Malcolm Allen

[Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act, December 6th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-15 in spite of my colleagues across the way, who think we should just shuffle it off and not hear from people and not get suggestions, but just send it to committee and somehow, magically, that committee would work differently than all the other ones we sit on.

I have had the pleasure of sitting on a couple of committees, and I will tell the following story, because it was not in camera. I will not tell the other stories, because they were in camera and we are not allowed to talk about what should and could have happened but did not happen in those cases.

I can tell the House about Bill S-11 at the agriculture committee, where the government said, “Here is an important bill on food safety”. The official opposition said the government was absolutely right, that in principle it was a good bill, a good foundation that we could build upon and make it better. My colleagues across the way, who I have heard all day, said that we should the current bill go committee and it will be fixed there.

I can say that my colleague, the member for Guelph, and I offered about 16 amendments in total to Bill S-11 to enhance that food safety bill. They would have strengthened it, by talking about an audit and whistle-blower protection and about when the clock would start to tick on a five-year review. My colleague and friend from Guelph said that we should start the clock when we enacted the bill, and not wait six months. It was a great suggestion.

The government, in its wisdom, debated the first four amendments, argued against them, but realized that its arguments were so full of holes that it stopped. Accordingly, on amendments 5 to 16, the government members listened to us and then said, “No, no”, and on and on it went until they were all done.

Now, what should we do with that? Should we trust them and suggest that we go to committee with our amendments, where somehow a “no” will become “We are thinking about it, maybe it looks like a good idea”? Of course, the end result will be “no”.

That is why we are debating the bill here in the House, because we want folks out there to know that there are good ideas, that there are things that need to be in this bill, because they were in it before. This is not new. This legislation did not just get dropped off the shelf a few months back.

Speaking of dropping off the shelf, I hear my colleagues across the way in the government saying how they need to get these things through. This bill was introduced by them last year. If it is so urgent, why was it not equally urgent last year when the government introduced it? The government waited a year to bring it forward and now complains that we want to debate it. I thought that folks elected us and sent us here to debate legislation. Call me naive if that is not what I was supposed to do when I got here.

Clearly, if I do not sit on that committee, my only opportunity to offer input on this bill is here in the House. That is the only opportunity to say, “Listen, we have some suggestions”.

What I find really ironic about this particular bill is that it is not its first incarnation. It was here before and amended. The other side actually accepted the amendments. Then magically, after an election, the government lost those amendments and forgot about them. Something happened on the way back to Ottawa after the election. All those good amendments fell off the bus somewhere. They are out there somewhere, never to be found.

That is really disappointing, because if they were good amendments then, they are good amendments now. Why not incorporate them? Why go through this charade of, “Come on, you approve it in principle, you want to do this, so let us get it off to committee”, only then not to make any changes, but bring it back and enact the legislation because you have the majority. We accept that fact. That is the will of democracy: You won the last election, you got a majority. That is fair.

Ultimately, do not expect the committee to accept amendments when the proof so far to date has been that you do not.

[Jobs and Growth Act, 2012, December 5th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Parkdale—High Park for all of her hard work at the finance committee and her diligence in holding the government to account as the critic for finance for the official opposition.

As the critic for agriculture for the official opposition, I know that a piece of that omnibus legislation on the Canada Grain Act was sent to committee. That is a very important act for grain growers across this country. When it was sent to committee, it was told basically, “Here it is, have a look, send it back, thank you very much”.

Does the member agree with me that the part of the bill dealing with Canada Grain Act should have been a separate piece of legislation sent to the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, that the committee should have dealt with it as a separate act and sent it back to the House with recommendations and amendments after hearing witnesses who actually had a chance to testify fully? Does she agree it should have been separate legislation that members could have voted on in the House one way or the other, yes or no, regarding the particular changes proposed to the Grain Act?

Could my colleague from Parkdale—High Park comment on that.

[Food Safety, November 29th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, what we heard for the last two hours was clearly that we had the largest beef meat recall in the county's entire history, courtesy of the minister and CFIA.

Canadians are truly worried about the food they put on their plates. The minister should have resigned months ago, but if the Prime Minister is too stubborn to fire him, will he at least remove CFIA from his portfolio and give it to someone who can actually do the job?

[Food Safety, November 29th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the capacity the minister is talking about, clearly this memo was sent in 2008. We then saw 22 Canadians die of listeriosis and they resent the same memo. We then had the Weatherill report and they resent the memo.

Was the minister really not aware front line food inspectors were being directed to ignore food safety procedures? Conservatives have lost all credibility on food safety, so will they now agree to an absolute audit of CFIA, as instructed in the Weatherill report, and do it now?

[Petitions, November 28th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to present a petition today signed by literally hundreds of members across my constituency in relation to Bill C-233.

The petitioners are supportive of that bill as we attempt to eradicate poverty in this country in a joint manner between the federal government and the provinces. It should be noted that these constituents are extremely proud to stand with us in support of Bill C-233.

[Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act, November 26th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Sudbury for highlighting what happened with the Kashechewan First Nation when it was split up across the entire province of Ontario. Not only was the community broken up but families were broken up.

The member for Sudbury gave an apt description of the amazement of young adults and youngsters alike turning a tap on and off for the first time. They were amazed that water came out of a tap. They had not experienced this in their own homes because they did not have any running water. They were amazed that they could fill up a tumbler with water from a tap and drink it safely, something we do every day of our lives without a second thought. This was something they did not get to do until a great tragedy beset their own community so that they had to go south to places such as Sudbury to find out that there is such a thing as safe drinking water inside a house.

That was a wake-up call for all of us. It needs to change, so let us change it. Let us amend the bill and fix it. Let us go forward and let no first nation ever again have unsafe drinking water, let alone no water at all.

[Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act, November 26th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, one thing I have learned in life is that if one does not learn from past mistakes, one is bound is to repeat them in the future.

Indeed, there are members of the Conservative government who were in the Ontario government during the 1990s when we had that great tragedy in Walkerton, Ontario, which many of us remember so well. Lessons were learned in the province of Ontario about that tragedy and we went forward from that. One would have thought we would look at those particular solutions and decide to make them part of this. Walkerton's municipal water system failed, under folks who people thought knew what they were doing. One would hope we would look at this whole piece and say let us not let it happen again, and this is how we should remediate it.

There was a review that went on for a number of years and we finally came up with more regulations. At the end of the day, many of them have been implemented, but some have not yet been.

Clearly, not only does that history lesson have to be learned by the government side that has some experience around it, but the government should have a road map in place. It asked for it be drawn, it was drawn, and now it simply has to put itself on the road map and follow it. It is no more difficult than that.

The government then has another party it has to talk to, which can sometimes be more difficult than the implementation. Unfortunately, in this case, not only did the government not meet its obligation to talk to the other party, the first nations, but it did not actually follow the road map when it came to resources. The government cheaped out on this aspect.

The government needed to follow the road map and then bargain a relationship with first nations, because that is what it said it would do. The government said it would do that in the spring. It said it would turn its mind to a different way of talking to first nations. The government said it would be inclusive, progressive, consultative and respectful of treaty rights with first nations. However, with its first opportunity, the government failed, which is unbelievable.

[Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act, November 26th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, New Democrats would never stand in the way if the government actually proposed how it intended to fix the system. It has found a leaky pipe and is trying to put a band-aid over the leak hoping that will fix it instead of cutting that section of pipe out and putting a new piece in place. One of the things I learned at the municipal level is that if we keep patching an old road, eventually someone will go down a sinkhole.

Yes, the government is going to spend $330 million over the next couple of years. The report asked it to spend $470 million per year over the next 10 years. I will do the arithmetic: $330 million over two years is $165 million a year. The report asked for $470 million per year. The government is off by $305 million a year and has a ways to go to make it up. We should ask the other side if someone else wants to find the additional money to actually fix the system as we go forward in the 21st century, when we still have people who do not have safe drinking water, running water or wastewater systems in their homes. That is reprehensible and what needs to be fixed.

[Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act, November 26th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join the debate today on safe drinking water for first nations.

As someone who in a previous career had some sense of responsibility for drinking water facilities in a municipality, I find it incredulous that in this day and age we have communities of people across our nation who do not have clean, safe drinking water, running water or waste water facilities that nearly everyone else in the country takes for granted. These are not people who are living in a cabin for two weeks and draw a pail of water from the closest river or lake because they are looking for the great outdoor experience, if one could put it that way. Rather these are folks who live their daily lives without clean, safe drinking water.

My friend across the way from Medicine Hat, who I like immensely, talked about the fact that the government deserves some credit with respect to spending $3 billion since 2005-06 on safe drinking water for first nations. It did. The difficulty is that there are still 124 first nations communities across this vast nation that still do not have any safe drinking water, not 124 individual homes or individuals. It is not a question of people living in homes inside these communities who in a pinch can go to their neighbours to get some water. They do not have any. That cries out for action.

If it was the case that 124 non-first nations communities across this great land did not have safe drinking water, there would be a heck of a lot of folks not sitting in municipal office for very long since it is the purview of municipalities across the nation, outside of first nations, to govern the safety of the water systems, whether it be for drinking water or waste water.

Clearly this requires some investment. As my colleagues have pointed out, it was reported back to the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, which commissioned the report that was done in 2011, that there was a financial commitment needed in infrastructure beyond what had already been done. Therefore, it is all well and good for the Conservatives to say that they have done that, which is fair, because some work has already been done, but it is not finished. Clearly, the report said that an additional $4.7 billion over the next 10 years was needed to ensure that first nations communities had water and waste water systems that were up to date.

Clearly, the needs with respect to safe drinking water for first nations are not being met, unlike our needs here. Whenever we simply hold up our hand or glass, the page delivers a glass of clean drinking water, and I am grateful to the page for bringing that. We have no issue getting clean drinking water. In fact, it is almost instantaneous. Yet when first nations look for clean drinking water, it perhaps another one, five or ten years, or perhaps not in their lifetime, depending how old they are, before they can go to the kitchen, turn on the tap and drink the water.

That is somewhat incomprehensible for most of us because of where we live. The federal government must know how wrong that is since it has a treaty obligation to ensure that first nations actually get safe drinking water and a waste water system that adequately takes care of all of that grey water that needs to be disposed of and handled correctly so it does not end up polluting a river that people draw water from.

It would seem that we need to start thinking about how to correct this injustice, because it truly is an injustice of a magnitude that I think a lot of us have not turned our minds to. Perhaps that is the problem with this legislation. Perhaps what happened is one did not turn one's mind, when the legislation was drawn, to not just the complexity of it but the magnitude of it, and recognizing that, because of the complexity and the magnitude, it will require funding that is greater than what is offered by the government today.

Ultimately, all of us deserve to have clean potable drinking water and a waste water system that is effective to ensure that our kids are not sick and that our grandparents do not drink bad water because they did not boil it sufficiently. The number of boil water advisories across first nations is another unfathomable statistic.

In my community many years ago, when I was deputy mayor and acting mayor, I received a phone call, which is every mayor's worst nightmare, other than Rob Ford being tossed out by the courts, I suppose. The worst nightmare, other than the death of an employee, clearly, is from the chief engineer of the water system saying that he had just run some tests and it might be necessary to issue a boil water advisory, and that, by the way, as the acting mayor, I would need to go on the radio and make the announcement. If that does not set fear in the heart of an acting mayor, I do not know what else would. Forgetting one's anniversary might be an issue but I leave that to those who have been married for a longer time and who had forgotten an anniversary.

When that happened to me as the acting mayor, I was told that a couple more tests would be run and then I would be called back. I crossed every finger and toe I had, my arms and legs to boot, hoping that the call back from the chief engineer from the water system would be that it was okay, that it was just a bad test, that the testing procedure had failed, that it was a contaminated bottle, that they had retested three times, that everything was good and that we were in the clear.

Fortunately for me, that was the case and I did not have to go on the radio and tell the town to boil water and to boil it for the next couple of weeks until we had cleaned and flushed the entire system. That is what would have had to be done.

We do not have systems here. This is not a question of saying, “Oh, by the way, we will just flush the system out, clean it out and we will go again”. It does not exist in these communities. That is why the extent of the infrastructure money required is as high as it is. I am sure the government side is saying that it is a lot of money. The $4.7 billion investment over the next 10 years is a substantial investment but it is the correct investment. It is a just investment. It is an investment we expect in our communities to the point where we actually have it. We live in communities that expect to have good, safe drinking water.

Here in Ottawa, which provides the drinking water for most of us here, it is safe drinking water, as it is across many of the communities. This is a right we expect and, in fact, take for granted. We turn on the tap, fill up the glass or the kettle to make some tea or coffee and we drink the glass of water or give it to the grandson, son or daughter, mom or whomever, knowing it is perfectly safe, and it is.

Now we must think about the first nations people. In the summer, when it is warm and their children are asking for a glass of water, the parents need to think about whether they have boiled any water lately and, if not, will need to boil some now. The children are thinking about whether they really need to do that because they are at an age where they are precocious little things. Instead, they get their own water and now they are ill because we did not do what we needed to do, which was provide a system that provided safe drinking water in the first place.

It is our responsibility for clean water because it is still under the act for us to have those negotiations. That leads me to the second piece of the legislation when first nations are saying to us that we have an obligation to talk to them about how we would implement these systems under treaty rights. It behooves us if that is the case.

I watched intently earlier this year when the first nations came to the Hill. The Prime Minister met with them, as did the minister and the parliamentary secretary. They talked about going forward with a new spirit of co-operation, dialogue, respect and understanding of our two nations. That is admirable but it is only words if that is all it becomes because here is the test. It is a fundamental test of people, not just first nations people but people in general, to expect to have safe drinking water and a waste water system that is effective and keeps them from getting ill.

When we happen to have that jurisdiction, we then have the responsibility to talk to them under treaty rights, ask them how they want to do this and tell then that we will be a funder of it. That is our obligation and responsibility. We should do that. However, we have an obligation to talk to them about it.

One of the things I found as I researched this piece, not being an expert on first nation treaties, is that it says that any abrogation or derogation from those aboriginal and treaty rights, any infringement of those rights, must be justified in accordance with the test for justifiable infringement enunciated by the Supreme Court of Canada. What do they include? They include whether a measure interferes with a preferred means of exercising a right, whether there has been as little infringement as possible in order to effect the desired results, whether in a situation of expropriation fair compensation is available and whether the aboriginal group in question has been consulted with respect to the measures being implemented.

When we look at the regulation part of Bill S-8, rather than being discussed with first nations and coming to agreement with first nations, it defers to provincial regulation. No one is saying those regulations are bad, albeit in Ontario we had to change our regulations after the Mike Harris debacle of Walkerton. I have seen the regulations but they actually have not been implemented in the province yet. For those who have not read them, I could provide members with a link to the website because it will probably take members about a month and a half to read them all. Even those regulations, if implemented, will put about 40% of the water systems in the province of Ontario out of business because there are not enough qualified people to meet the standards under the regulations, let alone if we imposed that on first nations across the country.

What first nations were telling to us was that we came to them with that spirit in the early part of the year but they wanted to know what happened to the consultation process when it came to the bill. What we know is that there was none.

I am surely not a legal expert, never having been a lawyer. I am not sure being a jury foreperson makes me be a legal expert but I will make a stab at it. In one of the Supreme Court's justifications, it says that whether the aboriginal group in question has been consulted with respect to the measures being implemented would be an allowable piece to let them out from underneath that. We know from the first nations and chiefs across the country that they were not consulted. That being the case, then it would seem that this is not a justifiable exemption in the sense of putting it aside and not talking to them.

It may have been well-intentioned from the minister's side when the legislation was put together to say that since the provinces have good regulations for water we should just use those. The minister should have sat down with the first nations and bargained under the treaty rights. He should have asked them what they thought about the provinces' regulations, which are pretty good and stringent, and that if the federal government provided the essential resources, the money, would they like to use the provincial standards. They may have agreed but we will never know because they were not asked. One should never assume that the answer to a question is yes if one has not asked the question. More important, one needs to discuss the issue because that is an obligation. Unfortunately, we did not do that in this case and that is what the first nations are telling us.

Here we are, at the end of 2012, albeit only a year since the last report was done, where we have 1,880 first nation homes with no water service. There is no such thing as opening the tap, filling a glass and drinking, safe or otherwise, because there is no water in the house. We know there are 1,777 homes that have no waste water. Not to try to be overly colourful, but that really means they have to bucket, because when it is -30° outside one uses the bucket. No one goes outside to the outhouse even if one has an outhouse.

The bill needs some real work. It needs to address the issues that first nations have identified. More so, it needs to address the report that the department commissioned. It received the report which outlined for the department where it needed to go and what it needed to do. Therefore, it was not a question of not being sure what to put in it. The department did its homework and found out was needed but it did not provide a solution. The solution was outlined in the report but it chose to ignore its own report that showed the path to fix the issue that has been here for a long time. If we go back to the nineties we see that 25% of the homes in first nations the drinking water issue was quite reprehensible. By 2001-02, it was 75% homes. It had actually become worse.

The present government was not in power then. It has made a stab at making it better but it could have fixed it if it had followed the report. The report outlined how to do that but the government chose not to. That is what this side takes great umbrage with. It is not the official opposition saying that the government should spend the money. We are simply saying that this is what the report said is the fix. However, first and foremost, it said to speak to the first nation leaders and ask them if this is the fix that they require and want so that in the end they will say how we can fix this issue together.

Would that not be a wonderful result if, at the end of the day, the government could say a few years from now that it fixed this issue? Finally, a Canadian government that said it would fix it and you could stand up and take the congratulations along with first nation leaders for accomplishing it together. That would have been a great feather in your cap but, unfortunately, you let it slide away.

[Safe Food for Canadians Act, November 19th, 2012]

Clearly, Mr. Speaker, some members on the government side are working with us. The fines have increased. There is nothing wrong with increasing the fines. The issue becomes what they do with them when half the time they do not impose them and the rest of the time they reduce them. They can charge whatever they like, but if they do not intend to apply them, they are of no value other than that it looks good on a piece of paper. It is unfortunate that the Conservatives have decided to do that rather than be willing to enact the fines rather than just increase the money.