Jim Maloway

[Human Pathogens and Toxins Act, April 30th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I will give the member an opportunity to finish his sentence when he comments of this.

I agree with him to the extent that too much discretion has been left to the government in the act's regulations. We see this with governments in general. However, an hour ago we were discussing Bill C-6, and that was a criticism of it as well. The government is getting too much leeway and putting too much into regulations. I would prefer as few regulations as possible to any bill. We should pin legislation down. Regulation should be incorporated into bills and there should be as little reliance on regulations as possible. To that extent, I agree with the member.

In terms of consultation issues, consultation is very important but it is impossible to consult with everybody. A decision has to be made at some point, although a bill should be done right. There is no harm in delaying a bill for a period of time to allow people have their say and to proceed after as much consultation as possible.

I want to give the member the opportunity to respond to that and finish his thoughts.

[Human Pathogens and Toxins Act, April 30th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, when we dealt with the bill dealing with the overhaul of the Charities Act, we were told that while the bill had been through two or three parliaments, several iterations and people had made presentations, that there were thousands of charities in Canada that were probably still unaware that the bill even existed.

We are dealing with the fact that the lab facilities would need to be licensed. I am sure we are dealing with a much smaller group than we were in the case of the charities, but does the member know how many labs we are talking about, what the procedures would be for licensing them and what sort of fees they would be paying?

[Human Pathogens and Toxins Act, April 30th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I know the NDP critic takes this issue very seriously and I know she has worked very hard on the bill.

I wonder if the member could tell the House which of her amendments were accepted in the bill.

[Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, April 30th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I want point out that while the Liberals were in government for 12 years, they ignored this file and did nothing in this area. By 2005 and 2006, more than 40% of product recalls were as a direct result of U.S.-initiated action. We were allowing the U.S. to do our work for us. The government of the day was happy to cheer on corporate trade but not to actually do any policing of it.

Now we have a Conservative government in place that seems willing to act on the file. However, it is hard to trust a group of free enterprisers who fundamentally do not believe in government regulations and believe in the free market. It seems like a bit of a contradiction to think that somehow the Conservatives will close these loopholes in any meaningful way.

I wonder if the Bloc member could make a comment on that.

[Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, April 30th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the member made an excellent presentation. I want to ask her a question regarding amendments and the question of the use of counterfeit approval labels, which are also primarily associated with offshore problem. That has not been dealt with in the bill.

We constantly see counterfeit labels in our country. People go into stores, buy very cheap products and find out later that the labels on those products are counterfeit. What would the member say about that issue?

[Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, April 30th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I fully agree with the member that we should see the regulations. We should tie the government down as much as possible, because Conservatives are not known for bringing in tough regulations when it comes to business. I would not trust them too far on this issue. That is why I would like to see strong measures put in the bill. Most of the regulations they would like to put in I would like to see in the bill from the very beginning.

There is one area we should probably look at, and I ask the member for his opinion. Perhaps in deciding whether a danger to health or safety exists, the legislation should require that the government consider the release of harmful substances from products during use or after disposal, including house dust and indoor air, the potential harm from chronic exposure to the substance, the potential for harm to vulnerable populations, the cumulative exposure to a substance Canadians receive from the products of concern and other environmental exposures, and the last one is the substitution principle and whether safe substitutes would exist for certain products.

I wonder if the member has any comments about these as possible additions to this bill.

[April 29th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am trying to ask the questions here and I am not getting any answers. We are here this evening to try to get some response from the government.

The answer is really simple. All the government has to do is take the sensible approach and have the minister change the regulations to ban the practice before the airlines start to do it. What is he going to do? Is he going to wait until they start charging and then ban it after they have gone to all the extra expense? That makes no sense at all.

This issue has absolutely nothing to do with Bill C-310, the airline passenger bill of rights. It is not dealing with the washroom issue. That is a different bill and a different set of issues. We will be dealing with that in our second hour of debate next Thursday and with a vote the following week. He can make up his mind then as to whether he will vote in favour or against it.

We are dealing with an issue that will cause a big problem for a lot of air—

[April 29th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, some time ago I asked the government, particularly the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, a question regarding the plans of Ryanair to charge people for using the bathrooms aboard their airplanes.

I would have expected the member to provide a serious answer to the question, but, in fact, he did not. I would have expected that his answer, an obvious one, would have been that he could change the air regulations governing carriers in Canada to ban the practice of charging to use the washroom for Ryanair flights, or any other airline flights, flying in and out of Canada. To me, that would have been an obvious answer to my question. Instead, he did not answer the question and I had to come through this process to get further answers from the government.

The government should be proactive in this case. The government is very interested to make certain the industry is efficient and does not waste money, but I do not think we should put this airline through the big expense of asking, which it has done, Boeing to create pay-for-use toilets for its planes and then at the end of the day, closing the door on it charging in Canada.

The message should be brought out very early in the process. Ryanair and other airlines should be told that this sort of practice will not be tolerated in Canada, rather than allow the airline to go to quite a big expense to get Boeing to reconfigure their planes.

To demonstrate to the government that this company is serious, I have responses on this issue from a lot of people. I certainly could not begin to read the responses, but I can assure members, they are all very negative.

The Ryanair people have indicated that this is no big deal. Passengers using train and bus stations are already accustomed to paying to use the toilets, so why not on airplanes? That is their rationale. This airline has made its whole reputation out of charging for all sorts of extra things such as baggage. Almost everything we could imagine that is charged for on planes today, Ryanair started.

Tommy Broughan, who is the transport spokesman for Ireland's Labour Party, said that the toilet charge idea had to be taken seriously. People on the other side of the Atlantic are taking this issue very seriously, and the government has to pay some attention to that.

Furthermore, the president of Ryanair, Mr. O'Leary, justified the proposed scheme, saying that the 33 million pounds could lead to fare savings and would keep people from annoying other passengers with unnecessary toilet trips. His theory is that people will go to the washroom before they get on the plane. If they have to go while they are on the plane, they will hold it until they get off the plane. It will make the flight a little easier because people will not make unnecessary trips. However, he still figures he will get 33 million pounds. He says, “Eventually it is going to happen. It is just we can't do it at the moment because we don't have the mechanism for charging you”, which is why he has asked Boeing to come up with a card reader.

My question to the minister at the time was this. What are people without credit cards supposed to do?

[Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, April 29th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the previous speaker for the Liberal Party indicated that the Liberal Party was always interested in safety issues. However, the Liberals were in power for 12 years and were asleep at the switch on this whole file. In fact, by 2005-06, more than 40% of the product recalls were a direct result of U.S.-initiated action. We not only see that there, but we also see it in crime issues and financial issues. The American system is able to prosecute and put people in jail, but we are not able to do that here in Canada.

The Liberals were asleep for all those years. PCs are really free market people and believe in the industry policing itself. Can we really trust them to enforce this act?

[Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, April 29th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member whether she would agree that the act should create a hot list, similar to that for cosmetics, listing carcinogens, reproductive toxins, neuro toxins; that these substances should be prohibited in products, with temporary exemptions granted only to the extent that the product is essential and only where alternatives do not exist; and that at a bare minimum, any product containing such chemicals should be required to carry a hazard label, as is required in California, Vermont and the European Union? I assume that the member would be in agreement with that list. I know she is a medical doctor, so I would like to get her opinion on that issue.