Keith Martin

[Economic Recovery Act (stimulus), October 7th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this bill. It is a bill that is central to the lives of Canadians.

One of the great responsibilities of the government is to deal with the needs of our citizens, with poverty, with access to health care, and with the problems of our citizens who fall through the cracks of life. It must put forward a plan for our nation in a way that ensures that Canada and Canadians are going to be at the forefront of what happens in the world, that we are able to be economically sufficient and sound, and that our social programs are going to be stable.

I would argue that the government has failed on all of these counts. Bill C-51 is an act to implement certain provisions of budget 2009. Here is a little bit of history. Earlier this year, we worked with the government to pass this bill. The bill had many things that we wanted to support, in particular, a stimulus package that we knew our nation needed because of the economic tsunami, which had been going around the world and hit our country.

There were also things in it that we vehemently opposed. The government added things to the budget bill, including a provision to tear up the arbitrated wage agreement that took place between the government and our dockyard workers. In doing this, it violated a sacred trust that it had from these workers, who worked so hard day in and day out to ensure that our men and women in the navy would be able to have the naval ships and equipment that they need to do their jobs effectively and safely.

In a slap to the face of these hard workers on the dockyard, the government arbitrarily tore up this wage agreement. We opposed this. It also put in provisions and changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act. Neither of these things had anything to do with the economy. However, the government chose to put it in and told us that if we tried to change any part of the bill, we would invoke an election because the government would collapse.

We in the Liberal Party felt that that would be irresponsible. For the sake of our citizens, our economy, and the jobs that we need in our country, we passed this bill with the understanding that the government would work with us to implement its provisions, particularly the stimulus package, in an effective manner.

What has happened is quite the contrary and I am going to get to that. On the management of the larger economy, a year ago the government was maintaining a mythology and frankly not telling the truth to the public. It said that we were not going to have a deficit or be in a recession when everybody knew that that was not the case at all.

Progressing forward to the end of last year, the government again claimed that we would have a balanced budget. In December the government admitted for the first time that it would run a deficit of $20 billion to $30 billion. In January budget 2009 showed a $34 billion deficit. In June it had ballooned to $50 billion. In September the Minister of Finance came out to Victoria, one of the furthest reaches of our country, to announce that the deficit had ballooned to $56 billion and that the government did not have a plan to deal with it.

That was what the Minister of Finance of Canada did when he came to Victoria. That is not leadership because it also means that the government has lost control over the public purse. In doing so, it has failed in one of its primary obligations as a government, which is to be a good steward of public money.

The government cannot tell Canadians that it does not have a plan to pay down the deficit and get the country's finances in order. That is not leadership. Frankly, it is a violation of its duty to the Canadians of today and their children, who will be paying off this growing debt long into the future.

The government must come up with a deficit reduction plan to get the country's finances in order. We have been asking for it and we will work with the government. The mythology exists out there that somehow the Conservatives are good stewards and the Liberals are not. However, history bears out a very different story.

If one looks back to the 1990s, the country was embroiled in massive deficits and a ballooning debt. The country's bond rating was declining and we were going the way of Argentina.

The then Liberal finance minister, Paul Martin, and the then Prime Minister, Mr. Chrétien, got together to put forth some tough medicine to pursue a balanced budget, which took place in the later part of the 1990s and then we had surplus budgets after that.

A contingency plan was put in place for rainy days, but the government spent right through that contingency plan when things were good. Why did it do that? Why did the Prime Minister do two things that were reminiscent of another leader, George Bush. President Bush lowered taxes and increased spending. Remarkably, our Prime Minister has done the same thing. When times were good, he lowered taxes and increased spending, wiping out the contingency fund and putting us right to the brink of a deficit budget during the good times. When things turned bad, we were pushed into the massive deficits we have today. That is merely a statement of the facts.

I have to point out the failure of the government to introduce a deficit reduction plan, which is one of the most pressing needs of our country today. There is also an issue of how do we plan the future? How do we ensure that Canada will be economically competitive for the next two decades? This is a challenge and a responsibility, regardless of who happens to be in government. Here are some of the challenges: investments; tax changes; reducing the tax burden on the poor and the middle class; investing in education; investing in infrastructure; investing in reducing trade barriers, particularly the interprovincial trade barriers that are a larger burden than those we have with our major trading partner south of the border; expanding trade opportunities with the BRIC countries, particularly India, and we have a large diaspora here in Canada.

There is no vision whatsoever in this area. Why is that so? Because the government has a small vision. The Prime Minister operates his government with an iron fist over his members of Parliament, his cabinet and the public service. It demoralizes the public service and the control that he has over his MPs means that they are not being allowed to exercise their abilities to the fullest. The people of our country pay the price for this. This is one of the grave problems we have, and that leads to the democratic deficit we have in our country today. The problem is that it chokes off innovation, and without innovation we cannot grow our country and we cannot ensure that our country will be competitive.

Let me put forth some of the challenges that the government is failing to face, and it must: first, the long-term economic plan for our country; second, dealing with the demographic time bomb that will threaten everything from our economy to our social programs; third, child care, a national head start program. Our party put forth a national head start child care program for our country that was supported by all of the provinces. The government burnt that. Fourth, defence, we need a long-term procurement process to deal with rust out; fifth, the environment, we are going to Copenhagen at the end of this year. Is there a plan from the government? No, there is not. We need to have a credible plan from Canada to deal with climate change.

Sixth, what plan does the government have with respect to Canada's role in the world? There is a responsibility to protect in times of crisis, but there is no obligation to act. We have a judicial framework with no enforcement mechanism. Canada led on the responsibility to protect when the Liberals were in power. The government needs to see that Canada has a larger role to play and must stop choking off the funds for our foreign affairs department. Foreign affairs has had the stuffing beaten out of it by the government and frankly does not believe that it has much of a role to play.

Seventh, infrastructure, for heaven's sake, put the infrastructure where it is needed, based on merit. In my province of British Columbia the government has put four times the amount of money for infrastructure in their own ridings versus those which are not government-held ridings. It has also neglected to get the moneys out the door and 50% of the moneys so far have been spent.

The government has a challenge on its hands. We are ready to take over to provide that leadership. The Conservatives should just give up and let us have that chance.

[Fisheries and Oceans, October 7th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, fish stocks cannot be rehabilitated unless their habitats are protected. Canada committed to 25% protection of our marine protected areas, yet a measly 0.5% is protected right now.

When will the fisheries minister implement a plan to expand our marine protected areas in British Columbia to safeguard our crucial marine ecosystem?

[Fisheries and Oceans, October 7th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, for the record, I personally called the minister when she was in Victoria and she failed to respond to our phone calls.

[Fisheries and Oceans, October 7th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, let us look at the government's mismanagement on the other coast.

British Columbia is witnessing one of the worst fishing crises since the Atlantic cod stocks collapsed in the 1990s. Eleven million sockeye were supposed to return to the Fraser. Less than two million did.

British Columbians are asking this one simple question: Why is the minister refusing to urgently convene an independent scientific assessment on why these sockeye failed to return?

[Economic Recovery Act (stimulus), October 6th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my hon. colleague this. Does he not think that one of the central responsibilities of a federal government is to control the public purse? Does he not think that the government has lost control over the public purse and over one of its primary responsibilities?

It was not a result of an omission. It was a result of its direct actions to overspend and create a massive imbalance by lowering taxes while increasing spending at two and a half times the rate of GDP, thus causing a structural deficit in the country today.

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, October 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, an important issue has received some attention during this debate and that is the trade in illegal drugs, the driver of the human rights abuses that have plagued Colombia for so long.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague from Toronto if he does not think that the Conservative government is actually working in opposition to the initiatives that are needed here to reduce the demand for illegal drugs in Canada. If we were able to do that, then the financial driver of FARC, the ELN and the paramilitary groups in South America would be severely undermined.

In other words, the absence of support by the Conservative government for harm-reduction strategies is actually playing into the hands of FARC, ELN and the paramilitary groups that are committing the human rights abuses that all of us are deeply concerned about.

Does my colleague not think that the government needs to seize on harm-reduction strategies like Insite and NAOMI and ensure that medical establishments across Canada have access to these programs?

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, October 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it does not preclude the fact of being able to have side agreements that are effective. We make the side agreements as effective as we want based on the negotiations in which we engage.

We need to look at this perhaps in a different way. Let us say that we did not have this agreement at all. Then we would not have any agreement on labour or on the environment. There would be no vector or roots at all to deal with these very important issues that not only affect Colombia, but also affect our country in the larger context.

Therefore, the question I think the member needs to ask himself is this. Is it better to have no agreement than an agreement that gets our foot in the door to deal with these larger issues that are critically important? I would submit that it is important for us to have strong side agreements to deal with these issues about we are mutually concerned.

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, October 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's excellent question really hits the nub of the matter.

Side agreements are important to support the central agreement. They are the ying-yang of the agreements. They provide a check and balance to ensure, in this case, a free trade agreement will not be utilized in a way that will not ultimately benefit the people.

The weakness I see, historically, is oversight mechanisms have been wanting. Part of the reason is that we might have an oversight mechanism without a proper enforcement mechanism. What has to be built into this is an enforcement mechanism.

It also gets to the heart of the need to rewrite and strengthen our Special Economic Measures Act, the SEMA, which a lot of the private sector companies in Canada want. They want to have discreet and defined parameters upon which they wan work. In that way, they will be able to work in a way that is commercially effective but also socially responsible.

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, October 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today on the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement. I want to compliment my colleague, the critic, who has done a very good job of dealing with a very difficult situation and trying to balance our deep concerns for the human rights situation taking place in Colombia with our need to understand and support our free trade initiatives that remove the barrier to trade that we know is going to liberate people, particularly the poorest in the world, from the poverty trap.

We recognize that while aid is a useful primer, foreign direct investment enables countries to have active, vigorous private sectors, where jobs and wealth can be created and moneys can be utilized by responsible governments for the social needs of a citizenry. It is something we support and, hence, that we pursue and support with some provisions.

As has been mentioned before, our goal is to ensure there is improved access. We want to balance it and ensure that elements within this bill are going to be supportive of the social concerns that many Canadians have due to what they have seen in Colombia.

I draw to the attention of the House to two parts. The critic has done a very good job of trying to highlight the parts that we want to ensure were going to be included. The side agreements involve labour co-operation and the environment.

I know that our colleagues and friends in the NDP have spoken about this, but it is very important for us and Canadians to understand that there are two side agreements and they involve the following. The first is the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining, the absolute importance to abolish child labour, the elimination of forced or compulsory labour, and the elimination of discrimination.

We are also supportive of a $15 million annual budget to ensure this agreement is going to be honoured and not violated. There are, however, some concerns.

There is one point I always try to bring forward. I had the privilege of travelling to Colombia some years ago. We know that the ELN, the FARC and the paramilitary are really driven financially by the moneys they are able to accrue from drugs, primarily cocaine and, to a lesser extent, heroin. There are, in effect, all groups of narco-terrorists. They may have started at one time, particularly the FARC, as having some political constituency and pursuing a certain political ideology, but for a long time that has not been the case.

Mr. “Sureshot” Marulanda died a couple of years ago. We saw the devolution of that individual from becoming a political revolutionary into a pure blooded narco-terrorist. It has been instructive to see how these larger groups are now operating.

In fact, what is happening now in the large context, which the government needs to be aware of and has not brought forward, is the input and responsibility of Venezuela, which is now harbouring the FARC and has for a long time been supporting it and other paramilitary groups to the detriment of the people of Colombia and the region. Frankly, we do not do a good enough job of holding to account the individuals in groups, like the government in Venezuela, to account for their destabilizing activities, in this case in South America.

President Chavez is engaged in activities that some in his country see as being supportive. In the larger context of stability within South America, he is a destabilizing factor. I do not know how anybody can countenance the fact that Mr. Chavez is selling the most vile of all weapons, landmines, to the FARC, that are being used now, despite the fact that Colombia is a signatory to the landmines treaty, the Ottawa process that was started by the Liberal Party.

Despite the fact that Colombia is part of invasive, destructive elements such as what Mr. Chavez is doing, it is killing people. Half the casualties are soldiers; half, however, are civilians.

I was in a different party at the time we were pursuing and pushing hard for the landmines treaty. Part of it was the fact that the majority of casualties were actually civilians. In fact, landmines are the poison that prevents a country from being able to be financially stable.

Imagine if there were one landmine in downtown Ottawa. What would that do for the commerce in Ottawa? It would shut it down cold. Therefore, imagine a country that has thousands of these landmines. The people live in fear because at any moment they could be blown up. It kills the economy. It kills the social infrastructure of a country. The foreign affairs minister and the Conservative government need to do a much better job in that area to deal with the external influences of what takes place to destabilize Colombia.

The other point is there would not be a FARC if there were not a demand for illegal drugs. The government unfortunately takes a position on substance abuse and harm reduction as something to be discarded or discounted. We can see the troubles we have had in the ideological oppression and position that the government has taken against scientifically proven harm reduction strategies, such as Vancouver's Insite or the North American opiate medication initiative, headed by Dr. Julio Montaner at St. Paul's Hospital.

Those things work. Why in heaven's name does the government not get its own House in order and work with the provinces to help reduce the demand of drugs, which are fuelling the internal problems taking place in countries such as Colombia and the Middle East? They are in fact fuelling, in part, the Taliban and al-Qaeda, which are killing our soldiers in Afghanistan.

The need and the desire to have effective, scientifically-proven harm reduction strategies is critically important in the larger context. It is also very relevant to the situation we are talking about today. The harm reduction strategies that my colleagues in the Liberal Party have championed and allowed to occur today must continue. The government must work with those who are experts in the area of harm reduction to ensure that Canadians from coast to coast will have access to those initiatives that work.

The bill also has another very important part and it deals with the issue of the environment. We know that in South America, one of the two great lungs of our planet are in Amazonia. We know Amazonia is being destroyed. We also know that addressing deforestation is one of the simplest and easiest ways of addressing and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, particularly for developing countries.

Dr. Eric Chivian and Dr. Ari Bernstein of the Harvard School of Public Health and Dr. Michael Fay, a National Geographic scientist in residence in Washington, have put forth some very compelling solutions as to how we can look at areas that are critically important for the collective health, not only those countries but the world, and use those areas so they will be seen as assets.

Right now we look at forests as an asset when the trees are cut down, but in reality forests are public utilities. They take carbon dioxide from the environment and put oxygen back. That has a value. If we put value on carbon, we can put value on these wild spaces and a country can receive moneys for preserving those carbon sinks. It very important that there are ways of doing this.

I encourage the government to also construct an independent group to oversee this bill. The Liberal Party is very concerned with how the bill will be implemented. This is why we are supportive of the existing oversight mechanism. However, I also suggest there is a very important role and opportunity to bring in civil society in Colombia and Canada, to bring forth a group of independent experts, arm's-length from the government, who can oversee the implementation of the bill to ensure the labour, human, environmental and social benefits of it will be accrued to the people of Colombia.

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, September 30th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I have a question for my colleague and I think it affects all of us. One of the problems with Colombia driving the FARC, the ELN and the paramilitaries is the fact that they get a lot of their moneys from drugs, primarily from cocaine and, to a lesser extent, heroin.

Would part of the solution be countries like ours getting their own house in order in terms of reducing the demand for these drugs? If there was not any demand, there would not be any supply. One of the great failures we have from the federal government's perspective is this. It is not willing to deal with the facts and adopt programs like NAOMI, which is the North American opiate medication initiative, and enable communities across our country to adopt those initiatives that would allow people to get away from consuming these drugs. This would reduce demand, enable people to get back to their lives, reduce harm, reduce incarceration and reduce costs. Is that not part of the solution in dealing with the problems in Colombia?