Jim Maloway

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

Mr. Speaker, 65% of consumer goods sold in Canada are imported. Perhaps I should ask a government member, but I will ask the member this. Has the use of counterfeit approval labels, which are primarily associated with offshore products, been adequately dealt with in this bill?

As we know, that is a big issue with offshore products. Counterfeit labels are being mass-produced in other areas of the world. Those products come in to Canada with counterfeit labels on them and the products are not what the labels say they are.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up on the question from the Liberal Party member when she asked about mandatory labelling, which is a pretty important issue to be dealing with here.

One of my constituents suffered all last summer because she used sunscreen that contained chemicals called oxybenzone and benzophenone-3, which I had never heard of, but the chemicals caused her huge problems with reactions. One of her relatives also had the same sort of reaction. She tells me that this is a big issue that the federal government should be dealing with. Part of it has to do with having proper labelling on the product.

The member asked a very good question and her question did not really receive a full answer from the government member.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have received many calls from people concerned about the natural health products issue. The parliamentary secretary said that Bill C-6 does not deal with natural health products.

I would like to know specifically how he will deal with their concerns in this bill. He mentioned he was going to put forward an amendment to the bill. Could he tell us what sort of amendment it will be?

[Business of Supply, April 27th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the government must develop and implement a national tourism strategy, which must contain an extension of passport expiry time from five to ten years, increase accessibility to obtaining a passport through driver's licence bureaus and other alternative government locations. We also want significantly to reduce the price to obtain a passport. We are suggesting free passports for those under the age of 18. Right now a family of four is looking at over $300 for passports. I do not think people are going to be overly quick to spend that. We also suggest free passports for veterans and half-price passports for seniors. I suggest the government even consider a 90-day period where it would provide free passports.

In addition to having the government consider these issues, how many NEXUS cards are in existence? Either members do not know or they will not say.

[Business of Supply, April 27th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, my comments are directed not only to the member, but also to the member for Ajax—Pickering.

We could look at the European model and learn a lot from how those nations have made their borders easier to cross, encouraging the flow of people and trade.

Have the Liberals looked into this issue and what did they discover when and if they did?

[Business of Supply, April 27th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, back in 2001, a lot of activity on this file was emanating out of both Washington and the government in power here at the time. One of the previous speakers mentioned where the programs actually started. When my good friend, Reg Alcock, was here, he was pushing and developing government online programs, even up against his own party at times. However, it seemed that once Reg Alcock was gone from the scene, the whole area kind of died. There does not seem to be much interest in the programs anymore. It is either a lack of interest on the part of the government or that it is just not promoting the programs.

How many NEXUS cards are actually out there? A government speaker made a speech just a few minutes ago talking about the NEXUS program. He had a wide opportunity to give us some figures but he never did. I would like to know how many people are actually using the NEXUS program.

[Business of Supply, April 27th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives seem to believe the right approach is to thicken the border. We can thicken the border all we want, but the bad guys do not come up to the border and ask for an iris scan. They cross the border on snow machines, or bicycles or they walk across the border through areas of the west.

In fact, I was at the Midwestern legislative conference last year and local politicians in North Dakota and South Dakota universally recognized this. When they start hearing about these border issues, they knew illegal activities were going on between the border points. If we are going to bring illegal substances into the United States, we are not going to bring it through the border. We are going to bring it across the border at another point.

The member is focusing on different areas, but I think we should be spending more time, as federal MPs, being involved with organizations like the Midwestern legislative conference. We see there is a lot of common ground there because they, like us, agree this is not the way to go.

[Business of Supply, April 27th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, in June 2008, 14-year-old students from Chief Peguis Junior High School took a bus trip to the Hershey games, a track and field competition in North Dakota that they go to on a regular basis each year. They sent the required information to the border 48 hours before the trip, yet when the bus got to the border, one of the so-called precleared students was taken off the bus, fingerprinted and sent back to Canada.

The U.S. consulate has since apologized for this, but I took the matter to the Midwestern Legislative Conference in Rapid City, South Dakota, last July and was successful in getting unanimous approval on a resolution sent to the Prime Minister, George Bush and other affected politicians.

I would ask the government, will it report back to the House on what has been done so far to develop consistent rules on student and senior bus tours going across the border?

[Business of Supply, April 27th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I want to point out that the NDP have asked for the development and implementation of a national tourism strategy, which would contain several elements.

We have looked at extending the passport expiry time from five years to ten years, increasing accessibility to passports and photos by making them available through licence bureaus and other government locations and reducing the price to obtain a passport to make it more cost effective, such as free passports for people under the age of 18, free passports to veterans and half price passports to seniors. I have even suggested that the government might want to have a 90 day moratorium on charging and maybe have free passports for everyone as of—

[Business of Supply, April 27th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the member has just made some very important points about the government and its inaction over the last number of years.

I believe 600 miles of fence has already been built at the U.S.-Mexico border. Drones are flying in the sky there. If we do not watch out, we will have the same sort of applications apply to our border as that applied at the Mexico-U.S. border. The government has to get more active in opposing this kind of action.

Recently drones have been flying over the Manitoba border with North Dakota. One of the Conservative members of the legislature made that an issue. We need more action like that, not less.

I would like to echo what the member said and applaud her for making those statements. Does she have any other observations that she would like to make at this time regarding the inaction of the Conservative government on this file?