John Duncan

[Canadian Tourism Commission, September 30th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the U.S. television show Boston Legal has taped an episode that will feature a world class resort in my riding on Vancouver Island.

This is good news. The bad news is that the episode takes aim at salmon farming, a sustainable industry that employs 4,000 British Columbians, many of them in rural or first nations communities.

The premise that salmon farming and tourism are incompatible is not correct. The Canadian Tourism Commission has rashly booked full page advertisements in The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times to promote the show, which will only serve to manufacture polarization.

We have a taxpayer funded commission which is now effectively taking sides at the possible expense of salmon farm workers and their communities. The minister must derail these plans today.

[Wage Earner Protection Program Act, September 29th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure I fully comprehended the question.

In terms of the amendment dealing with student loan repayments, I have no difficulty with what the Bloc is presenting. I think that is an appropriate amendment. For example, we would support an amendment to apply for discharge after seven years and to allow for discharge based on hardship at any time. I think we are basically on the same wavelength. I am not sure if that is what the Bloc member was driving at or not.

[Wage Earner Protection Program Act, September 29th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I think this has been a good day with a good set of debates on Bill C-55, which is an act to establish the wage earner protection program act and also to amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act, and to make consequential amendments to other acts.

Amazingly, we actually have a consensus from all parties in the House of Commons that we need legislation in this area. This bodes well for the fact that we have people who go to work every day and expect to be paid for their day's wages. Very often their medical and dental premiums are covered as part of that package. They will have other benefits paid for and so on.

Lo and behold, I think all of us in this place represent large enough constituencies such that over and over again we have seen instances where this does not occur. In some cases it leads not only to devastating personal circumstances, but on a very large scale it can affect whole communities where those communities are tied largely to one employer.

I certainly have that circumstance in my riding, along with the unhappy circumstance that the employer ended in insolvency. There was a restructuring, which also ended in insolvency, and we are now into another restructuring exercise which we are hopeful will conclude successfully. This community, the community of Port Alice, with its specialty cellulose mill, has been through a lot over the last couple of years and that has demonstrated the shortcomings of the status quo in terms of how workers' earnings protections are handled.

Bill C-281, the private member's bill from the NDP member for Winnipeg Centre, promoted an initiative in this place for all parties to get their act together in terms of doing something about this matter, which resulted in Bill C-55.

If one were to take a look at Bill C-55, it would be hard not to agree with the thrust of Bill C-55 and not hard to disagree with some of its details, because this is an area that is quite complex. For example, any attempt to try to change the creditor priority can have a positive effect on one party and a negative effect on another party and sometimes can be counterproductive for both parties. In order for me to explain that, I will probably have to give an example, but it does point out why we need to hold hearings on the issue. It is a complex area of law.

The bill is important to many people and consistent with the fact that I have a large union-certified membership in my riding. I have taken an active interest in these kinds of issues in my 12 years representing that area.

I joined the shadow cabinet subcommittee, which we put together as the Conservative caucus, to develop and propose a wage earner protection fund in the case of a bankruptcy. On May 3, 2005 the Conservative shadow cabinet approved a comprehensive proposal that would be funded through the Employment Insurance Act. Consistent with this report, the Conservative caucus tabled a motion in the House of Commons which reads:

That, in the opinion of the House, immediate steps be taken to amend the Employment Insurance Act to provide for the establishment of a workers' protection fund that is funded and administered under the Employment Insurance Act to protect workers wages, medical and dental premiums, and severance payments to an amount of $5,000 per employee in the event of a business bankruptcy or insolvency.

This demonstrates our direction and intent at that point. On June 3, one month later, the government tabled a bill to establish a wage earner protection program. The government's bill would create a fund which would pay laid off employees up to $3,000 per employee in lost wages. The NDP proposed a similar program, of course, in Bill C-281 that gives super priority to workers in the event of a bankruptcy.

The difficulty we would have in the example that I have quoted, which was the Port Alice cellulose mill with something like what is proposed in Bill C-281, is the fact that the level of assets would be the determinant of how much an employee would receive and this would also be almost certain to result in a long wait for the employee to receive anything.

This is why the direction that Bill C-55 takes, in that specific area of the bill, is actually better because payment would be more quickly achieved. There is no time that is more appropriate for employees to receive their paycheques than when they were expecting them or very shortly thereafter.

The assets were being run down on a monthly basis and at the end of May, the 330 or so employees at the cellulose mill would have had a payout much less than $3,000 per employee. That is another way that Bill C-55 does have some improvements over the private member's bill first enunciated as Bill C-281.

However, we need to look at this in a broad way. I think all of the parties have their hearts in the right place in terms of trying to protect the workforce from employers that have, in some cases, actually gone out of their way to hide from them the fact that they have not been paying into things like their medical and dental premiums.

There was even the case, in the situation I was talking about, where a family support garnishee program had been shorted. In other words, the payments had not been forwarded. That employee was in trouble not just from a financial standpoint in not receiving wages and benefits but owed a payment through the courts that should have been automatic.

These are some of the wrinkles that can occur. We have to avoid an incentive to drive businesses having difficulties into early insolvency in order to keep the asset base up. That occurs as well.

[Wage Earner Protection Program Act, September 29th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague speak about this bill. She mentioned the idea of changing priority during a bankruptcy in terms of creditor priority. I am wondering if the member could elaborate in terms of how changing priority could actually be a counterproductive measure and how we could avoid doing that and still achieve our goal, which is worker protection in the event of an insolvency.

[Wage Earner Protection Program Act, September 29th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, because he has indeed read my mind and I think the will of the House right now.

In a sense, we have just heard a farewell speech from our esteemed colleague from the Bloc. He is someone who has travelled widely and also has had many overlaps with other members over the 12 years he has been here. I have been here that same length of time. I also know that some of the newer members have a strikingly high opinion of all of their dealings with the member for Verchères—Les Patriotes.

I have some very vivid memories of the member, particularly from the trade portfolio when I held that portfolio as critic, and also from some international travel. They say that we do not really know someone until we travel with them and then we see them warts and all. Those of us who have been put on the same bus,on the same airplane or in the same routine, very often in a strange or foreign land for an extended period of time, get to know each other very well. I would say that the member for Verchères—Les Patriotes has indubitably passed all those tests.

The respect that the member carried had a personal impact on me. There was a point in time when there was a document produced by him which was sent to all members of Parliament. I read that document, which was a very lengthy document, and I could tell that he had poured his heart and soul into writing it. It was basically an analysis and a description of the expulsion of the Acadians. I know there is a personal family connection for the member and I knew that this was something he thought about for a long time. I complimented him on the quality and calibre of the writing. It certainly provided me with a point of view I highly respected, one that touched my heart. This is the kind of member of Parliament that we have been blessed with in this place for the last 12 years.

I feel compelled to wish my colleague good fortune in where he is going. I know that my colleague from Blackstrap beside me could not help but notice the passion that the member brought to the job and to his endeavours.

At this time, if the member for Verchères—Les Patriotes wishes to respond to my non-question, he would be more than welcome to do so.

[Committees of the House, September 29th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, we would be prepared to adopt the motion on division, if that would be preferable to the government.

[Gasoline Prices, September 26th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I have no objection to some form of petroleum monitoring agency. The November 2003 committee report recommended that the Competition Bureau be given a lot more resources to do this kind of thing, rather than set up a different bureaucracy. Perhaps we can do both. This is probably something that will have to occur.

Our refining capacity is so constrained and so tight that we are going to be subject to these kinds of problems every time there is a catastrophe, unless we can increase the supply. Increasing supply has a lot to do with the government as well.

[Gasoline Prices, September 26th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, that question is a good question. It is one all taxpayers in this country should be asking themselves, because it is not just on this fuel tax issue where we seem to get taxed beyond the necessity to run an effective central government. We now have a government that is spending money on an awful lot of what people would call boutique programs or programs that could very well be better and more efficiently run at a different level of government.

This is all about a government that is happy to take our money in ways that it thinks we will not notice in order to try to spend it on us in ways that it hopes we will notice and give it credit for. It is all about optics and appearance. The Liberals actually think that people do not really notice this money being taken from them at the pumps, for example. That is all the wrong kind of logic to use if one is legitimately interested in running the country based on principle rather than politics and opportunism.

[Gasoline Prices, September 26th, 2005]

I am being told by government members that I should not overestimate the impact of the committee. I am not overestimating the impact of the committee. I talked to some members of the national media that day. It was testimony by Liberal members that led them to seek out single stations that were gouging across the country and blow that up into a bigger story. That is exactly what happened.

That led to all kinds of other dimensions, whereby when I left that committee meeting and drove into a west Ottawa neighbourhood, there was a lineup at the pump to buy fuel where I would rarely see cars at that time of night, fuel that was still selling for the same price 24 and 48 hours later. This was all, excuse the pun, pumped up by Liberal members with a personal agenda to try to avoid the real questions in their own backyards where they had problems, either with the truckers' strike in the case of New Brunswick or with some other pressure point at home where they really did not want to deal with the issue the government could control, which is tax revenues.

So not only did these members contribute to the panic, but they attacked the refining sector, because they knew they could not attack crude oil prices. Those are set on a worldwide basis. They could not or did not want to attack the dealers and they did not want to attack the taxation issue. There was only one thing left, which was attacking the refiners.

Despite all of that, the ministers walked in here today and delivered an absolutely contradictory message: that the reason we do not have more refinery capacity is because they have not had enough return on investment and therefore the government has a responsibility there. I am not sure what its responsibility is, according to what they were saying.

I know what the government's responsibility is. We need some investor confidence in this country, which will come only when we have an energy framework, a framework that this government has not delivered in spite of the fact it has been promising one for a long time.

That is what happened in the bubble of Ottawa. Unfortunately, at home the tax burden is keeping people away from work in some cases in the resource manufacturing or transportation sectors because of high fuel prices. People, especially seniors and those on fixed incomes, are extremely concerned about what will happen this winter.

We all know what is in the ability of the government to most readily influence, what it can do right away, and the Conservative members have been putting forth that point of view for a long time. We put it forth again at committee. At each and every opportunity where we could talk about tax cuts that would make sense for Canadian fuel, we were attacked for taking that position. Whenever groups representing part of an industrial sector or a consumer group gave the same kind of testimony, they were aggressively attacked for their position by the Liberal members on that committee. It was at the point where we actually had denial; the Liberal members denied that if there were a tax cut it would ever show up at the pump.

We have examples in Canada in which we can compare province to province, or we can compare Canada to the U.S., where, if there is a lower taxation regime, guess what, there are lower fuel prices. We have the example of Poland. Last week, against the advice of the European Commission, it dropped the excise tax on fuel by the equivalent of about 10¢ Canadian per litre. That is already being reflected in large part at the pumps. Poland is doing the right things for its economy.

As we heard from the industrial sector, it makes a lot more sense from an economic standpoint to tax outputs rather than inputs. At the very time when our government is talking about trying to deal with the fact that our productivity is lagging, there is a double reason why it would make sense to reduce the tax load on fuels. Also, as people have mentioned here tonight, there are the irrational taxes that were based on a premise. For example, we had a 1.5¢ excise tax on consumer gasoline to help pay the deficit, which has now been paid for eight years. This was a tax installed by the Conservatives, which was supposed to stay in until the deficit was slain. The deficit was slain eight years ago but the tax is still there.

Also to address the deficit, a 4¢ per litre excise tax was put on aviation fuel. It is still there. Over the last eight years, that tax has collected over $300 million. That tax is money taken directly out of the aviation sector, a sector that has had nothing but grief over the last eight years and could have very well used that money to good purpose, for a purpose a lot better than any single thing I could imagine it was actually put to use for by the government.

The other ogre that was brought up was about this 5¢ per litre going to the municipalities. I will wrap up in one sentence. It is 1.5¢. It is not statutorily enabled past this next year, which is still at the 1.5¢ level, and all of the rest of it is simply Liberal policy that may or may not come to pass.

What is it all about anyway? The provinces spend over 100% of their fuel revenues on roads, so what is the big deal about the federal government spending maybe 50% of fuel excise taxes, never mind the GST, on roads and infrastructure?

[Gasoline Prices, September 26th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I am one of those people who was referred to by the member for Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, the chair of the industry, natural resources, science and technology committee. We all sat through a long meeting on Thursday, with 25 witnesses, I think he said.

What is clear from this debate, the debate last Thursday and the posturing of the various political parties is, first and foremost, that the government is addicted to the tax revenues it receives, and on all fronts, but specifically when we talk about fuel, the government is addicted to those revenues.

Second, the Conservative Party of Canada is the only party in this place that is in favour of reducing the cost of fuel to the consumer or end user. If we take that as the pretext or context of all of the other positions that people have taken, they are either putting up a smokescreen or creating diversions or red herrings in order to avoid addressing that issue head on. This is really the issue that the consumer or end user is concerned about. The more diversions or obfuscations they can create, the more likely that their argument will be somehow saleable wherever they are trying to peddle it.

Those hearings last Thursday, if we put everything into the context of what I have just said, were very instructive indeed. With hurricane Rita bearing down on the gulf coast of the southern U.S., the government members on that committee contributed to the perception that we had a major price spike coming and helped create a panic at the gas pumps. All we have to do—