Marc Garneau

[Fairness at the Pumps Act, October 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot really say that I am pleased to be debating Bill C-14 because, in actual fact, the bill has very little substance.

Let us be frank: as it currently stands the bill is not very credible because it is a bare bones proposal in response to something the Prime Minister himself observed during the 2008 election campaign. If he believes that consumers are being totally ripped off at the pump, why wait two years? The fact is that the government is acting grudgingly, and so the bill, as it currently stands, is mere window dressing and will simply shift the financial burden of the rising cost of gas onto retailers.

The Conservatives are on a witch hunt and are cracking down on independent retailers who, in their eyes, are alleged fraudsters. It is nothing but smoke and mirrors. Why does the bill not contain measures to support healthy competition rather than volume-based measures that would be extremely expensive for consumers?

The bill does not appear to deal with the real problem. There are few documented cases of retailers tampering with gas pumps, and they have no incentive to do so.

Let me share a few telling facts with you. The oil sector is ranked second when it comes to playing by the rules. So why would these kinds of measures apply only to this sector and not others? Are my colleagues aware that losses due to meter issues are in the order of $8 million, not $20 million as the government asserts? Currently, Measurement Canada inspects 34,000 gas pumps nationwide every two years, which accounts for a quarter of the 130,000 pumps across Canada. Enforcing this bill would mean hiring some 300 additional inspectors under contract to retailers. This would cost independent retailers between $50 and $200 per pump. Who will the bill be passed on to?

Most gasoline retailers are small, independent businesses, which in fact operate on very small margins, as we know. The additional cost of these inspections would certainly hurt their bottom line. In switching the onus of inspection to the retailer, the demand for private inspectors would increase drastically. I and many of my Liberal colleagues are concerned that retailers in northern and rural communities may not have access to the private inspectors required to ensure that they can stay within the letter and the spirit of the law.

If the government wants to keep going in this direction, would it not be better to review the way in which the law is enforced in order to ensure that the cost is not simply passed along to consumers? The ideal would probably be to increase the resources at Measurement Canada’s disposal. We need to face facts. Does the government have the resources or the money necessary to implement a measure like this? Independent retailers and consumers should not have to pay for this bill.

We will also have to ensure that it is uniformly enforced. My fear is that the penalties could be arbitrary, and that is why the inspectors should be trained according to very specific guidelines. The inspectors should definitely be under a very clear code of practice.

There is another point. In order to reduce certain difficulties for retailers, why not provide a 30-day grace period, as suggested by my colleague from Pickering—Scarborough East? The equipment these retailers use is not infallible, and sometimes they may not know that the readings are faulty. They should not be considered automatically guilty.

If the government were truly concerned with helping Canadians at the pumps, it could turn its attention to any number of issues, such as refinery closures and the anemic state of competition at the refinery level. In fact, when it comes to higher gasoline prices, the Prime Minister himself has said that there is nothing the government can do to help Canadians.

In the three elections since the Prime Minister has been leader of the Conservative Party, he has made no less than three specific commitments to help Canadians with ever-increasing fuel prices. Members will remember that in 2004, lest we forget, the Conservatives promised to eliminate the GST on gasoline prices above 85¢ a litre when they came to power. I do not think that happened. In 2008, they promised to lower the diesel excise tax. I do not believe that happened either.

I think the real reason behind the legislation being introduced right now is so the government can pretend to be helping consumers while they complain that prices are rising.

At this stage and in its current form, I see the fairness at the pumps act more like the Conservative farce at the pumps act.

A responsible government that really had Canadians’ interests at heart, including the price of fuel, would focus in particular on the competition among the refineries and look at the Competition Act. The important thing is to make the market more effective and competitive, as the Liberal government proposed in 2005.

How is it that despite the increase in prices and the industry’s claims that supply is very low, we see refineries closing? Why does the Conservative government remain impassive in the face of such a situation?

It is in the interests of Canadians that the House review whole parts of this bill and tailor them to deal with the real problem, which the Conservative government is trying to hide.

When a sampling was done of the gas pumps in this country, it was discovered that 94% of them were within specifications and only 6% were out of tolerance. Out of that 6%, one-third, or 2%, were actually delivering a little too much fuel to the consumer. The other 4%, in other words, 4% out of 100%, were delivering a little less fuel and a little outside of tolerance.

In terms of the devices that Measurement Canada is responsible for monitoring, measuring and inspecting, gas pumps are among the most reliable devices in this country. The question is why the government felt that it needed to legislate, through Bill C-14, the need to measure pump accuracy when the numbers were certainly extremely respectable. My guess is that the government wanted to do some grandstanding. It even gave it the name, “fairness at the pumps act”, which sort of left a hint that somebody was being unfair. Unfortunately, the retailers had to wear that name when, in reality, the situation was really very respectable.

From my point of view, the government has created a bill and has put us through the hoops when in reality there was very little need to create such a bill as Bill C-14. In the end, it has smeared retailers and will end up costing Canadians additional sums because of all the inspectors required to carry out the aim of this legislation.

[International Co-operation, October 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the Francophonie is a major international summit, with thousands of delegates, 600 journalists, 53 member nations, including observers, and over 70 heads of state expected to attend, yet the Swiss government is managing to hold this summit by spending a modest $31 million in security costs.

How can the Swiss, with the fifth highest cost of living in the world, hold a bigger summit, with more leaders to protect, for only $31 million when it cost the Conservative government 30 times more in security costs alone to host a summit?

[International Co-operation, October 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are quite concerned to see the Prime Minister return to the world stage. This week, he has the nerve to attend the Sommet de la Francophonie, where he will face the Franco-African countries he has abandoned in terms of international aid.

In February 2009, he dropped eight African countries from his priority assistance list, including the following Franco-African countries: Benin, Cameroon, Rwanda, Burkina Faso and Niger.

How does the Prime Minister plan to rebuild these relationships after turning his back on these countries?

[Infrastructure, October 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives are being stubborn and irresponsible with the March 31 deadline.

This policy is causing major problems. It is artificially inflating the cost of many projects, and is jeopardizing a ton of others, for example, 2-22, the flagship building of Montreal's Quartier des spectacles.

Let us look at a riding like Compton—Stanstead, where major PRECO projects are in jeopardy in East Angus, Weedon and Martinville, not to mention the Pat Burns Arena, which the Prime Minister himself announced.

According to the Fédération québécoise des municipalités, one-third of the projects are in jeopardy because of this ill-advised policy. That is why the Quebec National Assembly has unanimously called on the federal government to finance the projects that have been announced, regardless of their completion date.

The Conservatives must reconsider this decision and stop being so ridiculously stubborn.

[Business of Supply, September 28th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I do not.

[Business of Supply, September 28th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I have watched the Minister of Industry twist himself into a pretzel trying to justify the ill-advised decision of the government. I think he is an intelligent man who is not really comfortable with what he is saying, but he is saying it because he has to toe the party line.

I want to ask him a direct question. Did Statistics Canada tell you that going to a voluntary system would lessen the quality of data?

[Business of Supply, September 28th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member from Lévis—Bellechasse. I hardly know where to begin.

It makes me laugh to hear the Conservative government keep talking about prison sentences. Was my Conservative Party colleague asleep under a rock all summer long? Did he not hear the opposition parties say that they were ready to get rid of prison sentences? In fact, that is in today's motion. I do not know why he always has to make it all about prison sentences.

On the radio this summer, I remember hearing him say to listeners that the census asked people what kind of cereal they ate for breakfast. That is disinformation. It simply is not true. The 2006 census did not ask people what kind of cereal they ate for breakfast or how many toilets they had in their houses. But that did not stop the government from waging a disinformation campaign to promote its ideology.

I would suggest that the member read the census. That way, he will know what questions are in it and will understand that those questions are important for policy-making in our country, and for helping people in Canada, including the residents of Lévis—Bellechasse.

[Business of Supply, September 28th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the short answer is no. As far as I can make out, the decision to change it was made by the Prime Minister's Office. The government asked Statistics Canada how to make it work so that it looked okay. Statistics Canada, based on documents that we have seen, essentially said that it was a bad idea. The government decided that it was going to do it anyway and brought out its communication policy to sell it. We all know from listening to the Conservative government during the summer that it botched its communication. It brought up various bogus arguments over the course of the summer and did not persuade anybody.

The government did not consult the industry committee on which I sit. It did not discuss this in Parliament. The government did not present it to Canadians to see what they thought of it. The answer is no, there was no consultation.

[Business of Supply, September 28th, 2010]

moved:

That the House calls on the Government of Canada to reinstate immediately the long-form census; and given that no person has ever been imprisoned for not completing the census, the House further calls on the government to introduce legislative amendments to the Statistics Act to remove completely the provision of imprisonment from Section 31 of the Act in relation to the Long-form Census, the Census of Population and the Census of Agriculture.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to say that I will be sharing my time this morning with my colleague, the hon. member for St. Paul's. Furthermore, I would greatly appreciate it if you could warn me one minute before the end of my 10-minute speech.

I am very proud to rise today on this first Liberal opposition day to speak about something that is very important to Canada. I would like to read the English text of my party's motion:

That the House calls on the Government of Canada to reinstate immediately the long-form census; and given that no person has ever been imprisoned for not completing the census, the House further calls on the government to introduce legislative amendments to the Statistics Act to remove completely the provision of imprisonment from Section 31 of the Act in relation to the Long-form Census, the Census of Population and the Census of Agriculture.

What happened this summer? I can guarantee that when all of my colleagues in the House today left Parliament in June, they never would have thought that come September, we would be here debating the census.

What happened this summer on this issue? When I entered politics, I entered because I had a vision, like that of my party, for this country. I recognize that other parties have different visions, but I never for one second thought that today I would be arguing for the government to back away from what is a ridiculous decision on its part to change the long form census questionnaire.

During the quiet of the summer, when people were not looking and people were at their cottage, the current government, as it does sometimes with other issues, decided that it would announce a change to the long form census, that it would take this priceless and extremely important database, which is used to get an accurate portrait of the Canadian mosaic, and it is a complex mosaic, and that it would jeopardize its future value by turning it from a compulsory census to a voluntary census, not realizing, perhaps initially, or at least it said, that this would jeopardize the value of this census.

The census itself is a database that allows government policy to be formulated in the most intelligent manner for the benefit of Canadians. It requires accuracy and completeness because the Canadian mosaic is composed of rich and poor and of minorities, whether they be linguistic, ethnic or our first nations. Canada is a complex mosaic and in order to have an accurate portrait of the country, we need to know the level of education of Canadians; their habits with respect to commuting, because we are very interested in trying to promote public transportation in this era where we are concerned about the environment; and a host of important answers to questions that allow us to put in place informed policy.

Why did the current government not realize that by switching from a compulsory census to a voluntary census that it would be jeopardizing this priceless database?

It was clearly a bad decision and one that we and all Canadians reacted to very decisively. In fact, as members know, over 350 well-respected groups have said, “Stop this insanity. Do not do this. This is the wrong thing to do. This is an essential tool for public policy. It is an essential tool for non-governmental organizations that are concerned about social and economic issues. Why disturb something that has been working extremely well for the past 30 years, essentially in the same form?”.

I have been asked by many people why the government did this. I have had great difficulty in answering that question.

The only one that makes sense to me is that the Conservatives thought they would get some political gain by announcing this decision, that they might be able to consolidate their base or find some new adherents to their party. Of course, this throws out the window the importance of scientific rigour, logic and truth, and replaces them with ideology and dogma. It takes us into darkness. This was a bad decision.

Let me quote some of the people who have talked about it. The Canadian Association of University Teachers said, “We are deeply concerned about the disastrous consequences this will have for the scientific understanding of Canadian society, and for the ability to make informed decisions about social and economic policies”.

We will no longer be able to draw certain conclusions or know whether the gap between young and old or the gap between regions has grown. These kinds of analyses will not be possible.

The Atlantic Provinces Economic Council said, “You're not going to have the same level of reliability” with a voluntary survey.

This makes us even more vulnerable to a government or an interest group that claims something, because we will not have the data to contradict them.

Canada's professional planners depend on accurate, timely and consistent data to help build Canadian communities. Making the collection of this data voluntary undermines good public policy.

We know about the letter that was sent by two previous clerks of the Privy Council, Mr. Himelfarb and Mr. Cappe, as well as the letter sent by David Dodge, a highly respected former governor of the Bank of Canada. Ivan Fellegi, who was really the father of Statistics Canada, a widely respected organization, sent a letter to the Prime Minister asking him to please reconsider.

We have heard about evangelical groups and the Canadian Jewish Congress expressing very openly the fact that this was a wrong-headed decision.

We have heard the Governor of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney, express recently that this may make it more difficult for the Government of Canada with respect to its fiscal policy.

The complaints that have been brought out in the past three months have been thunderous and overwhelming. Let me mention a few of them. Many of them are in ridings where members of the government actually reside. The cities of Calgary, Edmonton, Fredericton, Hamilton, Kelowna, Kitimat, Langley, Mississauga, North Vancouver, Merritt, Montreal, New Westminster, Ottawa, Penticton, Pitt Meadows, Prince George, Spruce Grove, Surrey, Toronto, Vernon, Victoria are just some of the municipal governments that have said this is the wrong thing for the government to do.

We have heard from a host of different groups. They have protested because they realize the voluntary survey will only be filled out by a fraction of Canadians, possibly if they work very hard at it, up to 65% of Canadians. The people who will not be represented are the ones who will not fill out the form. They are the ones who are most in need of the policies of the Government of Canada, the ethnic minorities and linguistic minorities. At the moment the Canadian Federation of Francophone and Acadian Communities is taking the government to court to try to get it to reverse its decision.

I will give my place now to the hon. member for St. Paul's. We will be debating this motion all day long, but I certainly hope the arguments that are presented today will make the government reconsider this ill-advised step for the benefit of all Canadians.

[Census, September 27th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, did I hear the Minister of Industry say that he had been honest?

The government should not fight the consensus on this. The census is important for bilingualism, but it is also crucial for the economy.

If the Conservatives go forward, our central bank will have poor data on which to base its policies. This is no way to make Canada work. If the government goes forward, small businesses across the country will lose access to vital data that allows them to plan and grow. We may as well blindfold them.

Is the government willing to jeopardize Canada's economic foundation by refusing—