Gerald Keddy

[Seal Hunt, May 5th, 2009]

Madam Chair, what I said quite clearly was that it was simply wrong-headed and irresponsible to leave discussions with the European Union at this time. If anyone thinks differently, it is simply from inexperience. We cannot talk to people if we are not sitting at the table. This issue will stay at the European Union and stay there with the discussions. Quite frankly, we have dispute mechanisms in place so that when parties cannot agree we have a third party, hopefully unbiased, that can make a decision. Without question, under the rules that it has put this ban in place, we will win at the WTO. I agree that it takes time. I also agree that we can make better use out of our fisheries committee and multi-party committees in this House lobbying the European Union. I think that is a good idea and it is something that we should be pursuing.

However, the Minister of Trade, the Prime Minister, our fisheries ambassador and the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans have raised this issue with every person they can raise it with and have lobbied as many of the parliamentarians in the European Union as possible. That is why nearly 50 of them voted against the seal ban, and good for them who voted against it, and another 47 abstained. I say shame on them abstaining but that was better than voting for it.

[Seal Hunt, May 5th, 2009]

Madam Chair, this is an extremely important debate and one for which I have been on my feet many times in the House, as well as many of the other members here tonight.

Several times we have gone off on partisanship and partisan rants and I do not see any reason to stray from that. There is a couple of places where the record needs to be corrected. I have been listening to my Liberal colleagues say that somehow this happened since 2006. I have been here since 1997 and we worked hard to bring this to the fisheries committee and to the House but it did not happen. It did not happen in 2000 nor in 2001. We worked hard to have the voice of the sealers in Atlantic Canada heard in the Parliament of Canada, and it was not easy. It happened because of goodwill from every party here, primarily from the fish committee. That is a fact.

We just cannot say that the Tories took power in 2006, that this is an issue and what will we do. It is not that simple. This is a very complex issue. It is like saying that if the Liberals had stayed in government, we would not have global warming. It is like saying that if the Liberals had stayed in power, we would not have a global recession. We know that is nonsense. Trying to blame the intervention by the European Union on this government is the same thing.

I was here in 2006 as chair of the fish committee and I will tell the House about the Liberal record. In 2006, when we formed the government, up to that point there had never been a coordinated meeting, not one meeting, by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans or the Department of Foreign Affairs. The hon. member for Central Nova was the minister of foreign affairs at the time and he helped coordinate the first meeting ever between Fisheries and Oceans, Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Indian Affairs and Northern Development. It needed to be done and it was the right thing to do.

It was the same way when the former minister of fisheries appointed Loyola Sullivan as the international ambassador for fisheries. It needed to be done. Mr. Sullivan has in turn visited all 27 countries in the European Union and lobbied every one of those members on this issue. That does not mean the issue was solved or that we won the battle, but we did our job and we will continue to do our job, which means finding allies where we can find allies, and that means intelligent, rational debate in the House.

I was with one of the former Liberal ministers of fisheries at the NAFO meeting and I did not hear one word about seals. I do not think it should be blame the Liberals, blame the Tories or blame the NDP because they did not do enough or blame the Bloc Quebecois. We will defend Canada's interest. The Prime Minister, whether the opposition happens to like it or not, is the first Prime Minister to defend Canada's interest in sealing on the high seas when we arrested the Farley Mowat last year. It should have been done long ago but it was done.

We have defended Canada's interest in the European Union. One of the members opposite and myself were at the European Parliament and met with the committee on the environment. It was pretty tough sledding. I am not telling members that it was easy. They did not want to hear us. They did not want to have an intelligent, rational debate because they would lose if they had an intelligent, rational debate about the maintenance of the hunt and the sustainability of the hunt. They do not have any credibility on that issue and they know we are credible on that issue. That is where we need to continue to keep this.

Let us look at the European record on large animals. Several countries in Europe have a big game hunt. They have the worst record of any country in the world on a big game hunt with the most lost animals of any countries in the world with the big game hunt. They kill millions of muskrats every year in the Netherlands but no one cares if they are clubbed, trapped, poisoned or drowned. They just care that they are killed.

The Liberal member has said several times that 35,000 seals were killed. He is absolutely correct; 35,000 seals in Sweden and that is not counting the cull. That is not counting the cull in Iceland or in Europe, and it is not counting the unreported kills by the rest of the European Union members. These guys do not have a very good record on animal welfare.

I have been aboard the Louis S. St -Laurent at the front. We have witnessed the seal hunt close up and personal. It is absolutely correct. There is red blood on white ice and white snow. It is a great graphic picture but who are the real guilty culprits? I will name the name. It is Rebecca Aldworth, the head of the American Humane Society. She is the one who needs to be called to task. Her group took a seal that was drowning, which is a humane death, choking and bubbling on its own blood and pulled it out of the ice so they could film it dying a slow, suffering death. That is the American Humane Society. That is what we are dealing with here. That is reality.

If people do not want to agree with that, they should go find out the facts for themselves. Raoul Jomphe , the cinematographer from Quebec, was on the ice when that occurred and recorded that. He recorded the American Humane Society pulling this animal out of the water and breaking the laws of this land.

The Minister of International Trade has forwarded this cause. The Prime Minister has forwarded this cause. We are at a very difficult place right now. We know the Europeans have broken international trade laws. We know they have 60 days of consultation. We know there is a process going forward.

However, I must say that suggesting that we stop negotiations with the European Union on a free trade agreement at this time is somehow moving in the right direction, it is not. The way to deal with the EU is to keep it at the table, keep this up front and personal in front of it and keep the issue moving. However, if we stop talking, then we have to start all over. A lot of good work has been done by all members of the House on this very difficult and controversial issue, not for us in Canada because we have been educated.

Quite frankly, the members of the fish committee, who do stellar work on this issue, are still educating the members of the House. It was not all agreement when we started. It was not all agreement within the parties but we did our work as committee members and had all our parties on board. It did not come easily.

I forget which member said it but I commend the member for saying that it was the hypocrisy of this decision by the European Union. We have six million seals in the north Atlantic. We can debate whether it is 5.5 million or 6.5 million but here are a lot of seals and they do not eat turnips. If they did and we could somehow get them in a net, we could fly them over to Paris, Copenhagen, London or Rome and drop them. When they would see these seals coming up the streets on the Champs-Élysées, it would be interesting to see the reaction of the Europeans at that time.

In closing, and in all seriousness, I worked in the offshore fisheries for eight years from 1980-88. When we went out to Sable Island and that area in 1980, we used to land a fixed wing on the beach, go across to the helipad and get a chopper to the rig. I was on the Island 30 or 40 times and there were dozens of seals in 1980 and the spits were black with seals in 1988. That was the grey seal herd.

[Seal Hunt, May 5th, 2009]

Yes, 18%.

[Seal Hunt, May 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, despite the European Union's unfortunate and ill-informed vote on the seal hunt, the Government of Canada will remain firmly behind our seal hunters and their right to hunt. We will continue to work on their behalf.

It is unfortunate that while this government laboured on this file, the Liberals continued to undermine Canada's efforts with one Liberal senator, Mac Harb, even introducing a bill to ban the hunt, a bill that one anti-seal hunting group is crediting with helping convince the Europeans to vote against our hunters.

Canadians should know that this Conservative government will not sit back and do nothing, like the Liberal Party. We will not give up this fight and, if we must, we will take action with the World Trade Organization to overturn this wrong, unfair and unjust ruling.

[Business of Supply, April 21st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this issue. The issue before us is an issue of extremes. There are probably two sides to this debate that are too far to the extreme and the essence of what we are actually talking about here is lost, which is safety for Canadians. On one side there is the extreme group that would go back to the old days of the wild west when one could have a firearm on one's person, on one's property or in one's car or truck and not have to register anything. I do not think anyone is talking about that. On the other side, there is a group that would quite simply destroy every firearm in Canada. I do not think we are talking about that. Somewhere in the centre, we have an obligation as parliamentarians to look at this issue in a practical, reasonable, rational way and come up with a solution that actually improves safety for Canadians.

Having been a farmer before my life in politics, I always had a permit to carry my shotgun. That permit was for shooting coyotes and bears. Having been a sheep farmer, I can say that a shotgun is a practical solution when a bear is in with the sheep. I would not want to go back into the house to get the broom out of the kitchen and try to chase the bear away from the sheep because that is not a practical solution. Destroying every firearm in the country is not going to work.

I would like to speak about what we do not do well as parliamentarians. I have been in the House for nearly 12 years. Sometimes we do not look at legislation that we have already passed, reassess it and ask ourselves the very difficult questions: Has the legislation worked? Did it perform the task that we expected it to perform? Did it make a difference in people's lives? Is it effective? Is it cost effective? I do not think the gun registry would pass any of those tests.

Some of the arguments that have been raised today are totally bogus. There are no statistics to back them up whatsoever. I honestly believe that the issue we are talking about is the safety of Canadians and how we establish a safer society. What is a practical way of doing that? I believe honestly that we license all gun owners. They take a course. We know that they pass a psychological assessment. We know that they do not have a criminal record. We know that they are not likely to offend with that firearm. There is nothing guaranteed in life. An individual cannot get a driver's licence and say he or she will never have an accident or be in a tragedy. There is nothing guaranteed in life. However, we can do our best to make sure that drivers are licensed, that they obey the law, that they do not speed, that they do not drink and drive, and that they follow the rules that we have established.

As I am speaking, there are licensed firearm owners who have already qualified on a psychological assessment, who have proven they can pass the test to own firearms, who understand the rules, laws and regulations governing those firearms, that the firearms have to be locked up in a separate cabinet from the ammunition, that they have to be kept out of the easy reach of children or any other individuals, and today, that they have to be registered. That is why when we are talking about the safety of Canadians we have to look at the real numbers. Members should not make up numbers in this place. They should look at the real numbers.

There are seven million or eight million firearms registered in Canada. It was widely believed before the firearms registry was established that there were 20 million to 30 million firearms in Canada. Today there are seven million firearms. Where did the other 23 million go? Let us say that figure was too high. Where did the other 10 million go? They are still out there. I can say for a fact that many of my constituents own them because they did not register their firearms. They did not take the course. That is a problem. Those individuals would be licensed if they did not have to register their firearms.

If we want to make Canada safer, there is a good start and we can do it overnight because those individuals are honest, law-abiding citizens. Most of them have never had a traffic ticket and most of them have never gone through a stop sign, but they are not going to register their firearms. They are not going to put the information on a database that has been corrupted 306 times. People have logged on to the database 306 times. That is a serious problem.

There is another part of this debate that I think is a true tragedy. There have been some absolutely horrific deaths in this country perpetrated by people with firearms. Those people in a proper licensing system would never have received a licence to own a firearm. If we would not have spent $2 billion on a registry, we might even have the police resources to keep firearms out of those individuals' hands, but that is not the case.

The issue that I think is the greatest hoax of the 20th century and certainly the beginning of the 21st, is the idea that the gun registry protects women.

When the former government was spending $2 billion on a registry that would not work, and if a couple of million dollars would not have registered all the guns in the country something would have been wrong, when the government was doing that, we ignored violence against women. We absolutely ignored it and we are still ignoring it. Come on, get with the agenda here.

If we are going to look at registering firearms for individuals who have already been licensed, we are spending all that time and all those resources on individuals who have already proven to be safe. What we have not done is we have not enforced a single peace bond. We have not made a difference in any woman's life in this country who has been threatened by her spouse or who has been threatened by her neighbour. I think it is a tragedy. I do not understand it.

I say that as a law-abiding gun owner from rural Canada who absolutely has seen a remarkable difference in the hunters who I meet on my property, in individuals who own firearms, not because of the registry but because of the licensing. We have safer communities, we have better and safer hunters, and we have a better society because of firearms licensing. I am convinced of that. The registry has not made one iota of a difference.

[Business of Supply, April 21st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I will speak on this important issue a bit later so I will not give my speech now, but I have to make a comment. That was absolutely the most incorrect, incredible amount of misinformation that I have heard in the House in a long time. A good cook adds all the ingredients and then a bit of spice. In this case the spice was the true comments and the rest of it was the broth or the stew.

The member has mentioned statistics, well here they are: 84% of firearms used in the commission of crimes are unregistered; 74.9% are illegal guns smuggled into Canada, not the 50% as the hon. member has claimed. These are not speculative figures. These are the real numbers.

Where is the member getting her numbers?

[Business of Supply, April 21st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member's comments are meant in the best practice of this House to add to the debate and to try to find a solution to a very difficult problem in this country.

Probably the greatest myth ever perpetuated in this country in the 20th century and certainly carried over into the 21st century is that of the long gun registry somehow changing safety and making people, especially women, more safe in this country. I would argue that during the 1990s and much of the early part of the 2000s, quite frankly, as a society we turned our back on problems regarding the safety of women. The previous government especially tried to make it all about a gun registry. The gun registry never enforced one peace bond. As a matter of fact, it took resources and dollars away from enforcing peace bonds in this country. The gun registry never made one woman any safer.

Registering gun owners makes a lot of sense. A licence and passing a psychological test make sense.

The member when talking about firearms has the right idea, but she is on the wrong road.

[Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, April 20th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, this discussion concerns the free trade agreement between Canada and Peru. I was glad to hear my hon. colleague say that it was his party's intention to support that agreement, certainly to look at all aspects of it but in general to support it. We appreciate that as the government. Canadians appreciate that. Canadians, especially in these darker economic times, are looking for opportunities and other places to sell Canadian goods around the world.

Not to get sidetracked on China, but China is an important trading partner. Canada has opened six consulate trade offices in China in the past couple of months. The Minister of International Trade has been in China on an extended trip. The Minister of State has been in China. We are not taking China for granted.

I agree with the hon. member that trade liberalization and economic opportunity go hand in hand and they also encourage and promote human rights. Economic opportunity will always promote human rights. When people have more money and more opportunity, they expect more for themselves and for their families. They are less likely to put up with lack of freedom of the press, lack of rights for women, lack of rights for children.

It is not just this free trade agreement with Peru, but it is other agreements that we will be signing in the Americas, other agreements that we have negotiated and the overall thrust which is a very robust free trade agenda, unlike the previous government which had a very minor free trade agenda. Does the member agree with the direction this government is taking in the Americas?

[Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, April 20th, 2009]

How many seconds, Madam Speaker, 55? I will try to address that.

We know that when we are dealing with free trade agreements, first of all, it is a two-way trade, so the trade balance does shift and change. Sometimes it is in Canada's advantage and sometimes it is in the other country's advantage. That is to be expected and that is normal. I would say it is also fair and equitable.

The other issue is the whole question around the extractive sector and corporate social responsibility. I have been on a number of mine sites, both within Canada and abroad, and our companies, certainly on the sites I have been on, have done an exemplary job, a stellar job of representing Canada abroad, of running a solid corporation, and of providing benefits, safety measures and environmental mitigation to the country they are in and to the workers they employ.

I really take exception to the idea that the entire extractive sector is out there running rampant and footloose around the world. It is not the case. These companies are very responsible.

[Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, April 20th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his kind words and reiterate with some of my own. He is also a valuable member of our trade committee.

It is not simply a free trade agreement with Peru. There has been a terrific change in the entire mindset of government. We appreciate and understand how important our NAFTA partners are, how important that north-south trade with Mexico and with the United States is to Canada, but we are not about to sit back on our heels and simply be dependent on that.

Look at our trading partners around the world. Look at what we did with our free trade agreement with the European Free Trade Association, the EFTA countries, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Iceland and Norway. Look at ongoing negotiations with South Korea and many other countries around the world. Look at where trade has moved. China is now our number two trading partner. Who would have imagined that five, six or seven years ago? Nobody, quite frankly.

There is opportunity. There is opportunity abroad, there is opportunity with Japan, Korea, China, and the European Union. Those are all opportunities that we expect to engage in.

In the immediate term, there is tremendous opportunity on our very doorsteps in a region of the world that we live in, and we would be remiss if we did not take advantage of that in a very mature, open and equitable manner as we have done.

Everything has been covered under these free trade agreements. It is not just about trade. We have certainly looked at corporate social responsibility, the responsibilities of our country when working abroad. We have certainly looked at the environment and the importance of having a separate environmental agreement with the free trade agreement. We have looked at the whole question of human rights, where there has been all kinds of criticism but not many facts from the opposition.

All of these issues are addressed. They are addressed in this agreement. They are addressed in all of the free trade agreements we are looking at. That is a positive move. At the end of the day, it is good for the countries we are doing business with and it is good for Canada to not be as dependent on that NAFTA relationship as we have been in the past.