Malcolm Allen

[Auditor General, November 24th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, after several damning reports pointing out their mismanagement on important files like military procurement, the Conservatives are now proposing to cut the Office of the Auditor General. Our new AG's first task is to cut 60 jobs.

That is quite a coincidence, just days after the AG's fall report described some government spending as “disturbing”. What does the Conservative government have against being audited?

[Copyright Modernization Act, November 24th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, my brother is a graphic designer by profession. The member is absolutely right. He is part of the 90% who cannot make a living creating music, even though he has written hundreds of songs and sent them to production houses to try to get them recorded or recorded them himself.

On the other issue, the member is absolutely correct. There is a balance in protecting consumers. In questioning earlier, the member for Sudbury raised the extended education piece. When I went to university, if I had five days to read a particular article that I had photocopied, I would not get through it. Other things would get in the way. That is what happens.

Clearly there are boundaries and we need to find a way to balance the two. Consumers deserve to have material available to them without feeling under threat that they are breaking a law and that someone is going to knock on their doors to arrest them because they have broken a lock inadvertently. The lock should not have existed. Locks seem to be the answer for everything. Digital locks are the answer, according to this legislation. They are not.

[Copyright Modernization Act, November 24th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. This is about an economic interest that comes from abroad. It does not necessarily come from inside this country because if it did, we would reward creators. If we want to drive this economy and actually put some oomph into it, so to speak, we would make sure our creators were rewarded so that they could continue to do what they do and generate economic activity. There is a reason why movie studios in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia are competing north-south as well as east-west. It is because of the large number of dollars. Why would we want to give it away?

My hon. colleague's comments reminded me of the softwood lumber deal. We made a deal with the U.S. on softwood lumber and we have been paying ever since. We thought we got a deal and we got less than crumbs. We seem to get fined all the time. We always seem to be the ones at the bottom.

If we are not going to fight for our own creators, who will? If we are not going to stand up for the creative class in this country, who write for us, perform for us, produce the things we love to see, hear and read, who will? It certainly will not be the Americans. They will be happy to sell their stuff to us. They will not be so happy about us selling to them. The group of Canadian performers and writers will diminish when they end up having to work in other fields because they cannot make a living doing the very things they are passionate about.

[Copyright Modernization Act, November 24th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the debate on the Copyright Act.

First, I will congratulate my good friend and colleague, the member for Timmins—James Bay, who has been working on copyright legislation for, I think, the last three Parliaments, and trying to find a way to find a balance.

It truly is a balance between those of us who are consumers and those who are creators. I must admit that I am only a consumer of materials not a creator. I can neither write songs nor do I write poetry. The members who have been in the House when I sing “O Canada” probably recognize that I do not sing that well either, at least not well enough that someone would pay for it.

However, there are many folks across our great land who are indeed creators. They write, make movies, create music and do it wonderfully well and want to engage in it as a career. They want it to be their life's work and deserve to be remunerated by that life's work. I think all hon. members would agree that they deserve that. The difficulty with the act is that it does not address those Canadian creators in a significant way that would help compensate them for all of the hard work that they do, because, indeed, it is hard work.

I do have the good fortune of having a younger brother who is a creator. He writes music and does it very well. He deserves to be compensated if that work is put on the market and sold or copyrighted. He deserves some sense of remuneration for that.

We saw in the past, levies on cassettes. I betray my age when I talk about cassettes because they are what one might consider to be the dinosaurs of the technology age, let alone eight-tracks and reel-to-reel. That would really betray our age for those of us who had a reel-to-reel tape recorder.

We have been copyrighting other folks' work for a long time. That is how we give remuneration back to those individuals who create it. It is important because we want them to continue to do the things they have done in the past, which is create new works to entertain us, because that is really what they do when we buy that material, whether it be music, a book, a movie or whatever form it happens to be. The reason we want to consume it is for personal enjoyment. If those creators are not remunerated, we will not be the beneficiaries of that entertainment because it will stop. We will lose that creative class.

That reminds me of professor Richard Florida, who is an American but who has been in Toronto for a number of years now. He wrote a report about seven years ago about the creative class and what it meant to the economy and how we could have creative class clusters. He actually used my old hometown of Glasgow as being one of the new European creative class enterprises. He talked about literally hundreds of billions of dollars of economic spinoff from the creative class. When I thought about it, it dawned on me that it was more. In Glasgow, it was the opera house. We had all these wonderful performers from around the world who sang tremendously well. Looking at the stage, one would think maybe there were 40 performers. That is probably a high number. We might wonder what the economic spinoff of that would be until we think about set design, which carpenters needed to do; lighting, which electricians needed to do; costume design required designers and the folks who make the costumes; and it goes on and on. Therefore, when we look at that creative class and the opportunities for economic development from that, it is one of the key things the government continues to talk about.

There is no question that this world has a fragile economy. Members understand that on that side, as this side does as well. One would think that we would not want to impinge upon a piece of society that can generate economic activity for us.

Denying creators an opportunity to make a living is clearly what will happen. I heard that in the previous Parliament when I had artists coming to me and talking to me about the previous bill, which was very much like this one. They talked about how the bill did not address the needs of Canadian creators.

Our legislation should be written for us, Canadian consumers and the creators of that particular piece of work, whatever it happens to be. However, it would seem that there are pieces in this legislation that are being driven by large movie producers in the United States. That does not benefit Canadian creators. That is not helping our folks who are actually engaged in this work.

Why do I say that? Well, it really hinges on one piece of the legislation, and that is what is called a “digital lock”. For some of us, digital locks seem like an odd thing. We understand the idea of a padlock. I think those of us in the 40th Parliament understood padlocks well. There was one on the front door here when the government prorogued on numerous occasions. I remember the Parliament being prorogued and the padlock being on that door more than once.

If we are equating the digital lock to prorogation in this House, where we padlocked the people's House, that is not a good thing. If we are equating digital locks to what we have seen in Parliament with time allocation and closure, that is not a good thing.

The creators are telling us that the digital lock is not for their protection and is not for ensuring they can go forward in creating new works and making a living at it.

Are we asking the creators to get a second or third job instead of simply doing the work that is in their very soul? When they create works, when they write songs or poetry or novels, it comes from deep within them. Are we going to send them off to work three shifts some place and tell them to write the book at some other time or in their spare time at night, because we will not be helping them to protect their work and get remunerated?

If we are headed down that road, I do not know why we do not just take patents off medicines. We could say that it is for the general public good and we should all get them without having to give compensation to the folks who actually have the patent. That is what we are saying about creators, that they are not allowed to patent their music. Creators ought to be able to keep it copyrighted and find a way to make a living at it because that is really what they are trying to do.

The digital locks are insidious. Young folks today, as many of us know, are extremely adept at using the digital world. Some would argue that they are better at it than us. When I say us, I mean folks who look more like me, who are somewhat mature and who do not necessarily know how the digital world works. I will freely admit that I could not transfer music from the computer to an iPod or from an iPod to an MP3. I could not do that in four months of Sundays. I do not have the faintest idea of how to do that.

I am sure I could probably learn but it is not something that I necessarily want to do. My goodness, if I were to sit down with my young nephew, who I think is about nine now, he would certainly know. It is amazing how young folks know how to do work in this digital world in such a fashion that it betrays the actual age that they are.

Ultimately, we need copyright legislation that balances us as consumers and those who are creators. We on this side of the House want to help the government with amendments to make that happen. Our copyright legislation, as it stands today, is archaic and it needs to be changed. We. on this side of the House. are willing to help the government. Many times the Prime Minister has said that if we have good ideas we should put them on the table. What we are saying to the government is that we have some brilliant ideas and all it needs to do is listen to those ideas and then put them in the legislation. We would then have a copyright act that acts on behalf of creators and consumers, and that would help Canadians across the board from coast to coast to coast.

[Tobacco Industry, November 22nd, 2011]

That is the off-load of the day, I think, Mr. Speaker.

The AG reported that the tobacco transition program failed because it was rushed out the door and had loopholes as big as a combine. By 2010 the number of tobacco farmers had doubled. There were $300 million spent to reduce tobacco production and yet it did the exact opposite.

When will the government stop mismanaging important agricultural files and what has it done to get to the bottom of this fiasco?

[Agriculture, November 22nd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, in 2005 when talking about the CAIS program, the Prime Minister said, “It is complicated. It requires an army of accountants--”. He promised to fix it, but AgriStability changed nothing. It is just as complicated and even more expensive for farmers.

The Auditor General reported today that some farmers are waiting up to two years for payment. When will the government fix this broken program and make it work for all Canadian farmers?

[Pensions, November 22nd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, across Canada, and particularly in the Niagara region, many are finding it increasingly hard to retire. Consecutive years of Conservative and Liberal neglect have allowed good job after good job to flee the Niagara region, often with the support of wasteful and ineffective tax cuts provided by both the Liberal and Conservative governments.

The result of this neglect was the destruction of many defined benefit pension plans and, of course, reduced individual contributions to CPP because of extended periods of layoff.

The Conservative awakening to the pension crisis in Canada would normally be a good thing. Unfortunately, the pooled registered pension plan they have put forward seems tailored more to the benefit of Bay Street than to ordinary Canadians. This PRPP is privately managed and requires individuals to invest their retirement savings in the very markets that caused a pension crisis in the first place. Of course, it is pretty tough to do if one is unemployed.

This is the perfect opportunity to remind my colleagues across the floor that it is not too late to adopt the New Democratic plan, one that would lead to the doubling of CPP, one of the safest and most effective pension plans in the world, ensuring that all Canadians can retire with dignity.

[Senate Reform Act, November 22nd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in the debate about Senate reform, albeit many of my colleagues, including the member for New Westminster—Coquitlam and the member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, earlier talked about our stated policy.

On questions earlier, the member from Edmonton talked about our being all over the map today. Let me be abundantly clear, and the New Democrats have been clear since the 1930s: we think the Senate should go, just as many other Commonwealth countries that took up the Westminster model decided over the years that their senates would go.

We need not look that far afield. We do not have to look to New Zealand, as my colleague talked about. We just have to drive down the 401 from this place to Toronto. Toronto no longer has a senate for Ontario. In fact, no province in this country has a senate anymore. They are all gone. The last time I checked, Alberta was doing quite well without that senate.

When I talk with my colleagues from Alberta, they say that not only is their economy humming, but with all the things that are happening, it is a great place to be. I was in Camrose two weeks ago and I concur; indeed, Alberta is a great place to be. It is humming along with just a legislative house and no senate. It did not need one. Everything seems to work without a hitch.

It brings me to a vivid thought I have in my mind. If I could hearken back to the days of Premier Lougheed and Premier Klein, I could just imagine Premier Klein saying, “Senate, this is what I need done”, and the Senate saying to the Premier of Alberta, “Wait a minute, Premier Klein, we don't think so”. I can just imagine the constitutional flummox that would have been. I can imagine Ralph standing up in Edmonton saying, “I don't think so”.

What we are saying on this side is that we do not think we should keep the Senate, but we do not think it is up to us. We think it is up to Canadians. Let us let them decide. Let us put it to Canadians and ask them if they think the Senate is a valuable institution for us to keep. It is their institution, although when it was founded, it really was not about them as electors; as my friend from Cole Harbour said, it was the great unwashed, meaning supposedly us as members in the green chamber, and not them in the other place.

Clearly it was the landed gentry who said they needed to have sober second thought, just in case we did something absolutely ridiculous in this House and tried to send it along to Canadians.

I have great respect for all of my colleagues in the House. They do not do things that would be so ridiculous that we would need to send it to an unelected body for sober second thought, because quite clearly, that sober second thought is a myth.

Why do I say that? As my colleagues have rightly pointed out, when it came to Bill C-311 in the last Parliament, in which I had the great privilege to be a member, that legislation on climate change, regardless of what individuals thought in here, was passed democratically, as we would expect this institution to do, and duly presented to the Senate for sober second thought. I will agree with the “sober” part, but I do not think I could agree with the “second thought”, because the senators did not give it a thought at all, not one. They simply said, “Goodbye. We do not want it. We will get rid of it. Done”.

If senators were truly serious about their job, whether they liked the legislation or not, they had an obligation to look at the legislation, call witnesses about the legislation, critique the legislation, and ultimately, if they chose to, deny the legislation. That is their right.

However, to suggest that the Senate is somehow the chamber of sober second thought when the senators would not take the time to consider legislation is a slap in the face to the duly elected members. We are the duly elected members of this country, not the folks in the other place. Their actions did a disservice to their credibility, not individually, but as an institution that says it will take into consideration what the House has passed, take a look at it, investigate it, make a decision on it and, if we in the House agree, make some changes.

That has happened over the years. The Senate has indeed made some changes and sent legislation back to the House for changes. It has happened, but in this case there was no second thought, sober or otherwise.

Ultimately, why do we have such a place? Does it live up to the reputation it supposedly has?

It is interesting to note what Senator Bert Brown said in his letter to his colleagues. Of course, it was not sent to all of the senators, only to those of the Conservative persuasion. That is because the other place has taken on the mantle of a partisan place, and I will speak to what the legislation says on keeping it a partisan place.

In his letter he said, and I quote:

Every senator in this caucus needs to decide where their loyalty should be and must be. The answer is simple; our loyalty is to the man who brought us here, the man who has wanted Senate reform since he entered politics, the Rt. Hon. [Prime Minister].

What happened to this place of sober second thought when the loyalty is to a Conservative caucus and to the Prime Minister of that Conservative caucus? What happened to the idea of standing back and reviewing legislation to give it that sober second thought?

In my view, it is not only diminished; it is destroyed by the very words of a senator appointed to the Senate by the Prime Minister. Clearly this senator has an understanding of where the intention is to go with this issue.

Regarding politicization in the legislation, the bill says that to run for the Senate one must be a member of a political party in the registered domain of the place one runs in, meaning either a territory or province. In other words, one could not run as an independent senator. It would seem that one would have to join a party in order to run.

We can wax poetic about the folks who are there: the ex-finance bagman of a political party, campaign managers and defeated candidates both Liberal and Conservative. It was used as a reward for those who stood aside to let someone new get a seat in the House or when a change in leadership gave different perspectives under different parties. People were rewarded by being sent to the other place. Now we are going to politicize this place, as much as all of us here know it is political anyway. Maybe the bill is just an admission that it truly is political.

Ultimately, if we are going to say that one must run for a political party to run for the Senate, how do we make those folks accountable?

As members, we are accountable. Under the Canada Elections Act we have to hold an election every five years, although usually it is shorter than that. In the last number of years it has been shorter; sometimes a Parliament lasts only a couple of years. We have to go back to the folks who allowed us to come to this place and ask them if they would like to send us back again. They have the ability to judge us on the things we have done. They can look at our record to decide if they like what we did and then support us, or not, once again.

However, that would not be the case with this group. This group could promise the world during an election, and two things could happen. If the Prime Minister of the day liked the person, he or she would be appointed. If they represented the views of the Prime Minister and his caucus, they would be appointed.

However, we could also make the assumption that one could run and win an election in Alberta but not be appointed. There is no guarantee under the legislation that if elected, one would be appointed. The Prime Minister could simply refuse to make the appointment. One could wait six years and run again and still not get appointed. Therefore, even though the system down the hall in the other place is bad enough unto itself, we would make it worse.

It seems to me that if we want to reform the Senate, we should ask Canadians what they want. We should put it to them as to whether they want the other place. If they say yes, we should ask them what it should look like. We would then truly understand whether Canadians want it.

If the polls are right, more than 70% of Canadians say that the Senate's day has come. The sun has shone, and it is time to retire them all out of the chamber, roll up the proverbial red carpet and wish them all a Merry Christmas and a happy retirement.

That is exactly what we ought to do. We would be happy to help roll the first red carpet up as we let senators go on to whatever it is their lives will be, which is productive, prosperous and happy. We hope they enjoy the rest of their retirement.

[Canadian Wheat Board, November 17th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the farmers he intends to give it back to are the ones who are actually leaving and do not get it.

It is really simple. The government promised to allow Wheat Board farmers a vote and it broke that promise. Now the government is imposing a $200 million grain tax on western farmers.

Last week, the government agreed to join the trans-Pacific partnership but will not tell Canadians if supply management is on the table.

The government sold out western farmers. Will it do the same thing to supply managed farmers across this country as it did to western farmers this week?

[Canadian Wheat Board, November 17th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, last week, the Minister of Agriculture accused the elected Wheat Board members of stealing farmers' money. However, now we know the truth. The minister is planning to keep $200 million of farmers' hard-earned money, a $200 million grain tax. Not only is the government hauling out the single desk, it is picking farmers' pockets in the process. This is farmers' money, not the governments.

When will the minister give it back?