados tax loophole in the Income Tax Act. In the final draft, the member for LaSalle—Émard, the minister of finance at the time, added a clause that kept that loophole open. This allowed his company and others to move several companies to Barbados, avoiding hundreds of millions of dollars in Canadian tax.

The facts are simple. We had the finance minister at the time, the member for LaSalle—Émard, creating a tax loophole that allowed a gain for his own company that he moved to Barbados, knowing full well that he had just closed down the loophole in Liberia, knowing full well that the one in Barbados was left open, the whole time having a trust that was supposed to be at arm's length.

It gets worse. This regulation from the Department of Finance was introduced as a regulation in February 1994, which should have closed this loophole, closed Liberia, closed Barbados and closed other places around the world. When the minister of finance was speaking to Parliament and to the issue of the loophole, he said:

Certain Canadian corporations are not paying an appropriate level of tax...we are taking measures to prevent companies from using foreign affiliates to avoid paying Canadian taxes which are otherwise due. We are taking other decisive measures to close loopholes in the current corporate tax system.

This is unbelievable hypocrisy for a minister of the Crown, knowing full well that he had deliberately from his department created a loophole that he could take advantage of. It is a very difficult situation for a minister of the Crown to be in.

That was in the budget speech in 1995. Here is the reality. He then went on, having already amended the regulation in 1994 previous to the speech, to create a special exemption for foreign owned shell companies, so that is saying one thing and doing another. I really think the Canadian public deserves an answer.

[Lumber Industry, June 2nd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister for International Trade.

Atlantic Canada should not pay duty on softwood lumber, yet the government's most recent proposal to the Americans surrenders that exemption.

Why and how could the government sell Atlantic Canadians down the river?

[Member for Pictou--Antigonish--Guysborough, June 2nd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the Progressive Conservative Party sits in the House today with a new leader at the helm, the member of Parliament for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough.

With our leader comes a new Conservative course to provide confident and effective leadership for all Canadians, leadership of a type that has not come from this arrogant government nor from the listless regional parties, leadership that will not come from the Liberal crown prince, the hon. member for Canada Steamship Lines. In fact, the member for LaSalle—Émard has expressed concern that his Liberal opponents should be worried about a resurging Conservative enemy and not him.

Canadians know that a Progressive Conservative government will set policy and resolve issues without insulting or alienating our provinces or our closest allies. They know we will do this with the best interests of Canada at heart.

The Progressive Conservatives are ready to turn up the heat. If the Liberals cannot take it, it is time to leave the kitchen.

[Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, May 26th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, there are a number of issues before us tonight. I would like to thank my colleague from Calgary Centre for requesting this emergency debate on this extremely important issue. He spoke to it earlier along with the member for Brandon--Souris.

There are a couple of questions which I do not think have been answered in this debate. I was pleased to be here earlier to hear the minister reply to the member for Calgary Centre and the member for Brandon--Souris, and explain to the House the steps he took as minister to at least alleviate, if not totally prevent, any repercussions that could occur here. The thing that I did not hear the minister say is that he immediately contacted the rendering plants in Canada to ensure there was no brain or spinal cord material going through those rendering plants. After seeing the devastation of the beef industry in Britain and the repercussions throughout Europe, I would have thought this was something we would have done already, that we would not be waiting to discuss this in an emergency debate.

We have a beef industry in Canada that is worth $30 billion. That is a tremendous industry. That of course includes not just the farms and the sale of livestock, but certainly also includes trucking, the associated industries, the feed mills, the slaughterhouses, and the grocery store chains. We cannot stand a $30 billion hit to the economy of this country. We are out of time in our relationship with our largest and most important trading partner. I would not be off base to say it is at an all-time low. We have had members of the government call our largest trading partner bastards in the House of Commons. I would hope that is unacceptable language and behaviour for a member of Parliament, but it still happened.

The government made some decisions in our relationship with our traditional allies on the war in Iraq. I do not think those repercussions are through yet. I do not think that is over yet. We have a softwood lumber crisis which may or may not have a little break in the weather tomorrow with the WTO hearing, but we are not expecting any breakthroughs and the government is preparing us for the worst.

On top of this, we end up with the very worst thing that could happen to one of the biggest industries in this country, an industry that much of rural Canada is dependent upon. I do not think that the government can do enough to reassure consumers, our traditional trading partners, and the people around the world, the Americans, the Mexicans, the Japanese, and the Taiwanese who buy Canadian beef.

I appreciate the fact that the minister cut short his trip in Britain, returned back and took charge. That is to be commended. What the minister has not done is come up with any concrete plan on how we are going to cull the herds if they need to be culled, how the compensation package is going to be developed, or even if there is going to be one. I certainly have not heard it. Quite frankly, if I were a beef farmer with anywhere from 100 to maybe 2,000 head of beef, I would be extremely concerned on that particular issue.

We had a similar catastrophe with scrapie in the sheep flocks in Quebec. Those animals were purchased not just at their market value, but at their earning potential. I have not heard the minister say that. If an animal on a farm in Alberta or in P.E.I. for some reason has to be put down, I would expect the farmer to receive full compensation. First of all there has to be compliance, and in order to have compliance people have to buy into the idea. In order to have that, there has to be proper and adequate compensation. If we could pay up to $600 for a purebred ewe in Quebec, an animal that could be bought on the market for anywhere from $250 to $325, then I expect we could do the same type of thing for a herd of cows in Alberta or Saskatchewan or Manitoba. I think that is the type of action that will get support from farmers and a larger buy-in to some of the difficult decisions that will have to be made.

I am not satisfied that the issue of compensation to farmers has been settled, and the issue of compensation will be directly linked, in my opinion, to consumer support for the beef industry. Consumers are worried right now because they see the government reacting but they do not have enough information. Many are looking at this from the point of view of fear, not from the point of view of science. I think this is certainly one time when the minister needs to show leadership. He has started to do that. There needs to be more of it.

How many people know that mad cow disease or BSE, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is not passed on by muscle? It is only passed on by nervous tissue. The majority of Canadians probably do not even understand that. The department of agriculture and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency have to get out that message.

Right now only one cow is involved and it did not enter the food chain. I do not think we can say that enough, because the consumer generally is not aware of that. No one has stopped buying Canadian beef yet, but they could. The border is closed down. This is an extremely serious issue, and it is one, quite frankly, that I would have hoped to see a ministerial statement on in the House, reassuring, first, consumers in Canada, and second, the beef industry. The safety of our food supply is not something that can be questioned. The safety of our food supply is not something that can even be debated. It has to be guaranteed. It has to be written in stone.

What is the relationship right now between the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the United States Department of Agriculture? Have our officials been talking to American vets? Have they been talking to British vets? Have we brought in extra help from experts around the world? We are still chasing one cow back to its herd of origin. Apparently that has been done, but we still do not know where that cow came from. We still do not know where it contracted BSE.

This is not a debate to put doubt in the minds of consumers. This is a debate to reassure consumers and the only way we are going to do that is to give them information, enough information so they are reassured that every step has been taken that could be taken. I am not certain that is the case. I appreciate the 10 minutes the minister gave us here tonight, but I was not satisfied with the 10 minutes. I would have liked to hear half an hour and I would like to hear the minister explain at a press conference exactly what he has done to guarantee food safety for all Canadians.

The $10 million a day we are losing in beef exports should be a bit of a driver behind responsible action here. I am not going to speak at length on this. I very much appreciate this opportunity and I would like to summarize my comments.

First, we have a $30 billion industry that is extremely important to all Canadians and especially to rural Canadians. We have a farm and agriculture industry that is already threatened on many fronts and this is one more threat that is going to be very difficult to deal with. Next, we have an absolute responsibility and an immediate demand to satisfy Canadian consumers that their food supply is safe. It is safe, but we have to back that up with sound reason and policies that reassure the public. Also, we have to reassure farmers that we are not going to go through in Canada what farmers went through in Britain. I quite sincerely believe that it will not be the case, but at the same time farmers have to be reassured that they are going to be paid for any animals they have to put down, and paid very adequately. We did it with scrapie, as we should have, and now we will have to do it with the beef herds that are being put down.

It is okay for the minister to say he returned from vacation, and he is doing everything that can be done, but my original question was, have they taken the brain material and the spinal columns out of the rendering plants? I do not know. I would like to know the answer to that question. Has that occurred? I would hope so, but we do not know the answer to that question. Feed designated for non-ruminant species sometimes ends up in ruminant species. Mistakes are made.

We have excellent health and food safety standards through the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Is there a backup? Are the backups working?

There are still a number of questions not being answered here and at risk is a $30 billion industry. I do not think we can ignore that. I think it is a huge risk, and I am not sure the government is up to the task, although I hope it is.

[Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, May 26th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, this is an extremely troublesome and problematic issue facing Canada's beef industry, without question. It is the first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in 10 years in Canada. It raises the issue of the human variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and immediately Canadian consumers are on the defensive.

This begs another question. I see the government on the defensive as well. It has reacted to this, and I thank the Speaker for granting the emergency debate. However I would like the right hon. member's opinion on this point.

I just left the aboriginal affairs committee, which has been meeting since 8 o'clock this morning. I asked the chair of that committee to cancel and abandon the committee to allow all members on it to participate in this debate because of the extreme set of circumstances.

This is an emergency, recognized by the House of Commons and the Speaker of the House of Commons, that takes precedence over the work of the House. Yet the chair of the committee completely refused to abandon debate at committee. It is still sitting, members are having their supper and the Liberal and opposition members on that committee will have no opportunity to participate in this debate. It is a total dereliction of duty on behalf of the government to recognize the important issue that it is.

[The Environment, May 26th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House today to speak on this important issue. The motion put forward by the member for Windsor West reads:

That this House call upon the government to take the necessary measures, including the drafting of legislation, to prevent medical conditions and illnesses caused by exposure to identifiable environmental contaminants.

This is an extremely worthy and timely motion that is certainly needed in this place and I think it was brought forward with the best of intentions by the member for Windsor West. Certainly within the last few years we have seen an increasing amount of studies and public information published concerning serious threats to human health from exposure to toxic substances. Most recently, the media has been reporting on the effects of environmental contaminants on the health and development of children. This new evidence has created a new area of public health concern and that is indeed worth investigating.

I would like to highlight two examples of environmental contaminants, the first being the chemicals commonly found in pressure treated wood and the second being the health risks directly associated with the Sydney tar ponds.

In January of this year, Environmental Defence Canada released the results of a survey of playgrounds in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax. It was literally from coast to coast. They took soil samples from playgrounds in each of the cities, and in 37 out of 58 cases the soil was found to contain arsenic levels higher than the federally recommended maximum of 12 parts per million.

Pressurized lumber was found to be the source of the arsenic in the soil. Pressurized lumber, as most people know, is created with a chemical compound, chromated copper arsenate, which is a chemical preservative that protects wood from rotting due to insects and microbial agents. It is used to pressure treat lumber for decks, playgrounds and other outdoor equipment. It has been around since the early 1930s.

Unfortunately arsenic can leach from this treated wood, leaving residues on the wood surface and in the nearby soil. Young children who play near or on these decks or on playground equipment made from CCA treated wood can get arsenic on their skin and into their bodies, especially if they eat or drink without washing their hands, and we all know that young kids typically do this.

This is a huge concern. It is one that has been raised by the Progressive Conservative Party a number of times in the House, and now we all know that as of the end of this year arsenic will no longer be used in treating wood to be used for decks, picnic tables, landscaping timbers, gazebos, residential fencing, patios, walkways, boardwalks and play structures. For example, in New Brunswick all wood containing CCA will be replaced by August and every school in New Brunswick is expected to meet these new provincial guidelines on this subject by that deadline. Alternatives to CCA treated wood are non-wood materials like metal and plastic, or untreated wood such as hemlock, cedar or redwood, which are naturally resistant to decay.

The Progressive Conservative Party was very vocal and pressured the government to ban CCA treated wood. I would encourage the government to look at other environmental contaminants, as mentioned in the motion, that are posing serious health risks to adults and children, and to legislate against these as well.

Another example, and typical of the way in which the government deals with serious issues, is the serious health risk concerning the contaminants in what is locally known as the Sydney tar ponds in Nova Scotia. The Sydney tar ponds is actually a tidal estuary that contains 700,000 tonnes of toxic sludge dosed with PCBs and PAHs. The health risk to residents is undeniable. In the proposed cleanup of the tar ponds, it has been suggested that the tar ponds sediment be incinerated on site in an approved facility or facilities designed to handle the PCBs.

At first glance this would seem to make good sense. We do not want to transport this material any further than we have to, but we certainly need to get rid of it and it looks as if incineration is the only way we can get rid of it. We do not want to send it to Sarnia; we would like to get rid of it. However, if this cleanup method as it is proposed now is approved, the local community in Sydney would be exposed to emissions for upwards of 11 years. We are in a very difficult position, between the proverbial rock and a hard place. We have a serious problem and we have to do something about it, but has the government taken the proper steps to actually do something about it?

Environmentalists claim that the hazardous waste incineration is being promoted by the government as a safe method of cleaning up the tar ponds even though the incinerators will be in direct violation, and I emphasize that, of the guidelines of the federal Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment. These guidelines state that a hazardous waste incinerator shall not be located within 1,500 metres of schools, residences, et cetera. However, Harbourview Elementary School in Sydney, which houses 800 children, happens to be located 600 metres from one of the proposed incinerator sites when the federal guidelines say that it can be no less than 1,500 metres from the proposed site. There are residences, stores, businesses and an elementary school, all in the guidelines, that would be at risk.

Obviously there is not just a need but a desperate need for government to recognize its responsibility in protecting the health of Canadians when it comes to exposure to environmental contaminants. There has been a denial, I would say, on behalf of the Liberal government of recognizing the responsibility to deal with environmental contaminants. The Progressive Conservative Party supports this private member's bill and it is our sincere hope that the government will commit to protecting the health of Canadians. I do not think that is too much to ask. After all, let me say in closing that it would be a travesty if this were just another chapter lost in the toxic legacy of this Liberal government.