Joe Comartin

[Employee Benefits, October 31st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of points to make in support of my colleague's private member's motion.

This brings home the point of the need for this type of legislation. I recently had a conversation with one of my legal colleagues. He was telling me about a current situation. I will change the facts a little so it is not clear about the specific case we were talking about. I do not wish to divulge any of the information he specifically gave me.

[The Budget, October 30th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. The Canadian Wind Energy Association indicates that it cannot get financing for its projects in Canada and that a lot of the financing is going to the United States.

Will he consider adding some incentives and tax breaks in the budget that is upcoming in December?

[Energy, October 30th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, we are all aware of the benefits we can derive from wind power. Canada has the ability to produce more wind power than any country in the world.

In spite of that the federal government, while pumping billions into the nuclear and oil industries over the years, has contributed relatively little to the development of wind power in Canada.

Europe and the U.S. provide substantial financial incentives to both producers and consumers of alternate energy. Canada does relatively nothing. Ironically many of the investors in the growing U.S. market are Canadian companies.

It is time for the government to join other developed countries to embrace wind energy and provide the financial incentives and investments needed for this valuable renewable energy source to flourish in this country.

[Transportation, October 23rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the mayor of Ottawa was quoted as saying that this minister, referring to the Minister of Transport, made speech after speech across this country, including here in Ottawa. He gave the commitment that he would be at the table if the province was at the table.

Now he has reneged on it. I can only hope that the finance minister will take up the slack and honour the commitment. So I ask the finance minister, will he?

[Transportation, October 23rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, funding for public transit makes good sense especially in terms of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and meeting our Kyoto commitments.

Municipalities and now even the provincial government in Ontario have agreed to put money into this program.

Yesterday the transport minister refused to meet the commitments he made in the past and he will not come to the table and contribute. Why will the minister not meet his commitments? When will he participate in this type of program?

[John Haidar, October 22nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, this Wednesday, October 24, Mr. John Haidar will receive the 2001 Citation for Citizenship, an award recognizing those who help newcomers adapt to Canadian society.

Mr. Haidar came to Canada from his native Lebanon in 1977 and became a Canadian citizen in 1980. In 1987 he became actively involved in assisting immigrants with the application process. He has, on a volunteer basis, worked with the local citizenship and immigration office to develop effective procedures to assist new immigrants. He has also worked closely with the Arab Canadian Intercultural Orientation Centre and the Windsor Islamic Association.

Over the years he has assisted over 700 new immigrants to the Windsor area, not only with the immigration process but also in their efforts to find employment, access health care and education. His efforts have been an exceptional asset to our community.

I extend my congratulations to John Haidar on the occasion of this well deserved award.

[Broadcasting Act, October 19th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in support of Bill S-7, both on behalf of our party and more specifically with the full support of the member for Dartmouth who is responsible for the bill and our position on it, and who is wholeheartedly in support of it.

Other than the argument we have heard that perhaps it is not the best time to be doing this, it seems to me that there is universal support in the House for the need for this type of amendment to the Broadcasting Act.

As a lawyer in private practice and a litigation lawyer, one who has worked on various occasions for groups who needed this type of support to provide themselves with the resources to act as interveners, it is obvious to me that this bill should be approved by all members of the House.

It is particularly important if one looks at what is happening to our media, to our regulation of it and to the overhaul which I think all parties agree is going on at this time and will continue for some time in the future. From a democracy standpoint, we simply and absolutely require the assistance that consumers and other interest groups will bring to the debate around the overhaul of the industry.

There are some changes being suggested that are quite frankly scary. There are some changes that have already occurred. One cannot help but think that, if we had had greater intervention from these groups, we would have had a better system for both public and private broadcasting.

If one is serious about democracy, one must support the bill.

I will raise a couple of issues that already have been addressed. The whole debate continues around the convergence of the print media with the electronic media, and the mergers of those systems, so that in many respects we now are faced with public opinion being formulated through the media by a smaller and smaller group of editors and producers. That cannot be healthy for democracy. It limits debate and the issues raised. As democrats, we must be concerned about that.

The other issue that caused a great deal of anger was the issue of negative billing. One cannot help but think that if the issue had been addressed at an earlier stage by interveners, it never would have got to the point that it did and it would not have caused so many people grief, including the providers of the service. This type of a bill and the resulting support it would provide to the interveners would really help head off that kind of a problem at a much earlier stage.

There are any number of other areas in the processing and enforcing of legislation and regulations. One cannot help but think that the government would be serving the Canadian public much better if it followed the example in the bill.

Again, I reiterate the need for the bill. Senator Finestone is to be commended for her work in the Senate with regard to it. I also want to acknowledge the speech by the member for Charleswood St. James--Assiniboia. His words were particularly forceful and eloquent at times on the need to have this type of legislation in place and to provide that type of support for the intervening groups who want to provide assistance to the democratic process.

[Customs Act, October 19th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, as always when interrupted, my eloquence may be less than it was in the first several minutes. I will resume where I think I left off which was on the issue of the adequacy of the bill.

I have already made the points that we are concerned that the bill came from the Senate and was processed through there rather than through the House. It is well indicated that we are in support of the Bloc's amendments.

Beyond that we have some very serious concerns about the bill, particularly with regard to the tragedy of September 11. It is now totally inadequate to respond to the concerns of both Canada and the United States.

In that regard this was supposed to be about the free flow of goods and people across the border. Because it was our border we were looking at, it really was a question of the flow of people and goods from the United States into Canada.

It is important to my constituency and generally to constituencies in Canada that have large manufacturing centres. It is extremely important to those industries because of the nature of that trade that goods flow rapidly and equally so that the people involved in those manufacturing industries, including truckers and business people, are able to move easily across the border. Just on time manufacturing has been instituted in Canada and the United States now for over a decade. In order for that process to work, we must move across the border freely.

This bill was an attempt to deal with problems that existed long before September 11. Unfortunately it is wanting even with regard to the problems that we had at that time. What has happened since September 11 has dramatically increased the waiting periods on both sides of the border but particularly on the Canadian side going into the United States. That reflects the problems on the American side.

We do not do this a lot but I want to praise some of the work that national revenue has done with regard to the advancement of the use of technology and other systems to allow people and goods to move back and forth across the border. However that only works on the Canadian side, that is, it only works on allowing goods and people into Canada. The problem is it does nothing to allow goods to move from Canada into the United States.

It is important to note that 40% of all the trade in Canada moves across the five border crossings between Windsor and Sarnia. There are three tunnels, one for rail, two for vehicles, and two bridges for 40% of all the trade in this country. As a result of September 11 there have been tremendous backups.

I grew up in Essex county. The small town of Belle River is 20 miles, or 30 kilometres, from Windsor. On one day truck traffic was backed up from the Ambassador Bridge all the way to the Belle River Road which as I said is 30 kilometres from the border. Those are the kinds of problems we had.The bill is grossly inadequate to deal with those types of backups.

I want to come back to the praise I was trying to give to the department. It has moved further along both in human resources in the deployment of staff and in the use of technology on the Canadian side of the border. There has not been the same kind of response on the American side. That really is where the thrust has to be to get traffic moving again in an efficient and effective manner.

That is not to say there are no problems. We know that one of the systems, the Canpass system, allows priority to be given to people who hold the pass to move their goods across the border in a more rapid way than others. However one of the things that came out at the committee was that a full 15% of the addresses of people who hold Canpass passes are no longer accurate. The department itself gave that information to us.

Given the situation we have now and the screening that goes on around security, that is no longer acceptable. It should not be acceptable to Canadians and it clearly will not be acceptable to the U.S. government and its administration. We must improve these systems.

There is another system, Nexus, that assists individuals in moving across the border. These are people who move back and forth regularly. This system is similarly wanting in that it is not good enough. No one expects perfection but we are not close enough yet. We need to continue to work on that.

It is obvious that we need a system that both countries will accept and utilize to allow people and goods which move regularly back and forth across the border to have priority. It is the only effective and efficient way to move those goods and people.

We need the government to enter into intense negotiations with the U.S. government for these types of systems to be developed. It could also use the ones we have now and increase their effectiveness, or perhaps develop new systems that take into account the need to balance security and the efficient movement of goods and people.

Bill S-23, quite frankly, does not address these issues anywhere near adequately. It should go back for further review and be brought up to date.

I see that I am getting a signal from you, Madam Speaker, that my time has run out or is about to run out. I will finish with one other comment.

We have serious concerns, quite frankly, with regard to privacy and civil liberties in the bill.

[Petitions, October 19th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I am honoured to present a petition from my constituents and other members of the city of Windsor and the county of Essex regarding the preservation of an ecologically important area along the Detroit River. It is the last area along the Detroit River that has not been affected by development and it is important in their opinion for this to be preserved. I am happy to table that petition today.

[Employment Insurance, October 19th, 2001]

Quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, if I hear that one more time I will be nauseous. If she will not answer that question and give us more platitudes, could she tell us if she is doing anything about reducing the number of weeks it takes for her officials to process applications?

Seven hundred people have been laid off at the casino in Windsor and they are having to wait five, six and seven weeks for their applications to be heard. Could she tell us what she is doing about that?