Jim Abbott

[Canada Elections Act, June 10th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. We have come to a point where there is cooperation in the House and as long as there is cooperation between members, this whole business of applying votes works.

However some of the Liberal members are revolting at this point and it would seem as though many of them have moved out of the House. If a member comes into the House and asks to be noted as having come into the House, then we have the ability to take that person's vote. But in actual fact as pointed out by our whip, there were a number of government members who ended up leaving, heading for the hills, between votes. How do we know what the actual count was?

[Canada Elections Act, June 10th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, there are a few bills that are very important for most members of Parliament to speak to, and certainly this bill is one. Unfortunately, the government House leader has chosen to cut off debate simply because the Prime Minister has his legacy in mind and particularly wants the bill passed before the House rises for the summer.

I for one am scheduled to be here until a week Friday. I intend to be here until a week Friday unless the government decides to cut the session short for whatever reason.

We have time to get into the bill. We have time to get onto the record the items that are of concern to our constituents, yet the government has chosen to move forward with closure.

With respect to Group No. 2, Motion No. 11, which we are currently debating, we do support the fact that there should be a review of the act to assess the impact after the first election.

Clearly, we should get as close as we possibly can to reviewing the bill and the impact it will have on politics in Canada and on Canadians in general, but I would suggest that if we were not under this closure by the government, if we had not been shut down, we would have been able to bring out all the issues, or at least most of the issues, that show the bill to be, frankly, in contempt of the people of Canada.

Let us take a look at the stated reason of the Prime Minister for the bill in the first place. The stated reason for the bill is that the Prime Minister has been caught doing a tremendous number of things, first by the National Post when it was governed by Conrad Black. We all know the relationship that is not there between the Prime Minister and Conrad Black. Many events have taken place around the government, for instance with the former public works minister who is now in charge of our embassy in Denmark. These events are all things for which the Canadian public has a right to know and indeed for which the Canadian public has an extreme distaste. These are things that are very sorry, very sad and certainly put the honourable profession of being a politician into serious question and into great disrepute.

Because of the actions of the Prime Minister and his cabinet, we now have this bill. That is rather ridiculous. If the Prime Minister had not undertaken the kind of questionable activity in which he was involved and if he had kept proper control over his front bench, over the cabinet, over the government of the day, the Canadian public would not be questioning this.

What is his solution? His solution is to dig deeper into the Canadian taxpayers' pockets.

As the political system presently works, a number of rebates are available to people who choose to contribute to my campaign, to any other member's campaign or to a recognized political party. Through those rebates and tax credits, the people of Canada are currently providing about 60¢ of every dollar that political parties spend. Sixty cents of every dollar that political parties spend currently comes out of taxpayers' pockets as it is. Therefore the Prime Minister's solution to his questionable ethics and his questionable activity is to dig deeper into taxpayers' pockets and go after 80¢ on the dollar.

Now that is bad enough, but what is worse, which to me is the nub of the issue, is that the financing of political parties will be based on the number of popular votes that they received in the last general election.

If we were to go back to 1988 and 1989, when the Reform Party first came on the scene, and then we fast forward to 1993, when the Reform Party at that particular point had so few votes, where would my party have had the resources to fight against the well financed Liberals and Conservatives? We simply would not have been able to do it.

We are now in a position where, if the bill passes, a party like the Reform Party, coming out of whatever jurisdiction in Canada and following whatever interests the party may have, will not have access to all the largesse that is being provided by the bill out of taxpayers' pockets. In other words, we now have a closed shop situation.

The member across asked where we got the money. I will tell him where we got the money. We got the money from people $1, $5, $20 at a time who were really concerned about the way in which the government of the day, the Conservatives, were completely mismanaging and completely out of touch with the people of Canada.

The people of western Canada, in particular, voted very strongly for the Conservatives, both in 1984 and again in 1988, to maintain the Conservatives in power because they believed, unfortunately falsely believed, that the Conservatives would be paying attention to the concerns of the people west of the Manitoba-Ontario border. They did not and, as a consequence, many people, $1 at a time, $5 at a time, $20 at a time, ended up contributing large amounts of money to the Reform Party. Hence, we had the ability to fight the election in 1993, 1997 and again in 2000. My point is that the bill would stop another reform party.

Perhaps there are people in the House who would jokingly, or even with a pointed joke, ask what the problem is with that. The problem with that is that it is a case of freedom of speech. If I, as a small “d” democrat, believe that the people of Canada should have people who are representing their views, their wishes, their desires and their direction, then I must also expect that there will be some in the community who will oppose my point of view. That is what democracy is all about.

Now, however, to repeat, as a result of Bill C-24, fundamentally new political parties in Canada are not welcome. There is no place for them because there is no way for them to function. There is no way for them to get their message out. There is no way for them to compete with organizations like the Liberals have with all the political staffers.

Where does the money come from for them? Where does the money come from for the computer programs that they run with? Where does the money come from for the storefronts or for the offices? Historically it has come from 60¢ on the dollar from the Canadian taxpayer and 40¢ on the dollar from their supporters, many of which are the large corporations, which is fine. Now we have reached a point where 80¢ will come from taxpayers and only 20¢ from volunteers.

There is another smaller problem but, nonetheless, a serious one. I would be hard-pressed to find anyone in my constituency who had any appetite for supporting the BQ. Conversely, I rather suspect that my colleague from the Bloc Quebecois would tell me there are very few people in his province who would be interested in supporting my party, which is fine. Those are the choices. At least they were the choices up until Bill C-24.

Under Bill C-24, people in my constituency in the Rocky Mountains will be obliged to pay for the Bloc Quebecois. Conversely, there will be people who feel very strongly about certain issues and oppose the Canadian Alliance Party with all their might. That is democracy. However those same people will be compelled to pay support to the Canadian Alliance.

This bill, although it had questionable intentions to begin with, has gone downhill from that point. In fact, this bill is just fundamentally anti-democratic.

[Privilege, June 5th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, my qualifications for rising on this point of order are that, first, along with my colleague who just spoke I am deputy chair of the committee; second, I am the chief opposition critic; and third, I was one of the people, along with a member from the Bloc Québécois, who put in a minority opinion.

First, we must clear up the issue of timing. The original agreement, as determined by the committee, was that I and my colleague from the Bloc Québécois were to submit minority reports on May 12. My colleague is correct in his account of what took place. We ended up having to extend the deadline to May 16 and indeed, on Tuesday of this week, we came forward and had a retroactive motion that the reports that were submitted on May 16 would qualify. That was agreed to by a full quorum of the committee.

At that particular time I can confirm that the member who just spoke had asked for unanimous consent to put his motion, which I understand was hobbled because of the communication problem. He then came to the committee today with an identical motion. But to be clear, the issue of the dates of May 12 to May 16 is actually irrelevant.

It is unusual of course for a member of the governing party, who has worked very hard along with the rest of us on this committee, to come forward with this report, and that a member of the governing party would want to put in a supplementary opinion to add to the report. On pages 882 and 883 Marleau and Montpetit states:

A committee report reflects the opinion of the committee and not that of the individual members. Members of the committee who disagree with the decision of the majority may not present a separate report. There is no provision in the Standing Orders or the practices of the House for presenting minority reports. Where one or several members of a standing committee are in disagreement with the committee's report or wish to make supplementary comments, the committee may decide to append such opinions to the report, after the signature of the Chair. Dissenting or supplementary opinions may be presented by any member of a committee. Although committees have the power to append these opinions to their reports, they are not obliged to do so. In agreeing to append a dissenting or supplementary opinion, the committee will often specify the maximum length of the text, the deadline for submission to the clerk and whether it is to be submitted in one or both official languages.

With respect to the last sentence in that paragraph, “In agreeing to append a dissenting or supplementary opinion, the committee will often specify the maximum length of the text,...” the member of the Bloc and I both entered into discussions with the committee and the chair. I could be wrong but I believe it was not in camera. I believe it was an open committee, and that is verifiable through the minutes. We had a discussion that we would be putting in supplementary reports and we also had an actual negotiation as to how many pages each report would be.

In following the process that is set out in Marleau and Montpetit there is no obligation on the part of the committee to append an opinion. Members may choose to append an opinion depending on the decision of the committee. Because the vote this morning was in camera, obviously we can only report the fact that the committee, with full quorum, declined to append this member's dissenting opinion.

What has happened here is, if we refer to the phrase “after the signature of the Chair”, that the committee has made a decision. Whether it is fair or unfair is for the public at large to decide and certainly for this member to make his case to the public. Nonetheless, the committee has made its decision and it is within its right to make that decision.

[Foreign Affairs, May 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, speaking of respectful, the only thing that is bigger than the ignorance of the Prime Minister and the foreign affairs minister about this issue is the arrogance of the government.

The House of Commons and the other place moved motions that gave instructions to the government about what to do on the issue and she says there has to be respect.

I am asking the Liberals to simply respect the direction of the members of the House of Commons.

[Foreign Affairs, May 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, both the House of Commons and the Senate have adopted motions calling for the return of the Parthenon marbles to Greece before the 2004 Olympics that will be held in Athens.

Yesterday the Prime Minister was ignorant of those motions. The foreign affairs minister was also ignorant of those motions and he said it did not make any difference anyway because the government would not do anything about it.

Why will the government not follow the dictate, the motion of the House, and get the marbles returned from Britain to Greece? Why will it not stand in favour of the Canadian Greek community?

[Library and Archives of Canada Act, May 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, this is a very rare time in the House of Commons because yesterday I had a motion before the House on behalf of the Canadian Alliance which the NDP agreed with, and again today on yet another bill we have agreement. We had better watch out.

In this particular instance, we are talking about the heritage of Canada, about who we are. I believe the member will find a tremendous amount of sympathy and a tremendous amount of cooperation on the part of the Canadian Alliance with regard to this. We are prepared to take a look at what is required in order to do a proper job. There will be full cooperation on the part of the Canadian Alliance in every way to ensure that, without being extravagant or going over the top because we definitely would not want to do that, the necessary resources are available to actually put some wheels under this thing, to enact it and to make it work. We would be fully in support of any action like that by the government.

[Library and Archives of Canada Act, May 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of my colleague from the Bloc Québécois.

Clearly, with any legislation there are always ways to improve it. In this particular instance I think the bill itself is sound in its principle, but clearly there are going to have to be a lot of improvements. I look forward to her perhaps distributing to the members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage some of these suggestions. I have found that the heritage committee has generally been a very cooperative committee and certainly typically does work to make legislation better. I look forward to working with her on her suggestions.

[Library and Archives of Canada Act, May 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to speak specifically to a couple of clauses in Bill C-36 and in particular how they relate to the Copyright Act. I refer specifically to clauses 26 and 27 on which we have to do a quick review.

As the member just mentioned, we have shared some time together on the Standing Committee of Canadian Heritage which is presently wrestling with a number of issues relating to copyright.

It is my position, and it was expressed recently by somebody who knows well, that Bill C-32, when it went through the process of becoming legislation in 1996 and enacted in 1997, basically exacerbated the complexities of what was already an overly complex bill.

The concern of the bureaucracy at this point, as I understand it, is that they not get into amending the Copyright Act too quickly and that in fact they do a proper job.

What we are dealing with in committee is the World Intellectual Property Organization treaty, otherwise known as WIPO, which Canada signed but has not ratified. At this particular point the world copyright treaty and the world performances and phonograms treaty, otherwise known as the WCT and the WPPT, are both in limbo as far as Canada is concerned.

The best advice that we have at this particular point from the people involved in the heritage and the industry ministries, the bureaucrats, is that we have to amend domestic legislation before we can get into actual ratification legislation for us to be part of the WIPO treaties.

The reason I mention this as a background is that it adds to the fact that the Minister of Canadian Heritage has said that she could not envision making any changes to the Copyright Act as presently legislated without those changes being taken in their entirety. We have had a stiff arm from the minister and from her bureaucracy to any changes that are absolutely essential to the Copyright Act.

Problems are currently being created by the Copyright Act, problems that in fact have an awful lot to do with employment, particularly in the broadcast industry. These problems, which were created and built into Bill C-32 at the time that it was enacted, were built into it in such a way that people in the broadcasting industry are presently being laid off. Therefore we are talking about something urgent.

The difficulty to this point has been that the minister has refused to consider any idea at all of making amendments to the Copyright Act. The position of the Canadian Alliance and myself has been that this is bogus. There is no reason in the world why she could not have made those changes.

I draw to the attention of the House that the minister has indicated support, for example, for Bill S-20, presently going through the other place, with respect to photographic works. This is a bill that would amend the Copyright Act.

Therefore, apart from Bill C-36, out of one side of her mouth she has said that she will have nothing to do with changing the copyright bill but out of the other side of her mouth she has said that Bill S-20 is fine, in spite of the fact that it would alter the Copyright Act.

Now we come clauses 26 and 27 in Bill C-36 which both call for changes to the Copyright Act. Effectively what I am doing today is challenging the minister. Seeing as she must be prepared to go further, not only by her support of Bill S-20 but also by her support and the tabling of this legislation to change the Copyright Act as contained in Bill C-36, I challenge her to do so.

It is interesting that the clauses, which are so vexatious and create the problems, particularly for small market broadcasters, are contained in section 30 of the Copyright Act. However the minister is prepared to change section 30.5 of the Copyright Act but I want to deal with section 30.8. It is interesting that she is changing the Copyright Act to allow for this legislation in subsection 30.8(7). Well section 30.8, which is built into the Copyright Act, is the one that is the problem. My thesis of course is that if she is prepared to change subsection 30.8(7) for the purposes of this act, surely as an amendment in committee she and the government must be prepared to accept an amendment to section 30.8.

Sections 30.8 and 30.9 of the Copyright Act have to do with the right of broadcasters to do electronic transfer, a transfer of medium. It is referred to as ephemeral rights. Ephemeral simply means an electronic transfer that does not create any value. It simply takes place. If we look at section 30.8 of the Copyright Act it says:

It is not an infringement of copyright for a programming undertaking to fix or reproduce in accordance with this section a performer's performance or work, other than....

And it goes through that. I draw members' attention to the fact that it says “It is not an infringement of copyright for programming”. It then goes through paragraphs (a), (b), (c) and (d) and then subsections (2) to (11) inclusive and gives all of the reasons why it is not an infringement of copyright.

However a flaw was built into not only section 30.8 but also section 30.9, which have to do with a different way of fixing the music, that is electronically creating a record of the music, and in spite of the length of these sections in the Copyright Act, they would be annihilated or wiped out.

The minister is prepared to change subsection (7). I am simply asking her to delete subsection (8) which reads:

This section does not apply where a licence is available from a collective society to make the fixation or reproduction of the performer's performance, work or sound recording.

We would also delete subsection 30.9(6) of the Copyright Act which reads:

This section does not apply if a licence is available from a collective society to reproduce the sound recording, performer's performance or work.

If I have not been clear to this point I want to point out that sections 30.8 and 30.9 are about exceptions. A the time the copyright bill was enacted there were no collectives in place. Therefore it was the clear intention of the government and of the minister, who was the minister at the time, that these exceptions would exist for the broadcast industry.

What basically happened was that there were side negotiations quite literally out in the hallway, which I saw with my own eyes, between the Bloc Quebecois, which, as we will recall, was the official opposition in the 1993 Parliament, and the parliamentary secretary to the minister to get the bill approved by an artificial deadline that the Minister of Canadian Heritage put into place. During the dickering and the give and take that took place what the Bloc member got from the parliamentary secretary was these clauses that annihilate the exemptions.

A colleague of mine was just telling me about a small radio station in Fort McMurray, Alberta. We can imagine that the Fort McMurray radio station does not have a giant marketplace and does not have a tremendous amount of revenue. My colleague was shown a cheque by that radio station manager payable to the collective of over $20,000. In my constituency, in Cranbrook, British Columbia, we are looking at a radio station that must lay off an individual from the radio station which is already bare bones because its cheque is $57,000 which is more than a year's salary for a nominal worker at a radio station. We are talking about legislation, which was ill-conceived, done in haste, done in compromise and done in give and take, that is costing jobs in the Canadian broadcasting industry.

What is it about? When a radio station purchases a piece of music from a publisher a royalty is paid. The royalty is paid to the company which then goes through to the artist and so on and so forth. That is fine. They are receiving value.

Let us say that it is fixed on CD. They then would take the CD and historically they put the CD into a CD player, one of a bank of CD players. They would program that CD player: number one would play track 6, number two would play track 2 and number three would play track 5 or whatever the numbers were. Then the disc jockeys, when they were talking on the radio and the next song was up, they would simply push the button and then the CD would turn, track 4 would play and away it would go.

Now there is value there because when the radio station plays the music it has the opportunity to collect money from the advertisers who advertise for the people listening to the radio station that is playing the music.

Everything is fine up to that point except that technology has caught up to the point that rather than the disc jockeys having to put those individual CDs into the players, select the tracks and press the buttons, now a programmer simply takes those cuts and puts them on to a hard drive. The disc jockeys now only have to press a button and away it goes.

However what have we done? We have moved the digital image from the CD, or whatever the recorded medium was, which creates the audio that we hear on our car radios, into the hard drive. That is all. There is no value there. It is simply an easier way for the radio station to perform this task. In addition, there is now the transfer sometimes of that digital imagery by satellite or by broadband.

It is the difference between physically putting a CD into a FedEx package and shipping it across the country and then someone playing track 4 off there or by pressing a button and instantly, by broadband or satellite, that digital image goes from this computer to that computer. That is all it is. There is nothing more to it than that.

What has happened is that the industry has been smacked with a $7 million bill retroactive three years because it has been using new technology and receiving absolutely no value for it. This is the amazing thing about this particular exemption that was intended to be an exemption. It clearly and specifically states in sections 30.8 and 30.9 of the Copyright Act that the broadcasters have the right to do this.

The only reason they are being whacked with these millions of dollars very simply is that there was some dickering going on in the back hallway in Parliament during the committee process.

I come back to the bill we are talking about. Bill C-36 very clearly and specifically refers to the Copyright Act, subsection 30.8(7). I am very simply challenging the minister to do what is right for the broadcasters, to do what is right for the people in the broadcast industry and to simply extend the amendment to the Copyright Act to delete the next paragraph, that this section does not apply where a licence is available from a collective society to make the fixation or reproduction of the performer's performance, work or sound recording.

Somebody asked if it was not just a little too smart, with a bill dealing with the archives and the library, to try to extend this through to legislation that absolutely must be done. Was it not just a little too smart to make that connection? I say no, not at all. There is a principle here. The Copyright Act as it presently exists is wrong, absolutely wrong. It creates a penalty on broadcasters, on their business and on their employees. It creates a penalty that currently is costing jobs. It creates a penalty that is without principle a transfer of wealth from an industry which, although it is not on its backside, is an industry that does not have a lot of latitude on the profit side.

I would like the minister to realize that profit is not necessarily a dirty word. I would like the minister to realize that her backbenchers have been contacted by people from the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, from the local radio stations, explaining this to them, that there is support for this change.

Seeing as Bill C-36 will very likely pass, and certainly my caucus joins me in supporting the bill in principle so the bill can move to committee, we could have these necessary changes done in just a matter of a few days. This is long overdue because as we speak, people are receiving pink slips for absolutely no reason.

[Supply, May 26th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I enjoyed what the Bloc member had to say.

I wonder if he would like to comment on some of the questions that have been coming particularly from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. She seems to be trying to make the point that it is a two China policy and of course this has nothing to do with it. This has only to do with health.

I wonder if he would like to make a comment on the fact that somehow the world has found a way with the World Trade Organization, the WTO, to accommodate both the People's Republic of China and Taiwan. If they have managed to do it for trade, when we are talking about SARS, when we are talking about health, when we are talking about a very life, surely to goodness the government should be at the forefront as a world leader in trying to come to a resolution.

We can take a template from the WTO. Why can we not do it with the WHO? I wonder if my colleague would like to comment on that.

[Supply, May 26th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, while I have a very high regard for the member as an individual I must say that some of his words have made me feel very angry, angry because in fact they do not represent the facts as we know them, and angry because there are people who are going to die as a result of inaction and the difficulties that are created.

I wonder if the member could explain to me why it took seven full weeks before two people from the WHO finally appeared in Taiwan. Why did it take seven full weeks? I will give him the answer, but perhaps he will have a different interpretation. The answer is that Beijing simply was not being cooperative and was not going to permit people to go into Taiwan. Taiwan wanted the people to go in there. Second, when they did go in, they did not even contact the health minister of Taiwan, who was wrestling with this particular issue.

I do not understand where those comments are coming from when, as I recited in my own presentation, the fact of the matter is that the PRC has not spent one thin dime in Taiwan. It has absolutely no control and absolutely no jurisdiction over the health matters of Taiwan and yet it can stop WHO people from being able to go in there. I wonder if he can explain that because, quite frankly, those facts I have just recited do not relate at all well to the ones he has just presented.