Joe Comartin

[Budget Implementation Act, 2009, February 12th, 2009]

I think within the context, Madam Speaker, it was not unparliamentary, but I will go on to other items.

There could have been so many other things in the budget as opposed to trying to hide things. We have heard about the Navigable Waters Protection Act, the attack on the environmental movement, and all of what we have accomplished so far being undermined by that.

When I read that part of Bill C-10, the budget implementation bill, it immediately brought back a conversation I had with a public servant at the municipal level in my riding when I was doing the prebudget consultation work. I asked to be provided with a list of all the projects available if we could get a decent stimulus program going. I specifically asked whether these projects were ready to go, including if they needed an environmental assessment and if it had been done. He said to me in response, “Every single one of these has had an environmental assessment, if it is needed”. That is true generally with municipal projects across the country. Therefore, this provision is absolutely unnecessary. It is simply an attack.

I want to conclude by saying there is so much hypocrisy and ideology in this bill. The bottom line is there is not going to be an effective mechanism to stimulate the economy.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2009, February 12th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I rise proudly today to oppose Bill C-10, the budget implementation bill.

It is quite interesting when one does a quick analysis of what has happened since the financial crisis hit, which is a huge indictment of a capitalist system run amok and now attempts are being made to salvage it by bills like this one and other attempts by other right-wing governments around the globe. It is so symptomatic of how the crisis came about. It was based hugely on greed, incompetence and corruption, particularly in the United States, but its tentacles have spread right across the globe. Because we in Canada are so integrated, part of the globalization formula which both major political parties in this country have advocated for so long, we got caught in the crisis and we are going to get caught in it even more. In spite of the Bank of Canada's prognostications, the reality is we have not hit bottom and we are still some distance from hitting bottom based on the way our economic system works.

We saw the government, both during the election and even more so after, continue to be in complete denial of the crisis we were faced with. That has not ended. The budget is a continuation of the government's psychological bent of refusing to recognize reality. It is living in a fantasy world and the budget reflects it.

It also reflects a good deal of cynicism on the part of the government. It follows the same pattern the Prime Minister personally has followed for so long in taking every opportunity to push his ideological right-wing agenda. We see it in this bill in so many ways. It is a continuation of his broken promises, as we have just heard from my colleague, whether it was in appointing people to the unelected Senate, which he promised so vehemently he would never do, or whether it was calling the election in the fall. I remember watching him a number of times give speeches in advance of making that decision, and in advance of fixing the dates for elections in this country, a policy our party has supported for a long time, and the vehemence with which he spoke, and then watching him breach that promise so easily at the first possible opportunity to pursue his own personal objective of trying to get a majority government. We see that continued in the budget.

The Prime Minister stood in this House and he stood before the cameras of all our TV channels, all of our media, and said that he was going to change, that he was going to stop having every single item, no matter how important, be a confidence vote. He was not going to do that anymore.

Then what do we see in Bill C-10? Buried in this bill, which of course is a confidence vote since it is the budget implementation bill, there are at least half a dozen items that have nothing to do with the budget. They are policy issues in a number of different ways, but they are items that the Prime Minister wants from an ideological standpoint. Whether it is attacking the labour movement in this country, or whether it is attacking women over pay equity, he has buried a whole bunch of provisions in this bill, which is now going to be a confidence vote, which compels the so-called official opposition to support it, given the pledges it has made.

This bill is going to go through at some point, unless the Liberals finally come to their senses and maybe stand on principle, but that seems to be a contradiction in terms when we are talking about the Liberal Party. Unless that happens, a bunch of bills will go through the House comprised in Bill C-10, which should not be confidence votes and we should be allowed to vote on those bills without that hanging over our heads. I do not think there is anything more offensive and I say that personally.

I remember watching the finance minister speak about pay equity in his November financial update. In terms of the tone, the words he used and even his body language, I was offended by the vehemence with which he was attacking women and the movement around pay equity that has gone on for decades and still has not completely resolved itself. Then at the next opportunity the government almost hides it in Bill C-10.

We listen to the President of the Treasury Board try to justify it by, quite frankly, as my colleague from Winnipeg said, misleading the House about the provisions in provincial legislation and claiming it is the same. It is not. It is nowhere close. The epitome of it is the government is saying it will get done through collective bargaining. It was interesting to hear my eloquent friend from Newfoundland and Labrador point out that human rights are not bargained. It is either a human right or it is not and it is not bargained. That is what the government is doing in trying to lead us to believe that is the mechanism it is going to use.

To put the lie to that, one only has to read the bill, and I invite the Conservatives to do that to understand what is really in it, if collective bargaining does not work and a number of women say they did not get their pay equity and they want to pursue it, there is a mechanism to pursue it, but their union, their organized support mechanism, cannot help them. In fact, if it tries to help them, it will be fined $50,000. For every incident it will be fined $50,000 for doing what it should be doing in terms of its responsibility vis-à-vis its membership. If that does not put a lie to the real intent of the government, I do not know what would.

Madam Speaker, are you signalling that my time is up?

[BUDGET IMPLEMENTATION ACT, 2009, February 10th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister was very clear that he would not introduce bills or motions in the House that required a confidence vote other than for financial issues, traditional budgetary issues. I want to ask the member for Yukon this question. Based on the theme of his speech today, does he not agree with me that in fact the Prime Minister has once again broken a promise to the House and the Canadian people by incorporating a number of provisions in this bill that are totally unrelated to financial matters or only partially related that should not be confidence votes? If he does agree with me, then why does his party continue to support this budget and this particular bill?

[Andrew Grenon, December 2nd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I stand today to pay tribute to the extraordinary sacrifice and uncommon valour of my late constituent, Corporal Andrew Grenon, who was killed on September 3 of this year while serving our country in Afghanistan.

Corporal Grenon grew up in Windsor--Tecumseh and joined the Princess Patricia's Light Infantry five years ago. By all accounts, he loved serving in the forces and believed strongly in the missions that he was tasked to perform.

The dedication Andrew, or “Drew” as his fellow soldiers called him, showed in volunteering again after being injured in combat is truly inspirational. His death came less than two weeks after receiving a field commendation for saving the lives of two of his comrades.

Those who served with him say that he was an outstanding soldier who demonstrated tremendous leadership and bravery and inspired those around him with his courage, dedication and great sense of humour.

His contribution to his unit, to the Canadian armed forces and to Canada will be greatly missed.

[Economic and Fiscal Statement, December 1st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on the same point of order. I did not have this precedent when I argued earlier. It is on the same issue, the issue of whether the amendment is in order. I want to draw the Speaker's attention to a motion that was brought by the current Prime Minister on April 22, 2005, when he was in opposition.

The main motion before the House was a concurrence motion. The now Prime Minister moved an amendment at that point that the motion not be concurred in and be sent back to committee. That is very similar to a change in the format of what we are speaking about today. In that case the deputy speaker, who was in the chair at the time, ruled the amendment in order.

[Economic and Fiscal Statement, December 1st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, on the same point, I want to express our support for the amendment and make the argument that it is in order.

The attempt by the government to say that its motion does not require any opinion from this House is in fact not accurate. By our accepting it as a motion to take note of the content of the economic statement does call on this House to give an opinion. The amendment that has been proposed by the Bloc is completely in order. It is relevant. It is simply a different opinion from what the government is asking. By taking two words out and inserting one word, it is well within the scope of the amendment. It is likely that the result would be different but the intent of the motion is still there. The amendment is in compliance with that intent. It is the result that may be different from what the government is hoping for and wanted, but it is certainly within the rules as cited by my colleague, the member for Joliette, that this is relevant and proper and in order.

[Election of Speaker, November 18th, 2008]

I would like to congratulate all of the returning members of Parliament and a special welcome to the new members of Parliament.

For the new members who do not know me, I was elected to this House in 2000 after practising as a lawyer in the courts of Ontario for 27 years. After I was elected, I spent considerable time serving on the environment, justice and public safety committees, as well as other committees. I was elected deputy leader by my caucus, and I worked a great deal on the rules of this House.

I believe the role of the Speaker is quite clear and quite simple. It is set out in article 10 of our rules of this chamber. It says that the responsibility of the Speaker is to maintain order and decorum in this chamber. Beyond that, it is my belief that the Speaker has the responsibility to protect the rights and privileges of every member in the House.

I have been an advocate for causes and people since I was in elementary school. I propose that I would continue that role in this chamber as Speaker, if elected, and I would insist that those rights and privileges, that we, more than any other Canadian, have a right to, are guaranteed absolutely in this chamber at all times.

There are other roles the Speaker must play and the Speaker has responsibilities. Our security issues as members must be further addressed. Budgetary issues need to be addressed and I pledge to the chamber that I will be reviewing those should I be elected.

I want to go back to the issue of decorum. I do not believe there is anybody who has been in this chamber for any period of time who believes that the decorum, the order in this chamber, has not deteriorated. I ask members to look inside their hearts and minds and say otherwise to me. We all have a responsibility that goes with those rights and privileges to conduct ourselves with decorum in this chamber. We have not done that.

I do not wish to see the Speaker abdicate responsibility but I say to all members in this chamber that they cannot abdicate their individual responsibilities.

In those committees to which I referred I have worked closely with members of all parties and I have done the same in this chamber.

I am absolutely certain that I will continue to work closely with all members. I am absolutely certain that it is possible to change the conduct and decorum in this House.

I have travelled and visited other parliaments, including those in England and Australia. I have seen the reforms they have introduced. We need to do the same thing here, and I am absolutely certain that we can. I invite you to support me and help me make a change. Thank you.

[Nuclear Liability and compensation Act, June 19th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, crucial to the debate is how our risk assessment is conducted by the nuclear industry, both for existing plants as well as new ones. It is not just the potential for new plants, which is a reality I think we will be confronting, it also involves existing plants because parts of a number of them are not functioning now and a lot of proposals on the political agenda are for them to be reactivated at very substantial cost. We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars at a minimum and usually several billions of dollars to get a reactor back online once it has been shut down and then the restoration has to be done.

The way the financing industry works, if we need to go to the private sector to borrow money, one of the things it looks at is what happens if it does not work and it has a mortgage or security against the property. In law in Ontario and in all of the common law provinces, when one places that kind of security on a property and there is default, the lender assumes ownership responsibility. As part of that ownership responsibility, the lender must face the consequences of the cleanup.

Therefore, a big financial institution could tell, let us say, the people at Bruce Nuclear that it is prepared to lend them $2 billion but that there is no way that it will accept responsibility for billions more dollars if there is a contamination. The institution could ask for a limitation on the liability because it wants the security of knowing it will not have to pay an additional $650 million if a disaster or any kind of substantial consequential leak from a rupture occurs. The lenders are really pushing for this.

People may wonder why a company would not just go to an insurance company and buy insurance. I will point out that there is fixed liability in the United States but it is $10 billion. The nuclear industry has been able to get insurance. We hear from the nuclear industry, which the government has bought into, that Canada could not get that kind of insurance, that the limits could not be set that high. I do not understand that.

Canada's insurance industry is as active and vibrant as it is in the United States. Given that we compete with the Americans with regard to producing energy, it seems to me that we should at least be playing on the same level playing field as they are. It is always the term we hear, mostly from Conservative economists, that we want to be on a level playing field but this is one of the times we would not be. It is to the detriment of Canadian society that we are not prepared to follow those rules even though they are demanded of us in so many other areas.

Therefore, even if we were to fix it at $10 billion, it would be a substantial improvement over this bill by a long shot.

The other thing it does is it forces the financier to look closely at the safety measures implemented by the operator. There is another check and balance, if I can put it that way, by that methodology and the greater the liability the closer that scrutiny is.

[Nuclear Liability and compensation Act, June 19th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-5, the so-called nuclear liability bill is an obvious misnomer. It purports to provide some security to individuals, corporations and communities impacted by the failure of a nuclear power site and provide them with financial compensation for the consequences of that failure and the contamination that inevitably would flow from it. That is the way the bill is being sold. However, the reality is just the opposite.

The bill has nothing to do with protecting working families, neighbourhoods or communities. It is all about making it easier for private interests to build nuclear plants. It is part of the government's agenda, as it was part of the former government's agenda to some significant degree, to privatize the nuclear industry in Canada and to sell off the existing operations in a variety of forms, basically to shift all control to the private sector. Any new operations would similarly be owned and operated by the private sector.

There is a fly in the ointment, if I can use that analogy. The reality is the government cannot get financing in the private sector for the nuclear industry for the construction of new plants or for the renovation of existing plants so they meet operational standards because of the potential for a catastrophic financial risk to the lenders if there is even a minor leak of radiation from a nuclear power site.

It is quite clear that the legislation is totally about protecting the interests of the private sector nuclear industry and the people who would finance it. To suggest otherwise is to either be grossly ignorant or dishonest.

I spent some time on a standing committee a few years ago reviewing the waste management organization bill, which was legislation to establish a government organization to deal with potential sites for the disposal of nuclear waste. In the course of the hearings, which went on for quite some time, some of the information that came forward talked about the consequences of contamination from nuclear power sites.

One of the stories I always remember was about a small nuclear plant, one of the original plants built some time in the early fifties in the United States, that was not properly managed. There were small continuous leaks so the entire site was contaminated, something in the range of about 20 acres. Eventually the plant was shut down.

In the 1990s, after the plant had been shut down and sitting dormant for quite some time, through court orders in the United States it was required that the plant be cleaned up. By this time the private operator had gone bankrupt and was out of the picture, so the federal government and the state government had to take on the burden. At that time, there was no liability insurance available for nuclear plants.

There was no requirement, when that plant was built, to establish a fund to deal with the consequences of a leak or to deal with the cleanup once the plant had closed. There was no money there at all, so it was borne by both the federal and state governments in the United States.

They did get rid of the entire building, which of course was contaminated, but then they had to deal with the site, the soil. Their method of dealing with it was to go down to I think something like 20 feet, truck it to an incinerator and burn all of the soil. What was left, which was still radioactive contamination, was then buried and stored at another nuclear plant site. The price tag for this in the early nineties was $13 billion, and there were no buildings that they had to deal with; that was just the soil.

Let us look at what we would be dealing with if we had a Chernobyl-type disaster, and actually we do not really have to go anywhere near that far.

I want to say, as a bit of an aside, that whenever I think of Chernobyl I think of a meeting I was at of the Essex County Federation of Agriculture in the fall this past year. It was the tradition to have a presentation from an outside group on a variety of topics. There have been a number of interesting presentations over the years, but this last year a family from the Chatham area told about the experiences they had in helping the children of Chernobyl.

What happened after Chernobyl was that there was an immediate evacuation of the area of, I think, a 40 or 50 kilometre radius around the plant, especially downwind, and I have to note that the Minister of the Environment just made a comment about turning the lights out in Saskatchewan. I am sure he is quite capable of operating in the dark because I think that is the way he normally operates.

Back to Chernobyl and a serious issue. When they did this evacuation, they did it in part with the local climatic conditions, in particular with the wind pattern. So people downwind were even more removed.

But then what happened after a number of years, even though the entire site, thousands and thousands of acres, was still contaminated, families started moving back, almost out of desperation and, of course, began producing crops, which continued to be contaminated with radioactive material.

So this family in Chatham and a group they had been helping with had been told that if they could get them out of there, even for a short periods of time, it would reduce substantially their risk of getting cancer from the radioactive exposure they had. And so, there is this international program in Canada, and this family is part of the group, that has begun to assist by bringing both elementary and secondary school-aged children over to other countries.

Ireland is a big participant, as is the United States and Canada. We take students out of that contaminated area during their summer vacations, and just because they are in Canada or in a safe zone for six weeks or seven weeks of the summer, it will dramatically reduce, we are being told by the experts, the potential for them to get cancer, at least at an early age, even though they will go back into the exposure for the balance of the year.

When I think about that story, I also think about who is paying for that. It is not the nuclear industry because it has no liability. The Soviet regime did not require any of that. It is not the current government of Russia or Ukraine because they do not have the resources, Ukraine in particular. This is entirely being funded by this non-profit organization. In fact, the group was there that night to ask for financial assistance. It was interesting to see the emotional response from all of us and a substantial amount of money was raised.

Let us then transpose that to Canada and say we have a significant spill of radioactive material. Whether we take the site at Bruce nuclear or the ones on Lake Ontario near the Toronto-Oshawa area, if there were not money to take care of the area around Chernobyl and there still is no money, imagine what it is going to be like if we have that kind of a disaster in Ontario? What is $650 million going to do?

That is what the absolute maximum limit is under this legislation. It would not do much for that site in the United States that cost $13 billion back in the nineties, which would probably be a $20 billion figure now. It would not do anything for all of the families, individuals and children who would be affected because the $650 million would be gone in the twinkle of an eye.

Think about what it does. We have nuclear plants sitting right there on Lake Ontario and Lake Huron. Any substantial spill would significantly impact on the Great Lakes all the way through into the St. Lawrence. We know that contamination, that radiation, has a lifespan that is beyond the comprehension of our current science.

We hear scientists talk about half life. What they are really saying is we do not know yet, in spite of the nuclear industry being six or seven decades old, how long the contamination will last. We get estimates of 1,000 to 10,000 years, but any nuclear scientists of any substantial credential will say that they just do not know, that those are minimum ranges of how long the contamination will last.

Again, think about the nuclear plants at Bruce and Lake Huron. I know that area fairly well. I have family there and I have spent summer vacations in that area of Kincardine, Port Elgin, and South Hampton. Think about what $650 million would do and more importantly what it will not do. It will not deal with anywhere near the property damage and losses that would be consequential from a spill. It will not do any appreciable good for all those claims we are going to have from people who will no longer be able to work and will suffer cancer, early deaths, et cetera. What about all the medical treatment they are going to require? In a situation like this we look at literally the potential for the collapse of our health care system. I know that sounds dramatic, but it is the reality of a substantial spill. That $650 million just does not cut it.

It does not provide protection for individuals, for businesses, for communities, for the province, or for the country. So why are we doing this? We are doing it to try to facilitate the expansion of the nuclear industry and we are doing it to make it possible to privatize the nuclear industry.

If the bill were to go through, and it probably will because it has the support of the government and the opposition parties, other than the NDP, it would actually expand the risk levels. So the $650 million again becomes more of a joke because it would make it possible, which it is not right now, but it would make it possible to expand the nuclear industry.

There is no question that we need legislation in this area, but the legislation should be that there is unlimited liability on the part of the nuclear industry for the consequences flowing from a spill, a rupture.

If we dumped garbage on our neighbours' property, our laws say to us and society says to us that we must pay to clean that up. We do not turn to the government and say it should clean it up. We do not turn to the neighbours where we dumped it and say that it is on their property now and they can clean it up. If one of their children falls and cuts their foot or their hand on the glass that we have dumped on their property, we are responsible because it is our actions that have caused that. That is the tradition in our law, going back to the common law system and the parliamentary system in England for hundreds and hundreds of years.

This legislation says to this sector of the economy that it can get away with that. If it dumps its waste through its negligence on the neighbours' property, whether it is the whole of Lake Ontario and Lake Huron or the neighbours who live downwind in Toronto and Oshawa, it will have not have to pay them beyond this amount. We know the amount is ridiculously low.

In effect, with this legislation, we are giving a permit for the industry to expand and in effect, we are saying to the nuclear industry, we will impose some limited liability on it, but it does not need to worry about it too much because beyond that it is safe. Then the governments, individuals, corporations and businesses will have to pick up the rest of the tab. We know the rest of the tab is many billions of dollars. That is the reality of what we are dealing with.

I want to refer back again to the work that we did in committee with the waste management organization. The risk level continues to rise because we continue to increase the sheer volume of waste that we have from our current plants and of course we will continue to do so if we build any new ones. From all the work that we did in that committee and the reports that really precipitated the work of that committee, there is no safe storage mechanism in the world for nuclear waste.

The Americans have not figured it out in the U.S., which would arguably be the most advanced country in terms of the work that it has been done on nuclear waste and how to deal with it. They have not figured out how to deal with it safely and securely with full protection for society. They have not been able to do it.

It is not simply the length of time that the material remains contaminated by radiation. It is the actual nature of the contaminated material itself. We have no way of dealing with it. We know we can reduce it somewhat in volume, the nuclear rods in particular. We have developed some technology to reduce that part of it by reusing it. There is very limited reduction, but there is a little bit.

Whatever we have been able to do in that regard has been more than offset by just the sheer volume that is being created as the nuclear plants continue to function and provide us with energy.

The risk is going up, literally on a daily basis as the plants continue to operate and continue to produce radioactive material. In this legislation, we would be limiting the liability, so we can only expect that the risk will continue to rise, in particular, if new plants are built.

I was about to say 50 years from now, but let me say for sure that in 100 years or 200 years from now, those societies will look back at what we did here since the early fifties and wonder if we were crazy.

My answer to them would be no, we were just reckless. We were reckless to go down this road in the first place. We were reckless because we see this as a panacea, a solution, in the sense of increasing the use of nuclear technology for energy production. We were reckless because we know we have alternatives that, arguably, even now, and probably for a few years, are less expensive than the nuclear alternatives. We know that if we pumped more money into research and development of alternative fuel sources that we could be even more quickly dealing with this issue.

This is not an answer at all to the problem with which we are confronted, whether it is energy production or it is a--

[Committees of the House, June 19th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is not a question of ability to do anything. It is a question of the willingness, having the political courage to stand up and say we are going to do what we are supposed to do. The government very clearly would get a positive response from the United States. We know that.