Keith Martin

[Employment Insurance Act, September 17th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, several days ago the finance minister came into our town of Victoria and proceeded to tell Victorians, indeed Canadians, in the furthest outposts of our country that the government has lost control over the public purse, and that the deficit that was originally not going to exist at the end of last year is now $59.5 billion.

I am asking this because at the heart of the responsibility of any federal government is the ability to control the public purse. The Conservatives have lost control of the public purse, and therefore the ability to pay for programs like EI.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague from the Conservative Party when his government is going to tell Canadians what the deficit reduction plan is going to be for our country.

[Employment Insurance Act, September 17th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, we all know that when a person loses his or her job, it is one of the most traumatic things to endure for the individual, his or her family and the community.

I want to correct my colleague from the government who said that the Liberal plan was going to cost $4 billion. In fact, the Parliamentary Budget Officer actually took the government to task by saying that the government was flat-out wrong. He said very publicly that the Liberal calculation saying that our proposal would cost $1 billion was indeed correct and that the government's figures were dead wrong.

Workers from across Canada pay into the EI fund equally and yet the benefits that they accrue can be very, very different. In my province of British Columbia a person has to work almost twice as long to receive lower benefits than someone, for example, in the Maritimes would receive. Does my friend not think it would be fair and equitable for workers from across Canada to be able to receive the same amount of EI for the same length of time?

[Medical Isotopes, June 19th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps the minister would like to listen to the engineers who worked on the project. This is what they had to say. They said that the reactors were only four months away from being able to effectively produce medical isotopes and that just one of these generators would have been able to produce the entire world's supply.

The government has a solution at its fingertips. Will the government work with the National Academy of Sciences and other nuclear scientists to get the MAPLE reactors up and running, to effectively and safely produce isotopes?

[Medical Isotopes, June 19th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the MAPLE team leader, Dr. Harold Smith, and three other nuclear scientists told the natural resources committee yesterday that abandoning the MAPLEs would be a tragic loss of scientific and engineering accomplishment, similar to Mr. Diefenbaker's decision to cancel the Avro Arrow. Medical leaders have called this decision a “horribly short-sighted” decision that makes no sense.

Will the government recognize that it is making a catastrophic mistake and work with the National Academy of Sciences and other experts to keep isotope production in Canada where it belongs?

[Main Estimates, 2009-10, June 19th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I think the crux of the matter for most Canadians and members of the opposition is that the government has not been getting the moneys that this Parliament, this opposition party and other opposition parties authorized. I know this has to be of concern to the minister. It has to be of concern to all members of the government. However, it is particularly of concern to Canadians.

Frankly, it is disingenuous for the government to claim that it is actually getting money out the door when it is not. In my riding, whether it is an overpass extension in Langford, sewer extensions in Sooke, or moneys for the University of Victoria, Royal Roads University, or Camosun College and their Pacific Institute for Sport Excellence, moneys have been promised but not delivered.

I would like the minister to please tell the House and our citizens how the government is going to get moneys out the door within the next few months. If it does not, it is simply missing the entire construction season and missing all the opportunities that people such as Mr. Les Bjola in my riding and his development projects need in order to put workers back to work.

I have one last point. There is a great opportunity for the government to provide credit to developments that have taken place. This would get money into the real economy and I implore the government to tell the House—

[Criminal Code, June 16th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, one of the reasons people commit identity theft is to get resources for illicit purposes. One of the underlying reasons is the individual may have a substance abuse problem. Studies show that an addict steals about $250,000 in various ways, including identity theft, then turns around and sells that information for about $50,000.

The North American opiate medication initiative is a very exciting project that has been going on in Vancouver. Recently there has been an extension to that called SALOME, which is a long-term narcotics substitution program. This program is taking place in Montreal.

Does my colleague think that communities across Canada that would like to have narcotic substitution programs should be able to have them and by so doing the ties between an addict and crime, particularly theft, would be severed?

[Criminal Code, June 16th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, in my colleague's previous capacity as a lawyer, he managed to delve into the lives of individuals, both victims and those who were convicted. I want to ask his opinion on two enormous issues that have not been dealt with in the House but should be.

First is the incidence of fetal alcohol syndrome and fetal alcohol effects. It is estimated that 50% of individuals who are in federal institutions have FAS or FAE. It is leading cause of preventable brain damage by birth in children.

Second, if one wanted to do one thing that could reduce youth crime, for example by 60%, and have the most profound impact on keeping our country more secure, it is an early learning head start program for children. It is worked in places like Ypsilanti, Michigan, which has a 35 year retrospective experience with this program.

In his previous capacity as a lawyer, does my colleague not think we should work with the provinces to develop an initiative to reduce FAS and FAE? Also does he not think the federal government has a role to work with provinces to implement a national early learning head start program?

[Business of Supply, June 15th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague, a former chief economist of the Royal Bank, has really been a voice of reason in the House on matters relating to the economy.

Aside from this issue, the government has not frankly shown any leadership on this issue. Nor has it shown any interest in developing the international standards that are required to prevent and inoculate the nations of the world, including our own, against the types of economic contagion that has blown up economies around the globe.

What does my colleague think the government should do in broad strokes, in terms of an international level, to try to prevent these kinds of catastrophes from occurring again and damaging the savings of so many Canadians?

[Business of Supply, June 15th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things missing is that we are not working toward common international regulations that are required to develop the common rules and regulations to prevent the international contagion that went around the world and has caused such devastation.

Many believe that the IMF is the place to do this. Many also believe that counties of the world, particular those that are part of the G7, will not be interested in actually coming together and being subject to the power of a supernational organization. However, what can be done is that organizations, like the IMF, could be responsible for developing common norms that the countries of the world should adopt.

Could my friend tell me what his government's position is in terms of trying to work with other countries to develop common norms that all of us could adopt which would enable us to work in an integrated fashion to prevent international contagions from occurring again?

[Business of Supply, June 15th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I think most of us were completely appalled at how things went off the rails in terms of seeing Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme and seeing the subprime mortgage devastation that took place south of the border which affected us in a big way. We were somewhat protected given the laws of our country that the Liberal Party of the day put forward in terms of not pursuing a more open course of action that would have left investors and our citizens open to a wide range of problems that, tragically, our friends south of the border were victims of.

Does my colleague feel that this is one step toward being able to inoculate our citizens against such things as the Ponzi scheme? Also, what is his government's plan to perhaps work through the IMF to work through more common regulatory initiatives that are required in order to reduce the types of things we have seen over the last year that have been so devastating for all of our economies?