Leon Benoit

[Petitions, November 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to present, on behalf of constituents, a petition calling for some restrictions to be put on abortion in Canada.

The petitioners note that Canada is the only country in the western world, in the company of China and North Korea, when it comes to having no restrictions on abortion legislation.

The petitioners call on the House of Commons to enact legislation that restricts abortion to the greatest extent possible.

[Committees of the House, November 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the fourth report of the Standing Committee on Natural Resources entitled “Resource Development in Northern Canada”.

Pursuant to Standing Order 109, the committee requests the government table a comprehensive response to this report.

I want to commend all members of the committee for putting together a report that really does reflect what witnesses said, and will lead to better things for this industry in the future.

[Petitions, November 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour today to present a petition on behalf of constituents who note that Canada's 400-year-old definition of a human being says that a child does not become a human being until the complete moment of birth. The petitioners argue that modern science refutes that and they call on the House of Commons and Parliament to confirm that every human being is recognized by Canadian law as human, by amending section 223 of the Criminal Code in such a way as to reflect modern science.

[Petitions, October 31st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to present a petition on behalf of constituents who note that Canada is the only nation in the western world that has no laws restricting abortion and that it is in the company of countries like China and North Korea. They also note that the Supreme Court has said that it is Parliament's responsibility to deal with the issue and to enact abortion legislation.

The petitioners call on the House to speedily enact legislation that would restrict abortion to the greatest extent possible.

[Job and Growth Act, 2012, October 25th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am not going to bother responding to the member's comments on process, because most Canadians really do not care an awful lot about process. However, they do see it as a very positive step that this budget implementation bill will be examined by as many committees as makes sense. That is important to note.

Conservative MPs really do give credit where credit is due when it comes to creating jobs, and that is to large businesses, medium-size businesses and especially small businesses. They are the ones that drive the economy; they do create the jobs. Government creates the framework, along with some stimulus programs, which I admit I hesitated about when they were first announced. However, they do work. On that we have to be pragmatic. The framework our government has put in place, along with the stimulus package, clearly has worked in setting the framework. However, it is the business people of our country who create the jobs. I wish the opposition would remember that when they are beating up on business.

[Job and Growth Act, 2012, October 25th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, that is an important question because there clearly was a lot in our budget, as there usually is. Budget implementation bills are usually large omnibus bills and this is no different. However, the one thing we have committed to, in my understanding anyway, is that the bill will go to the finance committee. It will be divided from there and other committees will examine parts of the bill. Other than process maybe, I believe that is basically what the Leader of the Official Opposition was asking for. To me, what we are proposing is a reasonable process to follow.

Nonetheless, I do know that if the bill were divided into several parts and we tried to pass it through the House piece by piece, our budget from the last spring and summer would not be implemented within the next two years. It would not be implemented.

[Job and Growth Act, 2012, October 25th, 2012]

It is 820,000. That is a remarkable number when in many other countries the number of employed people is not going up. It is something that Canada is successful at whereas many others are not.

One of my colleagues who spoke before me pointed out that the opposition should be a little more positive about what we are doing, because we are being successful. When compared to many other countries in the western world, we are extremely successful. I wish opposition members would take a little more positive approach to this and work with us on the budget's implementation. That would help an awful lot.

I want to focus on the same issue that my colleague touched on, the Navigable Waters Protection Act. The member for Halifax has made statements over the past couple of weeks that the Navigable Waters Protection Act is really about protecting the environment. She is completely wrong on that. This act was put in place in 1882, an awful long time ago, and it is clear that it was about navigation on Canada's waterways. Of course, in 1882 navigation by river was particularly important; it was certainly one of the major modes of transportation at the time. The act remained largely unchanged until about three years ago when our government finally made some important changes to it. Those changes were very much needed. I want to talk a bit about the process that led to those changes.

I have been in the House for 19 years today. This is my 19th anniversary. About 12 years ago, I was doing my usual tour of county councils, municipal district councils and listening to councillors about the issues that were important to them and how the federal government might work with them to improve things.

Something that started coming up on a regular basis during my tours, and brought to my attention, was that the navigable waters act was causing them problems in areas where there was clearly no navigable water at all. They used the example of a culvert, just an 18-inch culvert across a country road, not even a heavily travelled road, which might normally cost $75,000 to replace. However, because of the navigable waters act and the process that municipalities were required to go through, that cost would double in most cases. That burdened municipalities, which just do not have a lot of money. Many of these municipalities have maybe 2,500 residents, and so that kind of cost, multiplied by perhaps 10 or 20 projects a year, was creating serious difficulties for them.

I want to make clear what the so-called navigable waters were. They were waterways that farmers farmed through in the spring and actually seeded crop in, in many cases. The waters would just be a little stream going through for maybe two weeks in the spring. One has to wonder how this ever got started, but we had people from the transport department who dealt with the navigable waters act come in and say, “We must have a study done on this. Clearly, there is a problem here”. That is not exaggerating. It is exactly what was happening. From a little waterway, with water only running for a couple of weeks a year, this serious problem was created, costing these municipalities hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Clearly, changes had to come about.

I pushed for changes when the Liberals were in government and nothing happened. When we first formed government in 2006, many of my colleagues and I brought the issue to the transport minister . The transport committee took this issue on and was successful, because the changes made back then made a lot of difference. What they did was to clearly define what a navigable water was. Water like those little creeks that would run two or three weeks of the year, or a month of the year, were not navigable and the act no longer applied to them.

In about 2008-09 I went back to the same councils and they said the issue had been dealt with.

However, about a year later, around 2009 or 2010, I toured the municipalities again and they said it was unbelievable but that the fisheries department had filled that void and was coming in and requiring a study, because water was running for a couple weeks a year and might affects the fish habitat. Again, it was a complete misapplication of what should have been happening.

Our government is dealing with that. Things will get better.

Certainly, the changes that have been made to the navigable waters act, including changing the name to the proposed navigation protection act so the act deals with navigation and nothing else, are extremely important. It means a lot to the councils in my area, right across western Canada and, I believe, across the country.

The member for Halifax can continue to make false statements about what the existing act's intent was. It is clear that the intent had nothing to do with the environment; it had to do with navigation. This is the final step in fixing that problem for the good people of my constituency and across the country.

It is a small change. I could talk about maybe 200 other changes in the budget implementation bill that are just as important. However, for a particular group of people and a particular group of taxpayers, it has meant an awful lot, because in the end the taxpayers pay for this extra cost.

I want to commend the Government of Canada for making this change. I thank it for finally putting this issue to bed once and for all and to say that this budget really will lead to prosperity and jobs and will continue to lead to growth. Our government should be commended for that. I am thankful for what our government is doing.

[Job and Growth Act, 2012, October 25th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the speech by my colleague very much, but he made one error that I want to point out. He indicated that a favourite activity in the Penticton area is floating down the river on tubes, and that is fun. In fact, my wife and I are very much looking forward to taking our grandkids on that trip because it will be a lot of fun.

However, I have a brother who lives in the Okanagan and I go there most summers for a week's holiday. We have another favourite activity, which is probably favoured by more people than floating down the river, and that of course is a wine tour and drinking wine. That is a wonderful activity. There are some terrific vineyards in his area. They are a wonderful part of the history of the area and have really brought the quality of Canadian wine up quite remarkably.

I am delighted to be speaking on this bill today and I want to remind people of exactly what this bill entails. It is the second part of the budget implementation act. The budget was passed last spring, but generally budgets deal with a lot of different issues, as that budget did. There was one large bill implementing part of the budget and there were complaints about it being so large, but we are doing a lot. We are doing a lot because, quite frankly, it is needed. The world is in very difficult economic times. In Europe things are in a terrible mess and I worry about the future of the United States. Canada has fared much better, but we cannot take it for granted that this positive momentum is going to continue because the world is in a serious economic downturn and at some point we certainly could be affected.

The government is taking a proactive approach. We are doing what we can to ensure that the positive forward movement will continue. We have been successful with a lot of what we have done. For example, since 2009 the good business people and citizens of our country, with the framework that the government has helped put in place, have created some 820,000, mostly full-time, good jobs.

[Petitions, October 18th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am still getting petitions in which the petitioners ask that Canada's 400-year-old definition of a human being be debated, be dealt with at committee and be changed to reflect the knowledge gained through modern science.

[Petitions, September 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to present a petition on behalf of constituents who note that Canada is the only country in the western world, in the company of China and North Korea, without laws restricting abortion. My constituents call on Parliament to do as the Supreme Court suggested be done many years ago, which is to enact abortion legislation that restricts abortion to the greatest extent possible.