John McKay

[Transparency of Payments Made by Mining, Oil and Gas Corporations to Foreign Governments Act, January 31st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague has given a perverse illustration of my entire speech. Good regulation is good for business. That is the point.

Yes, he is right that the mining industry is very important to the GTA. It is the industry that is calling for regulation. I do not know whether he listened to my quotes from Pierre Gratton, the Mining Association of Canada's president and CEO. The association wants the government to get into the game, but the problem is that the government is not in the game. The industry is in the game, the NGOs are in the game, civil society is in the game, some provinces are in the game, and some international companies are in the game.

The consequence is that, if the government is not in the game, all of that industry will migrate to jurisdictions where there is a responsible attitude toward corporate social responsibility, rather than the "three blind mice" approach that the Conservative government exemplifies and my hon. colleague's question exemplifies.

[Transparency of Payments Made by Mining, Oil and Gas Corporations to Foreign Governments Act, January 31st, 2014]

moved that Bill C-474, An Act respecting the promotion of financial transparency, improved accountability and long-term economic sustainability through the public reporting of payments made by mining, oil and gas corporations to foreign governments, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, that is an exceedingly long name for a bill. Possibly, the name might even be longer than the bill itself. I have been referring to it as “the sunshine bill” because the notion is clearly that payments made by the extractive sector to various entities, that the light of sunshine be shone upon them so that all can see what is happening, but also that it acts as a disinfectant to what is the pernicious problem of corruption.

There is a broad consensus among civil society, NGOs, and the industry, and some governments that there has to be something done about the payments and the corruption involved in a variety of enterprises, particularly involving the extractive sector: that we need to have increased transparency and to curb corruption.

Indeed, recently PDAC, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada; MAC, the Mining Association of Canada; Revenue Watch Institute; and Publish What You Pay came together to say the following, as stated by Pierre Gratton, Mining Association of Canada's president and CEO:

The Canadian mining industry is fully committed to improving transparency in a way that aligns with global standards. Today's launch of the draft framework, which was developed hand-in-hand with our civil society partners, is an important step forward to help reduce corruption and build governance capacity, while showcasing the positive contributions we make to the countries where we operate.

Clearly, among governments, the United States has been the lead government through the Cardin-Lugar amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill. It is a very dramatic amendment because it says that every year within six months of a corporation's year-end, the corporation must file a statement saying whom it paid, how much it paid, the currency it paid, et cetera. If it fails to file, then it will be de-listed from U.S. stock exchanges. It is a very draconian sanction, and it shows the seriousness with which the United States takes the issue of corruption.

The European Union has passed similar legislation. The United Kingdom is in the final stages of drafting a bill. Prime Minister Cameron made it a central issue of the last G8 meeting in Ireland. He and his fellow summit leaders were even able to get our Prime Minister to say that he is in favour of transparency, “empowering people to hold governments and companies to account”; indeed, “progress towards common global reporting standards to make extractive industry payments more transparent”.

That was a commitment signed by all G8 leaders, and this, frankly, is a big change from the last G8 summit when our Prime Minister refused to endorse a similar communiqué.

So we take progress, however incremental, and we take some encouragement from that, even though the former president of Revenue Watch Institute, Karin Lissakers, said publicly that Canada was out of step with other countries on upping their game.

It is trite but true that Canada is the most important mining country in the world. We have something like 8,000 interests in a variety of properties in a variety of countries, something like 100 of them. That is 8,000 mining sites, or mining sites that are in the process of being developed. Yet, the government continues to dig in its heels. It was only last December that the public service launched a review of corporate social responsibility strategy for the extractive sector. A review is not a commitment to a legislation. A review is not draft legislation or regulation.

The United States is out of the blocks. Their legislation came into place as of September this past year. The first filing period will be September 2014. Also out of the blocks is the European Union, and the United Kingdom and others are following suit.

We, on the other hand, have a review, and maybe in the fullness of time before the end of this Parliament, we will have a bill to look at in this Parliament. However, Mr. Speaker, you and I know that legislation sometimes has a tortuous path, particularly prior to the dissolution of a Parliament, and it is not realistic or likely that a bill, such as what we see in the United States, would be put forward by the government for Parliament to debate.

Industry, on the other hand, is frankly a million miles ahead of the government. Pierre Gratton, again of the Mining Association, has said:

There was a little bit of a surprise that industry is asking for more regulation. But there are business reasons for doing this, and sometimes additional regulations is actually good for business.

Business can only carry the load so far. The best companies operate at the highest ethical standards, but they are frankly helpless when less ethical companies bribe their way into lucrative concessions. Regulation and legislation are not for those who wish to be transparent. Regulation and legislation are for companies that wish not to be transparent or to be less transparent. It frustrates the CEOs who want to do the right thing. It makes him or her unnecessarily vulnerable and, frankly, it trashes Canada's reputation.

I want to take the opportunity to relate a conversation I had with one of our Conservative colleagues, whom I quite like and respect. He had just returned from Africa and was commenting on the endemic corruption he had witnessed. However, he said that he would not support my bill because “...corruption is a way of life there, and frankly there is nothing you can do about it, so why bother?”. He did not add, but I will add, that if Canadian companies do not bribe, they will lose business, and that I am just being naive.

There are two sides to corruption: the demand side and the supply side. I do not expect that Bill C-474, the sunshine bill or any other bill, frankly, will stem the demand side. That would be naive. However, we could possibly just slow down the supply side of corruption, because every CEO and every project manager would know that their company would have to file sworn statements that this money was paid for this concession to this government or entity on this day in a particular currency, and failure to file would be an offence. In my proposal in Bill C-474, it would be a finable offence, and on the U.S. side, it would be a delisting offence.

Maybe SNC Lavalin would not be in the mess it is in today if something like the sunshine bill had existed. Maybe their executives would not be facing criminal charges. Maybe their stock prices would not have been hammered, as they have been in the last year. Maybe SNC Lavalin and their related companies would not have been cut out of World Bank business for the next 10 years, and maybe we would not see the headline that we saw on The Huffington Post and the Financial Post this morning, which said:

Canada has the dubious honour of being home for the largest number of firms on a World Bank blacklist of corrupt companies.

I want to point out that this is one occasion where I think a headline is misleading. The article goes on to say “Of the more than 600 companies now listed as barred from doing business with the World Bank over corruption, 117 are Canadian, the most of any one country”. However, further down in the article, it states that 115 of those 117 are related to SNC-Lavalin in some manner or another.

Therefore, this is a case of the headline of an article being misleading. Nevertheless, if people live in a fantasy world and believe that Canada is as pure driven as the snow, then I would ask them to take another look at that.

If we had legislation in place, maybe Griffiths Energy would not have been fined $10 million. If we had legislation in place, then Niko Resources would not have been fined $9.5 million. I am not so naive as to believe that Bill C-474 would have ended all of these problems, but I do know that legions of lawyers will be reminding their bosses of their filing requirements under the bill.

I commend the government for its initiatives on S-14, an act to amend the corruption of foreign public officials act. It was a good idea. It has put resources behind prosecution, which is a good initiative. It is a good idea to beef up the Criminal Code and its anti-corruption measures. When it comes back to the House, we will support it.

However, when a prosecution is launched, it means that the horse is already out of the barn and that a crown attorney has concluded that he or she has a reasonable chance of a successful criminal prosecution. I would suggest that it is much better to put resources toward keeping the horse in the barn. That is what Bill C-474 does.

The government has also taken other CSR initiatives, such as $25 million for the CSR centre in Vancouver. That is good. There is nothing wrong with that. It is not clear to me what it has accomplished at this point, but I think it is a good initiative on the part of the government.

The initiative that has been an unmitigated disaster is the CSR counsellor. It was a mandate that was designed to fail, and it did. I believe it was in 2009 that Counsellor Marketa Evans initiated two or three files. Last October or November, she resigned. It cost millions of dollars and there is no longer a head of the office itself.

Here we are with a modest regulatory initiative with which the House could put Canada back in the game. It is a simple bill, with a clear aim to promote transparency. It is largely a photocopy of the U.S. legislation. In the various times I have been speaking with industry, I proposed that if it has a filing with the Securities Exchange Commission of the U.S., to photocopy it and send it to us. I do not intend or want to have an increased regulatory burden on the industry. However, I have some sense that this would not be well received by the government. Unfortunately, we are the huge hole in the international fence. The United States has stepped up to the plate and is the leader. The U.K. is following, and the EU and Australia are already there. We are the largest hole in the international fence because this is where the action is as far as worldwide mining is concerned.

I appreciate the time and attention of the House. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this initiative. We do not want to see the headlines that we saw, as misleading as they might be, in the The Huffington Post and the Financial Post this morning.

[International Trade, January 31st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the Government of South Korea employs a number of non-tariff techniques in order to circumvent free trade deals.

In its rush to sign deals, the Conservative government appears to be prepared to throw Ontario's auto industry under the bus.

Will the minister specifically contact the Ontario government and address the concerns raised by the Ontario government that it get the same deal that the U.S. demanded and received for Michigan?

[Canal Classic, January 31st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, we witnessed several miracles on ice at the Canal Classic. Some miracles were expected; some were not.

As expected, the members for Barrie and Wetaskiwin demonstrated their dazzling speed.

As expected, the member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel missed an open breakaway that any four-year-old could have scored on.

One media member who claims to be both tough and fair was neither tough nor fair nor present, spending the entire game on the fringes, presumably worried about his makeup.

An unexpected miracle occurred when former Liberal senator Jim Munson tied the game in the last few seconds. He appears to relish his new-found freedom to be out of a position at the perfect time.

With the game tied and at the end of regulation play, the member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel redeemed himself and miraculously won the game in a shootout. Equally miraculously, the NDP, the Conservatives, and the Liberals co-operated to beat back the media hordes. Even the former minister of defence and his former critic of a similar name were civil to each other.

However, the most satisfying miracle was to raise funds for JumpStart. We thank Canadian Tire for making all of these miracles, both big and small, possible.

[Petitions, January 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the third and final petition concerns the Experimental Lakes Area. The petitioners call upon the Government of Canada to recognize the importance of the Experimental Lakes Area and to reverse the decision to close and defund the Experimental Lakes association.

[Petitions, January 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will take that admonition seriously.

[Petitions, January 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is signed by literally thousands of Canadians, again concerning the implementation of binding legislation with respect to corporate social responsibility, the rule of law and good governance and democracy.

The petitioners call upon the Government of Canada to adopt legislation which would be binding upon the EDC and other Canadian corporate bodies and be contingent upon compliance with corporate social responsibilities. They also call upon CIDA, which is of course now defunct, to comply with the—

[Petitions, January 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have three petitions. The first petition calls upon the Government of Canada to mandate corporate social responsibility. The petitioners are appalled by the activities of the extractive industry, particularly in the eastern Congo, where they see the iron fist of Canada against indigenous populations.

They would allow the CSR to be legally binding here, and they would reinvigorate Bill C-300, which was a vote that was lost in the last Parliament.

[Request for Emergency Debate, December 10th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that a request for an emergency debate on the mortality of bees might not be something that the House would usually engage itself in, but I want to bring this forward as an emergency debate because Health Canada and others have all noted over the last two years an increasing mortality rate of bees, which is unusually high.

Why is that important to Canadians? It is because one third of our food sources are pollenated by insects, primarily by bees. There is not much greater emergency than not eating. There is a variety of reasons put forward by experts as to why this is happening, but for the last two years it has been happening and it has been a massive kill.

The reason I am asking for an emergency debate now is that this is effectively the last time that we will be able to engage in debate for the next six weeks. Over the next period of time, the farmers will be buying their seeds. They will also be buying pesticides, so if we have a debate in late January, early February, there is not much that Health Canada or the Government of Canada could do because the seedings will be prepared, the pesticides prepared, the farmers will be prepared. Therefore, we will have another crop rotation through 2014, the effect of which is to postpone the ability of the Government of Canada or anyone else for that matter, to do anything about it until 2015.

The cumulative effect of this increased kill rate on bees is quite significant to our food chain, Mr. Speaker, and I would ask you to give serious thought to this being the last opportunity that we in the House have to discuss this issue. I am not proposing solutions. I think this is a complex issue. I think Health Canada at this point is on top of it, but at some point, and I would hope sooner rather than later, we may have to take actions such as the European Union has taken and such as the United States is considering to deal with this issue.

That is the basis for an emergency debate tonight, sir, and I hope you will favourably look upon it.

[Business of Supply, December 9th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to carry on the conversation about the evidence. The evidence is not in front of us, so each and every person who votes on this motion, whether it is tonight or some other night, will be voting blindly. That is the way the government prefers us, a little like mushrooms, kept moist and in the dark.

This is a consistent pattern. When members, whether they are in the House or in committee, ask for real evidence on any matter, which now is on lapses, we and the PBO continue to be shut out.

I thought the hon. member's answer on the cost and the benefits was quite interesting. The other interesting point is that this money does not just disappear; it actually goes into investments. Investments generate jobs. I would be interested in the hon. member's thoughts on how much this investment would, in effect, create more jobs.