Jim Maloway

[Canada-Jordan Free Trade Act, November 19th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the member talked about Canada being an exporting country, which we are, and the lack of an export strategy. I would like him to explain the elements of a comprehensive export strategy that he would like to see in this country.

[Canada-Jordan Free Trade Act, November 19th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member for Burnaby—New Westminster for a fantastic speech. I have to say that the members opposite will need to get up awfully early to catch the member in any factual errors.

The member has explained in great detail why a bilateral agreement is a race to the bottom and really not the answer in trade agreements. He has referred to it as the Ford Pinto. Would he give us some details of what a fair trade agreement would look like? We dealt with it in quite a bit of detail when we were talking about the Canada-Colombia trade agreement and others, but clearly the message is not getting through to the government as to what the elements of a fair trade agreement should look like.

Perhaps the member could, once again, enlighten the government on the elements of a fair trade deal.

[Canada-Jordan Free Trade Act, November 19th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, the member was asked by my colleague, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster, about hearings at committee stage and he did not answer the question.

Is the member in favour of hearings at the committee stage so a variety of presenters can come and have their say?

[Petitions, November 19th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, my petition today is a call to stop the Canada-Colombia trade deal, a familiar topic in this Parliament.

Violence against workers in Colombia has not abated at all. More than 2,200 trade unionists have been murdered since 1991. There has been a host of violence committed against indigenous people, Afro-Colombians, human rights activists, workers, farmers, labour leaders and journalists.

When the Canada-Colombia trade agreement was negotiated along the lines of NAFTA, its benefits really accrued to the corporations and not the people at large. There has not been any big improvement, certainly under NAFTA anyway, to the labour standards. In the case of Mexico, over a million agriculture jobs have been lost since NAFTA was approved.

The petitioners call upon the Parliament of Canada to reject the Canada-Colombia trade deal until an independent human rights impact assessment is carried out and the resulting concerns addressed, and that the agreement be re-negotiated along the principles of a fair trade, which would fully take into account the environmental and social impacts as well as genuinely respecting and enhancing labour rights and the rights of all affected parties.

[Committees of the House, November 19th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I believe the member for Mississauga South is an accountant and he certainly is a quick study. My question, however, was really for the parliamentary secretary but I am hoping he will be able to fill in on his behalf.

In recommendation 4 of the report, I am concerned with the reference to the requirements for information regarding the payroll deductions and procedures for opening a bank account. Perhaps the committee should be asked to take a look at this whole area of payroll deductions and make a further recommendation to Revenue Canada to make it easier for people to deal with Revenue Canada in terms of payroll deductions.

It is very easy for a small business with five, ten or one hundred employees to run its payroll efficiently but when it needs to hire one person to fill out the deductions, it becomes quite an onerous task and a lot of people are actually discouraged from hiring because of that. During the election campaign we had to hire one employee for about two weeks work. We were being chased for months afterward with regard to employee deduction issues. It is a huge amount of paperwork for one person.

Perhaps the committee should look at making a further recommendation to Revenue Canada to somehow make it easier to deal with the payroll deduction issue. I wonder whether the member would address that. In addition, the whole issue of setting up bank accounts is also a very onerous task today, especially post 9/11.

[Committees of the House, November 19th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I know the member is interested in provincial rights, and I wonder if he is aware that in Manitoba this spring a series of rules were enacted, which evidently have been working out quite well, to register and restrict the activities of immigration consultants. That certainly has been a long-time problem in Manitoba, as it has been right across the country. Manitoba had to do something, and that approach seems to be working quite well.

I am not certain just what kinds of rules the Quebec government has in place now or may be planning to put in place, but I wonder whether he would like to look at the Manitoba rules to see what they are, whether he likes them and whether they are working the way he would want them to.

[Committees of the House, November 19th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the whole area of immigration consultants has been a problem for a long time in the province of Manitoba. Perhaps there should be some requirement of full-time employment if someone is going to be an immigration consultant. The reality is that there are lawyers who have been acting as consultants. There are also income tax operations that say they are doing income tax and immigration consulting. There are travel agents that have been doing the same thing. There have been investment consultants mixed up in bringing people in, especially under the immigrant investor program. This has caused huge amounts of trouble. There have been programs on CBC exposing these rings of people. I am really glad that Manitoba is finally starting to do something about it.

Is the member aware if Manitoba is getting results from its program?

[Air Passengers' Bill of Rights, November 18th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Ken Young of Oshawa, Ontario, booked a flight with a Canadian carrier for his wife, Claudia, to attend the upcoming university graduation of their son, Chris, in England on December 17, 2009. Everything was confirmed and organized, with a connecting flight, until the carrier cancelled and rescheduled the flight for three hours later. The result was that the customer would miss the non-refundable connecting flight and would miss the graduation altogether.

Now the customer will only receive 50% back on his ticket and will lose the entire connector flight from London to Plymouth, England. This is no way to treat paying passengers. When Mr. Young contacted the Canadian carrier, he was told the airline could change anything it wanted to, whenever it wanted to, with absolutely no accountability to the customer.

The air passengers' bill of rights would have forced the airline to offer the Youngs full reimbursement of the ticket price.

It is unfair for airlines to gouge and take advantage of Canadians. I urge my colleagues in the House of Commons to support Canada's first—

[Committees of the House, November 17th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I too am very proud of the member for Windsor West in his long uphill struggle with this particular issue. Having had a background myself in consumer affairs for 23 plus years in Manitoba, I recognized this issue right away upon being elected. I must admit it took me a couple of minutes to sort it out because I did not really understand it straight up. I talked to the member about it.

In Winnipeg I spoke to two General Motors dealers who are friends of mine. They were quite concerned. As a matter of fact one of them contacted me. When we sat down to get to the bottom of their concerns, we found there was a certain amount of misrepresentation. At the end of the day, they accepted that it was not a bad idea after all. It was interesting that General Motors was apparently the most cooperative company to deal with this.

When we think about it, the bill started with the member from the fourth largest party in the House. We can talk about rolling the ball uphill. Not only did the member start this two and a half years ago, but when Parliament dissolved the member had to start over again. After every election and with a new government everything has to be reintroduced. When one goes through that process, at a certain point one wants to throw up one's hands and give up in a lot of cases, but the member did not do that.

This particular issue was not as sexy as some consumer affairs issues, and I have dealt with a few of them over the years. Nevertheless it did have its appeal.

I knock on a lot of doors in my constituency and over the course of a weekend in the fall, this issue came up two or three times, as did the credit card issue and the air passenger bill. Interestingly enough, in a couple of cases it was put forward by teenagers, people who were 19 and 20 years old, which really amazed me. I asked how they knew about this right to repair. They knew exactly what it was all about.

I think the member had a terrific issue. He carried it as long as he could. He in effect was the cause of the final resolution of the problem. This is going to benefit consumers for many years to come.

When most members in this Parliament were young kids, we all knew the local garage could fix that '49 Ford and that '57 Chev. In fact I had one of those at one time. It cost me $35. Each door was a different colour, as I recall. That car could be fixed by anyone.

Today it is not possible to find a garage that will fix any car newer than 10 years. It boils down to the owner having to go back to the dealership and repairs by a dealership can cost a lot of money. If one has a lot of money, then it is not a problem, but if one is operating on a budget, going back and forth to the dealer can be a problem.

I want to lead from there into another area that many people are not familiar with, which is CAMVAP. CAMVAP is our answer to a lemon law which has become very popular. There has been a lemon law in all 50 of the United States for the last 15 or 20 years. I introduced legislation in Manitoba a number of years ago on the lemon law. There is the weak lemon law that can be found in the car belt in Michigan and there is the very tough lemon law that can be found in Florida.

Generally speaking, under the lemon law dealers are required to give consumers a book when they buy a new car so that they know their rights.

If the car has lots of problems and turns out to be a lemon, the manufacturer has four attempts to fix it. I have attended arbitration panels in Florida. By the way, they settle roughly about 50% for the public and 50% for the car companies. Of course, air conditioning is a big issue there. If the car cannot be fixed within four attempts, the car company will have to buy back the car with a depreciated amount so and the consumer will get out of the problem.

What did Canada's manufacturers do as an answer? They saw that the consumer groups and legislators were starting to introduce bills across the country and they were alarmed. They formed CAMVAP, an organization consisting of all of the governments across Canada. The head of the Consumers' Association of Canada sits on CAMVAP. The downside is that no one knows about it. The last two cars I bought, I prodded and poked the salespeople at the dealership about my CAMVAP book. I wanted the information on what would happen if the car turned out to be a lemon. I got blank stares. They did not have a clue about it.

Unlike the lemon law in most of the United States where consumers are given the book when they buy the car and the coverage is explained to them, in Canada we do not have any such procedure. We have the lemon law, but no one knows about it. As a matter of fact, when I gave this speech the other day, someone in the crowd asked me to spell out the name, CAMVAP. She said that her car was at the 160,000 kilometre mark and it was not acting very well and she wanted to check into the CAMVAP situation.

The general insurance companies and the life insurance companies have done a similar thing to what the member for Windsor West has succeeded in doing. The general insurance companies had bankruptcies 20 years ago which left consumers hanging. Their claims were not being paid because the little company which insured their house went bankrupt. The insurance companies recognized if they did not do something, government would step in and people such as the member for Windsor West would start introducing private member's bills, so they moved quickly. They formed an organization similar to CAMVAP whereby general insurance companies as a group would take responsibility for any failures within that group. If the insurance company in Manitoba for example went bankrupt and could not pay its house insurance claims, then the insurance companies would use the money they had been levying each other to pay for those claims. They would pay the costs of taking care of the problem and winding down the company.

That was happening almost 20 years ago. The life insurance companies did the same thing because they had the same sort of problem.

This points out the fact that MPs and MLAs in any jurisdiction in this country should not get discouraged. They tend to, but they should never be discouraged because it is private members' bills like this one that can end up with conclusions such as the member for Windsor West just achieved. He will be remembered for that for many years to come because he has done something that no one else was able to do. The problem did not start yesterday; it has been around for a number of years and he provided the solution when no one else did. He deserves full credit and full honours for that.

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, November 17th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I think the member hit on the real reason for the free trade agreement proposal when he started to talk about the business investment aspect of it.

We know that Colombia is not a significant trading partner for Canada. It is only our fifth largest trading partner in Latin America. We know that 2,690 trade unionists have been murdered in Colombia since 1986. In 2008, murders were up 18% over the previous year. So far this year, 31 trade unionists were murdered. Almost 4 million people in Colombia are internally displaced persons. Sixty per cent of this displacement has been in regions of mineral, agriculture and other economic importance and where private companies, the government and paramilitary supporters are forcing people from their homes. This is not a tranquil country by any means.

The Colombian government of President Uribe has been accused by international human rights organizations of corruption, electoral fraud, complicity in extrajudicial killings by the army, links to paramilitary and right wing death squads, and using its security forces to spy on the supreme court of Colombia. This is not a healthy environment.

The government is pursuing this trade agreement for other reasons and I think the member is on to what those reasons are.