Joyce Murray

[Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act, November 28th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, earlier my colleague from Guelph made a comment about the very negative repercussions experienced in another country doing this kind of deregulation.

On Friday, I attended an urban farming forum in Vancouver, which was well-attended. People are interested in what kind of government framework or supports there are for small farmers or young people who want to get into farming or organic farming for more direct farm-to-urban table approaches. It appears to me that this deregulation of wheat growing will go in exactly the opposite direction than what is needed.

What might the effect be on smaller farms and family farms compared with the larger farms after this deregulation of wheat marketing?

[Canada Water Preservation Act, November 23rd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and speak in favour of Bill C-267, an act respecting the preservation of Canada’s water resources.

I congratulate my colleague from Lac-Saint-Louis. He is a pioneer and a driver of the issue of protecting Canada's water.

We sometimes take water for granted. We can turn on a tap and access clean and abundant water. We have the impression that Canada is a vast country with the best freshwater supply on the planet. We need to fight to ensure those things are true. The member for Lac-Saint-Louis has made members in Parliament and people in his riding and across Canada aware of the fact that we cannot rest assured that our water supply is safe.

The member for Charlottetown spoke very convincingly about the bill. He understands and has explained the elements of it. I will take a different approach in my remarks this evening.

I want to reflect on the words of one of our premier water experts in Canada, Dr. Karen Bakker, who is a professor at the University of British Columbia in my riding, and also the editor and partial author of Eau Canada. Dr. Bakker spoke in Vancouver Quadra recently about our myths about Canada's water. I have spoken about that before, but it is worth repeating because this is the century of water.

In this 21st century humanity needs to pay attention to the fact that water is a top concern. There are enormous threats to our water, everything from climate change to industrial use to overuse. Complacency is the biggest threat. Dr. Bakker talked about the myths about water, that we do not need to be concerned about it. I have referred to those myths in speeches before.

I want to acknowledge my colleague for being clear that water is one of the top threatened resources that cannot be replaced in any other way and that we must protect it. This bill is important in that regard.

[Points of Order, November 23rd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Vancouver South made a false statement about my social media communications and I would request that the member retract her remarks and correct the record. None of my tweets have referred to a carbon tax.

While she is at it, perhaps she could ask her colleague, the Minister of the Environment, why the government is such a dismal failure on the issue of climate change?

[Senate Reform Act, November 22nd, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the hon. NDP member a question about equity within Parliament. Former Liberal prime ministers have had to appoint senators in order to have a more equitable Parliament, that is, one with more women in the Senate. Unfortunately, the current Prime Minister's senate appointments have reduced the proportion of female senators.

Does my colleague not see having more women representing Canadians as one of the values of the Senate?

[National Flag of Canada Act, November 18th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the words of the member for Don Valley West. I agree with much of what he had to say about pride in Canada, what the flag represented and how important it was to Canadians.

I am an immigrant who came to Canada and I have immense pride in the flag. The Liberal Party has immense pride in our red and white flag that it brought forward for Canadians to be proud of over the years. However, what is mystifying to me is how one converts those words around pride, freedom and democracy into the creation of a condo board inspector team to check on the decisions being made about this.

While I appreciate there might be some changes to the bill, the last thing we want is the flag police. That is antithetical to freedom and would get in the way of people's inherent right to exercise their democratic freedom with respect to the flag as well.

[National Defence, November 18th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, lots of smug talk about fiscal balance, but we have just learned that the Prime Minister has overruled his own Minister of National Defence and is forcing National Defence to repaint a VIP government aircraft because he does not like its colour.

The current fleet of aircraft are painted military grey because they are used in critical military operations. The Prime Minister's vanity paint job will make the plane unsafe for those very military operations. Why is the Prime Minister putting his own vanity above the needs of the military?

[Government Expenditures, November 18th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, under the government's watch federal spending has shot up 37%. That is 60 billion more dollars a year spent. The Conservatives go around preaching small government, but meanwhile they have squandered the surplus and wasted so much money on gazebos, jails, and pet projects that they are now slashing departmental funding just to make ends meet. They spent Canada into a deficit even before the recession.

I am from a small business background where every penny counts, so I would like to ask, does the government need our help understanding the real priorities of Canadians?

[Business of Supply, November 17th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I know it is not reasonable to expect that the member would have read the Liberal Party platform but that was explicitly in the Liberal Party's platform.

Many things need to be done in Canada by governments but we need to focus here on the specifics of the drinking water and waste water infrastructure that is needed. That is what this motion asks the government to do and the other parties to support. I understand that there are many associated issues.

One of the NDP members talked about environmental issues. I have a whole set of thoughts about how we contributed to the drinking water problems by doing resource developments without proper consultation and planning, and we continue to do that. For example, we are seeing a northern gateway pipeline proposal where first nations are saying that they were not consulted on it. Consultation is important. Preventing water related problems from resource development is critical. Replenishing our forests where they are being devastated by global warming related infestations, like pine beetle, is critical for hydrology.

There are many things we can do on the environmental level and on the social level, as the member just pointed out, with education, but we need to put the money for this infrastructure on the table, consult, get some action, get some timelines and get this done.

[Business of Supply, November 17th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal leader very wisely called for this to be a debate about how to move forward on a critical issue. If the member wants to talk about the past, I could ask why the leader of his party was the one responsible for bringing down a Liberal government that had actually consulted with first nations and consulted with the provinces over the course of a year and a half and come up with the Kelowna accord to address this very issue? It was his leader and his party that undermined that accord and they should take responsibility for that.

[Business of Supply, November 17th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, of course I support standards for drinking water, but that is only the beginning.

A federal government years ago moved first nations out of their traditional territory and put them into small reserves that were totally unsuitable. It disrupted the ecologies of the game and fish that were the basis of their livelihoods. The government has a far greater responsibility than to just say that there will be some standards.

To go back to the people of the Tsay Keh Dene, after a few years of trying to live in these uninsulated shacks with no services, having to drive down the road to get buckets of water out of the creek, they just moved out and went back into the forest to try to live in their historic way again. It was completely untenable to live in the reserve.

How many of our first nations are in that very same situation because the representatives of the people of Canada took those kinds of actions and dismissed and denied their rights?