Kennedy Stewart

[Fighting Foreign Corruption Act, June 3rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to my colleague's speech, especially when he talked about temporary foreign workers and pipeline construction. Could he elaborate on this a bit?

I know the government is very keen to push pipelines through British Columbia, as well as the Keystone XL pipeline. Of the jobs it is promising in these proposals, how many of these construction jobs on these pipelines would be filled by temporary foreign workers?

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1, June 3rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, there is some excellent research being done in Canada that we should all support, but the government has a little trick. It pulls out anecdotal information about particular projects that are being funded, but it fails to account for the overall picture of science and technology in Canada.

I asked the Library of Parliament to do a bit of work. It is not Wikipedia, but it might be a bit better than that. It shows that overall S and T funding by the government has dropped by 8.6% since last year and 14.5% over the last two years, so while we hear members on that side bragging all the time about science and technology investment, they are actually cutting hard and deep.

I am wondering if my colleague on the other side could somehow justify these cuts to scientists in Canada.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1, June 3rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague's speech with interest. As this whole debate is about the economy, I just think about how lucky we are to live in a country like Canada where we have so many natural resources to take full advantage of, but then it starts to make me worried about what we are doing with our knowledge economy.

Frankly, the government is failing to look forward to when our resources begin to dwindle. How do we start to compete with other countries that have fully invested in their knowledge economy? Our GDP investment in research and development is declining. Our productivity rates are declining.

I am just wondering if my colleague could really reflect upon what the government is doing to stimulate the knowledge economy. What is some good news, because we cannot find any in the reports coming out internationally?

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1, June 3rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleague's speech. We are talking about the economy here today as we go through Bill C-60. It is interesting to listen to members on the other side try to paint a rosy picture about what is happening with Canada, but I will point to two key indicators that are worth paying attention to that are not being addressed by the government.

The first is productivity, which has virtually collapsed under the government. Now we are 28th out of 35 comparator countries and it is getting worse under the government. Second, is the R and D investment. The latest Science, Technology and Innovation Council report said we have dropped from 16th when the government took power in 2006 to now 23rd in terms of R and D investment.

I am wondering when the government is going to admit that its plan is not working and Canada has fallen behind.

[Research and Development, May 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, while the Conservative Party wages its war on science, the NDP continues to champion research and growing Canada's knowledge economy.

Conservative cuts to basic research, muzzling scientists and dismantling the National Research Council shows that Conservatives do not understand how science works.

Under the Conservative government, Canadian R and D investment has dropped from 16th to 23rd in the world.

The NDP unanimously passed a motion at our 2013 policy convention to continue to develop our made in Canada national science strategy, which includes moving to match the percentage of GDP invested by the public and private sectors in R and D as found in other global leading countries, such as the United States.

The Conservatives have no such policy goals or targets and only offer vacuous statements based upon dubious financial figures, while attacking the core of our knowledge economy.

The NDP has a clear and positive vision, which we will implement when we form government in 2015.

[Petitions, May 27th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am presenting a petition that hundreds of constituents have signed. It calls on the Government of Canada to recognize that the use of shock collars on animals is barbaric and unnecessary. The petitioners also want the government to ban the sale and use of electric shock collars in Canada, as has been done in other countries. I have had many articulate and well-meaning constituents come into my office to talk to me about this. I would urge the government to take this petition seriously.

[Conservative Party of Canada, May 27th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, Conservatives are hearing from constituents who are angry about the Senate scandal and the PMO cover-up.

People are angry about how a senator can get paid off by the Prime Minister's chief of staff, and government backbenchers are angry about being given evasive talking points by the PMO that range from the implausible to the unbelievable.

I, for one, agree with the member from Kootenay—Columbia who said:

Any person who holds a public office position...should not only withstand public scrutiny, but stand before the public to explain any short comings.

Remember what the then-leader of the opposition said in 2005:

When you're under the kind of cloud the Prime Minister admits his government is under, I think you would use every opportunity to be as forthright as possible.

Yet the Prime Minister now acts just like past Liberal prime ministers, evading questions and refusing to come clean.

Canadians deserve better.

[Science and Technology, May 7th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, we will vote against their budgets every single time they cut basic science, and we will keep doing it.

I would like to remind the government that it is the National Research Council, not the commercial application council.

For the Conservatives, if research has no immediate commercial viability, they do not consider it worth doing, but the fact is that many revolutionary scientific advancements that benefit people today, such as the human genome project, started as basic scientific research.

How can the Conservatives be so short-sighted? How can they turn their backs on important research that will now go unfinished?

[Petitions, May 1st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present another petition today, one signed by hundreds of people from across Canada, regarding animal cruelty.

Specifically, these constituents want to eliminate the use of electric shock collars because the practice is barbaric and unnecessary. The petitioners want Canada to follow the lead of other countries and ban the sale of electric shock collars in Canada.

[Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act, April 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, crime in my riding, as in any community, is something that is talked about. I have had very good meetings with the RCMP in my riding—although I am not sure I am allowed to anymore—and we have talked about how to strengthen the community. However, what we are talking about here is an extraordinary circumstance. It is a very small segment of the population that this bill would impact.

We do talk about these horrific cases, but we have not had one in our community. The missing women inquiry did look at Burnaby to some extent because we had some traffic going from Vancouver to Coquitlam through my riding. However, luckily we have not had an issue other than that one to talk about.

Generally, we talk about it, and I am sure my community will support looking at this in a reasoned way.