Joe Comartin

[The Environment, October 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great distress that I read this weekend that an ecosystem almost five times the size of Prince Edward Island is on the brink of dying. Because of federal government cuts, scientists cannot even tell us why this is occurring to Lake Erie.

Funding cuts to Environment Canada made by the former finance minister have critically compromised research, monitoring and remedial action for the Great Lakes. As well, the Canada-Ontario agreement respecting the Great Lakes basin lapsed for two years. It was only signed about six months ago and nothing has been done to implement it.

Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes and serves as the bellwether for all the others. As Lake Erie goes, so do all the Great Lakes. I urge the government to properly fund and implement the COA and revive this vital ecosystem. Or is it just going to stand on the sidelines and let it die?

[Iraq, October 2nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the simple answer of course would be yes. We can extend the examples to any number of other cases. Do we still criticize Germany for using mustard gas in the first world war? Do we attack the United States because it was the first one, the only one, to use nuclear bombs? The examples go on and on.

We know as recently as this week from information released that in fact some of the chemical weapons Hussein had at one point came directly from the United States. Do we look at them and point our guns at them? Obviously not.

[Iraq, October 2nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, that, in terms of both the comments and the questions, is almost impossible to answer in the two minutes I have left.

Let me just say this about the over-defensiveness, perhaps, of my colleague from the Alliance. We have to tone down the rhetoric. We have to stop prejudging what is going to happen and throw out the hypotheticals. So the inspectors go back and they find one small gram of chemical-biological warfare material: Does the hon. member want me to answer that in fact we should go in and bomb Baghdad? No, we should not. He cannot give me the reality. Until we get the reality we should not be prejudging and presuming we are going to have to use military force, because if we start from that vantage point we will in fact use military force.

[Iraq, October 2nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I want to echo the sentiments of a number of speakers this evening and last evening in recognizing the importance of the opportunity we have been given to debate this issue around the current situation in Iraq and the response that the international community should have to that situation.

Let me begin by saying that I have sat in the House both evenings and have been very concerned about some of the rhetoric that has taken place in the House, of which we have heard more this evening, some of which is out there in the world. There is just way too much willingness to talk about war and the use of war.

If we truly believe that human life is sacred, then the decision to wage war must be made only as an absolute last resort. It is not something to be played with.

I suggest that members of the House should think about what they are saying when they advocate the use of war. They should listen to themselves. They said the same things when the U.S. went into Vietnam.

Let us talk about both of those situations, not just the second world war but the mess that the west ended up in because of what the U.S. did in Vietnam. Let us talk specifically about the gulf war in which 100,000 people died, 35,000 of whom were civilians.

Since the gulf war, sanctions that were imposed after the war have resulted in somewhere between a half a million and a million civilians dying in Iraq from starvation and the lack of medicine. We cannot fall into that trap.

Some of the comments we have heard from Nelson Mandela have been very interesting and very educational. This is a man who has every right to be bitter at the way his country treated him. I think it is very important that we listen to some of the comments he has made. He has directed these comments to the United States specifically and, more generally I believe, to the west. He has talked about how appalled he was with the talk and the rhetoric about the invasion of independent countries. He has accused the U.S. of being the greatest threat to stability and security.

Those are harsh words and, quite frankly, they may not be totally fair, but it is a signal from that great man, who we honoured here just a year ago, that again we should be careful about how we speak about the use of war and how we act when we head down that road.

I want to speak specifically about the consequences of the invasion of Iraq. I had a very personal experience in this regard. This past summer while the House was in recess I had the opportunity to attend a banquet where the local Chaldean Church was being dedicated. It is the first one in Canada. The Chaldean sect is from Iraq, mainly centred in Baghdad.

I sat that evening with the bishop of that church, who told me about his experiences in the gulf war and about being in Baghdad one evening when the bombing was going on. He was in his church when several bombs fell nearby, destroying buildings and, of course more important, killing many of his neighbours and close friends who lived in the neighbourhood. He then explained the type of work that church has been doing in Baghdad to deal with the sanctions and told me about the number of people they are feeding. He finished by giving me what I think was a caution about what he felt would happen to those women, men and children they were feeding if Baghdad were bombed again. It was very personal.

We have to stop and think. What role does Canada have to play? In some of the speeches we have heard that gung-ho, macho attitude of “let us get in there and support whoever the allies are”, whether it is the U.S. by itself or with England. It is a joke. It is easy for us as parliamentarians in Canada to talk that way because we know we have very little capability in terms of deploying military power. That is a shame. We have to correct it, but that is the reality of what we have now.

It is easy to talk that way when we know there is hardly anything we can do about it. But what we can do, as we have so often in the past, as our diplomats and leaders historically have so often done, is seek out diplomatic, creative solutions to those types of world problems that Iraq now represents for us. I listened to some of the speeches in which parliamentarians suggested that there is no other choice, that we all know what Saddam Hussein is and there is only one thing we can do. I could not help but think that this lack of hope, this lack of creativity in how to deal with that monster, is not in keeping with the Canadian tradition.

I thought about another hot spot in another country, Sri Lanka. As recently as a few months ago, people were saying the same thing about that country, that there was nothing we could do and no solution, that we would have to use some type of military force. In fact, Norway, in its peacekeeping efforts, just kept plugging away at it using whatever diplomatic suasion it could. To give Canada its due, we have been in there too. There have been 60,000 people killed there in the last 20 years and that issue now appears to be resolving itself without further violence.

There are times when we can use creative thinking and creative action to solve those problems short of war. That is what we must do now. We must rely on the rule of law. We must allow those inspectors to get into Baghdad, to get into Iraq and to do their jobs. The talk of war must cease until we see those results. We must not demean their work, as I have heard many speakers do, but let them do the jobs that they know how to do. Only then do we decide what further steps may be necessary in order to deal with the issues that confront us from Iraq.

Again, we have to tone down the rhetoric. We have to let the rule of law apply. We have to let Canadian diplomacy work creatively and, hopefully, for the sake of the world, successfully.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, October 1st, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I would like to indicate that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Winnipeg--Transcona.

As I was listening to the delivery of the throne speech yesterday by the Governor General, I had this recurring thought in my mind. After nine years, is this what we have been brought to as a country by this administration? Is this all there is? Could Canada not have expected better after the experience this administration has had over that nine year period?

Because of my area as critic I focussed particularly on the environmental messages that should have been coming from the throne speech, the themes and ideas we were looking forward and that the country was expecting. They were not there. There was a reference to Kyoto. As our leader indicated earlier today, was it the typical Liberal way of dealing with it or was it for real?

I was in Johannesburg with the Prime Minister. I heard him take a position there. When I returned to Canada a few days later I watched him and other ministers of the government weasel out of the commitment he made to the international community and the people of Canada at that time. I was hoping that maybe he had done some rethinking of his obligation to the country and to the planet on the issue of Kyoto, but I did not get any satisfaction out of that in the throne speech.

There was every opportunity in the throne speech for the government to send a clear message that it was serious about dealing with the issue of climate change and global warming. There was a need in the throne speech for specific references on timing for Kyoto, again because of some of the mushiness we have had from this administration and specifically from the Prime Minister, but it was not there.

There were no points about what the plan would be and whether we were ever going to get a plan. There was no specific reference as there should have been to the timing, both of the passage and the implementation. Given the status of concern in the country over the Kyoto protocol, it called for and demanded that those types of points would be covered and in fact they were not.

We have already had one reference in the last few minutes to other issues around the environment in the throne speech. There was a reference to the issue of water quality. We must look at the throne speech in the context of what has happened over the last few years around the issue of water quality. There was Walkerton and the deaths of seven citizens because we did not have safe water. In North Battleford there was serious illness among citizens in that community because we did not have good water quality.

I have lost count of how many water advisories and warnings we have had around the country. In that context again, would the country not have expected something more than a bland statement about dealing with what would clearly be non-mandatory, completely voluntary water guidelines? That is as good as the government could give us.

There was a reference to air quality. Again, in the context, could the country not have expected more? We hear from the medical association that thousands of people die prematurely in Canada every year due to poor air quality.

One reference in the throne speech was about talking to the United States. That was a sore point for me because I come from a community where a great deal of the poor, unhealthy air quality is as a result of practices in the United States.

This administration has spent a fair amount of time talking to the United States but not doing anything about improving the air quality. When we hear that bland statement about talking to the Americans, it does not give us any sense of confidence that those numbers of deaths will go down in the foreseeable future.

There was reference to our park system, a pledge to create 10 new parks and five new marine conservation areas. It sounded hollow to me because of how bad the situation is in not just some but every single national park. Every single one of them is deteriorating. There was no commitment by the government in that speech to turn around that deterioration.

There were other issues beyond the environment that should have been addressed in the speech. I just want to deal with a couple of them.

For all this period of time, we have heard from the former finance minister and the Prime Minister about how great a job they have done dealing with the debt and deficit. We never hear from them, and we did not hear it in this throne speech, about full employment.

I have been travelling a fair amount in the last few weeks. I hear the same thing every time, “What about value added employment and job creation?” I hear it from those communities that are based in the forestry sector and, similarly, in the energy sector. Why do we not have policies that would use the natural resources we have much more effectively than we have up to this point? There was nothing in this speech in that regard. I have heard that all over the country.

Just one more point, and that is on the issue of military spending. What did we get? We got, in spite of where we are at, a pledge to wait until the review was done. What we needed to hear was a recommitment to train, equip and supply our military for peacekeeping and for our international obligations. We did not hear that. We did not hear anything in the way of creativity about dealing with what our military could be doing. It was very bland and very inconclusive.

[The Environment, June 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, southwestern Ontario is currently under a smog watch, an occurrence that happens all too often.

A report released yesterday by the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation highlights the source of the smog. It found that the alarming amounts of deadly toxins being released by coal-fired power plants in North America is on the rise and is expected to increase by a full 50%.

To date the federal government has remained silent on the use of coal-fired power plants in Ontario and elsewhere. Could we have a commitment from the government to move for a moratorium in Canada and demand that the U.S. do the same?

[Health, June 17th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to draw to the attention of the House and all Canadians the ongoing struggle of some 70 dedicated health care workers in St. Catherines, Ontario fighting for their rights and quality care for the people they serve.

The members of IWA local 700 are entering the 10th week of a strike against the U.S. based private health care provider Anagram ResCare. In the ongoing dispute the employer has brought in workers from the U.S. as scab labour. An investigation is underway into its conduct as a result of a number of these scabs being intercepted at the border.

The workers of IWA local 700 are on the front line in the battle against the Americanization of our health care system, fighting for quality health care for Canadians and equity for health care providers. I commend them on their struggle and call on the government to act immediately to put an end to the Americanization of health care in Canada.

[The Environment, June 11th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, when the G-8 foreign ministers meet in Whistler tomorrow they will discuss a U.S. proposal to fund a plutonium disposition program. The proposal to pursue the so-called MOX option is unsafe for the environment, extremely costly and could increase the potential of plutonium falling into the hands of terrorists.

In light of the real threat of nuclear terrorist attacks, as demonstrated by recent events in the U.S., will the Prime Minister assure all Canadians that he will oppose the MOX option and ensure that any option that is adopted is subjected to a full environmental review and brought before the appropriate parliamentary committees?

[World Day Against Child Labour, June 11th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring to the attention of the House and all Canadians that tomorrow, Wednesday, June 12 is World Day Against Child Labour.

There are almost 250 million children, or one in six worldwide, in the workforce today. The majority work in unsafe conditions without any health or safety standards or protection of their rights.

In solidarity with children from around the world, the students of Malden Central Public School in Essex County will be placing flowers on their front lawns symbolizing the member states of the International Labour Organization and as a way of encouraging the 53 states who have yet to ratify the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention to do so.

I congratulate and commend the students and staff of Malden Public School with the support of local labour groups and the community for drawing attention to this worthy initiative.

[Species At Risk Act, June 11th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, in one word, no. I think I made it clear that I was not prepared to trust the minister or the department on a number of issues.

Specifically on the compensation, I have to take some issue with my friend from Surrey Central. I do not see that issue or the issues of criminal penalties and socioeconomic considerations as being the most important issues we dealt with. They were considerations, but they were secondary ones.

There is no question that we should have had a broader scope of how the compensation would work. The criminal penalties are fairly restrictive as well and we should have had a broader scope on those.

With regard to the socioeconomic considerations, I believe that the work the committee did in structuring the bill as to when socioeconomic considerations were to be taken into account was the appropriate way to do it. In that respect I had, and I believe the majority of the committee had, serious disagreements with the Alliance Party. It wanted to introduce socioeconomic considerations at times in the bill and at stages when species were being protected at various levels, which were much too early and I would say inappropriate.