Mauril Bélanger

[Ottawa School of Art, May 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, we all acknowledge the importance of art in our life and in our respective communities. In Ottawa, we are fortunate to have had the benefit for the last 130 years of the Ottawa School of Art.

The Ottawa School of Art plays a lead role in visual arts education and is also well known for its dynamism and innovative programs.

Her Excellency the Right Hon. Michaëlle Jean has continued a viceregal tradition dating back to the 19th century by becoming the school's honorary patron, for which we thank her.

Like all institutions, its vitality depends on the people involved. The students, staff and numerous volunteers at the Ottawa School of Art are the reasons behind its decades long tradition of excellence.

I wish the Ottawa School of Art a happy 130th anniversary.

I wish the school many more years of excellence.

[Armenia-Turkey Relations, April 24th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, in 2004 the majority of this House voted to recognize the terrible suffering endured by the Armenian people in 1915 as genocide. The opposition of 68 hon. members to this motion underlined the still ongoing debate about the sequence of events that led to this terrible tragedy.

Canadians have built a reputation as fair arbitrators in conflicts all over the world. Let us continue in this tradition and encourage the governments of Turkey and Armenia to move forward in their desire to normalize their relations.

It is with great encouragement that we learned yesterday that a comprehensive framework has been agreed upon by the governments of Turkey and Armenia to improve their bilateral relations. We must make sure that this road-map succeeds.

In the spirit of this agreement, let us support Canadians of Armenian and Turkish origin in their efforts to also come together in mutual understanding and respect.

[Family Services Centre, March 31st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the national capital region family services centre is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year.

Sister Micheline Beaulne, Father Jean Monbourquette, Father Benoît Garceau, Sister Claire Malette, Brother Maurice Lapointe and Reverend Father Roger Guindon worked together to set up the family services centre, whose mission is to create community support networks. Every day, it touches the lives of many francophone families in the region and the riding of Ottawa—Vanier. One of the centre's guiding principles is that a society's well-being depends on families.

To mark the anniversary, I would like to salute the nearly 200 dedicated volunteers who continue to make the centre's services available. They are providing the kind of exceptional community support that deserves to be in the spotlight. Congratulations to them all.

[Business of Supply, March 31st, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I would like to refer my colleague to the report I mentioned during my presentation. Some of her colleagues helped produce it and supported it. When we form a government, I hope it will base itself on this report and move in the direction suggested there, that is to say, develop a multi-year agreement covering at least seven years with predictable funding in place so that our public broadcaster knows what it is dealing with over this period. The complexity of programming development requires such a multi-year commitment. That is the direction we will move in.

We want to follow up seriously on all the work parliamentarians have done in consultation with Canadians. When we form the government and my colleague is in the opposition, I hope she will support these initiatives.

[Business of Supply, March 31st, 2009]

Madam Speaker, numbers can be made to say anything. But since we are talking numbers, I will add a few. When the Liberals formed the government in 1993, they inherited a $42 billion deficit. All kinds of budgetary restraints and cuts were imposed.

The member opposite forgets or neglects to mention that the government also created the Canadian television fund for the development of programming. Personnel moved from the public broadcaster to the private sector and with double the critial fund he result was an upsurge in the creation of Canadian programming. So we have to understand what went on.

The question I want to ask is this. If the government presents a program in one or two weeks to help the private broadcasters while refusing to help the public broadcaster, will Canadians be able to conclude anything other than that the government has no intention of helping CBC/Radio-Canada?

[Business of Supply, March 31st, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to take part in this debate and I thank my colleague from Honoré-Mercier for his motion and for sharing his time with me.

Allow me to first set the stage. We know that last week the CBC announced cuts including the elimination of 800 positions by the end of September in order to save some $171 million. We also know that the Conservative government, through its Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, has been saying for some time now that it has no intention of providing a long term loan, advancing funding or, frankly, lifting a finger to help the corporation.

In the course of my remarks, I will discuss primarily the report entitled CBC/Radio-Canada: Defining Distinctiveness in the Changing Media Landscape, which my colleague mentioned and which was tabled in the House in February 2008. It is the product of over a year's hard work conducted in a most responsible fashion by all the members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. I must mention the real cooperation existing at that time among the representatives of the various parties who were working to establish a solid footing for the future of our quality public broadcaster.

Ever since I have been elected as a member of Parliament for Ottawa—Vanier, I have been involved in cultural matters, more particularly, in the well-being of our national broadcaster.

As I have said in the past, I totally support the existence of a public broadcaster in Canada. Furthermore, I believe that its existence is essential and I am resolved to defend the mandate of CBC/Radio-Canada and to improve its role. In my view, with the increase in foreign television programs, we have the task as parliamentarians to promote Canadian content, first through its creation and then its broadcast. To do this, I repeat, we must have a public broadcaster.

Examples of countries with a public broadcaster are many. There are at least 18, including Australia, Great Britain, Sweden and France. In France, for example, the president has called for an end to advertising on French public television, which will in future be funded from public coffers. So regardless of the situation in a given country, I sincerely believe that our government should provide CBC/Radio-Canada with more appropriate funding. The report I have just mentioned recommends a number of solutions.

I will mention, essentially, four main points from this report. The recommendations were based on five broad themes.

The first theme was on limiting, and eventually, gradually decreasing the importance of advertising revenue. I will mention recommendation 4.8. It states:

The Committee recognizes the current necessity and value of advertising revenues from television and on new platforms, and accepts that the CBC/Radio-Canada continue to pursue those revenue streams. However, the Committee also recommends that the Government of Canada and CBC/Radio-Canada work toward decreasing CBC Radio-Canada’s relative dependency on advertising revenues for television programming.

This recommendation was accepted by everyone. Today, we find ourselves in a situation where the members of the government caucus appear not to share the opinion of the government at the time. Longer term planning must be ensured, because there has been a crisis in the Canadian and world economies and advertising revenues have declined. It is up to the government to intervene and support our national broadcaster, something the government does not seem to want to do.

There were recommendations on being reflective of all Canadians, and there was unanimity that CBC has to keep doing a better job of improving its ability to make sure Canadians identify with their public broadcaster in all regions of the country and in all spheres, be they public affairs, arts and so forth. There were a number of recommendations in that area which were supported by all parties. One would expect therefore that the party in government would follow up on its recommendations at the time.

There were recommendations on securing CBC Radio-Canada's autonomy. I will mention one in particular, which is recommendation 1.13:

The Committee recommends the ratification of a seven-year memorandum of understanding between the Government of Canada and CBC/Radio-Canada, setting out the respective responsibilities of the signatories. The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage would be responsible for reviewing the memorandum of understanding and will conduct public consultations as required.

This was the subject of a lot of debate and was at the core of our report. Essentially we wanted to start borrowing from the model of the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and perhaps give our broadcaster a greater stability, autonomy and predictability, not just on funding but also on what government and Parliament expect from it. That was supported by everyone.

We talked about the new media. There was a recommendation that the legislative mandate of CBC be amended, the only recommendation to that effect, to make sure that CBC Radio-Canada had a mandate to incorporate in its planning digital technology, of course, and any new emerging technologies, and not be shut out of that as some of the private broadcasters would hope to do.

There was also a recommendation on funding. Here I will quote recommendation 4.1:

The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage recommends that the Government of Canada commit to stable, multi-year funding for CBC/Radio-Canada, indexed to the cost of living. Funding should be for a period of not less than seven years and be established by means of the proposed memorandum of understanding.

We had a report which, although we did not have unanimity on every proposal or recommendation, was supported by all parties. In many instances recommendations were supported unanimously, but today that is not the case.

We also recommended that the base funding of CBC be increased from today's level of about $33 per Canadian to $40 per Canadian. I want to quote what the president of Radio-Canada, Mr. Lacroix, said about that on Thursday.

In a speech before the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, he referred to a comparative study of public funding for broadcasters in 18 countries and had the following to say:

The study revealed that those countries spend on average $76 per capita for public broadcasting. Canada ranked 15th, with a grand total of $34 per capita for CBC/Radio-Canada, which broadcasts in two languages. For comparison, France will soon spend $77 per capita, and England, $124 per capita—and in both cases, for unilingual broadcasting that is therefore much easier to manage.

We have a situation where all the broadcasters in our country are experiencing severe difficulties.

This government is entertaining the notion of helping private broadcasters. The minister talked about that recently. No one yet knows just how the government intends to support private broadcasters like CTV, Global and TVA. We expect to hear an announcement soon from the government, explaining how it will help private broadcasters, while its public broadcaster has asked for assistance but was denied. We have every reason to wonder about the nature of the government's true intentions concerning the public broadcaster.

I echo my colleague's question: Is the government using the financial crisis to effectively cut off CBC/Radio-Canada's lifeblood? I hope that is not the case.

However, if the Government of Canada goes ahead and helps private broadcasters, but refuses to help the public broadcaster, while they are all suffering from the devastating effects of the financial crisis, one might conclude that this government has no interest in supporting the public broadcaster, contrary to what its representatives have publicly repeated over and over again while working on the report I referred to.

[Exemplary Canadian, March 27th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, today I wish to give praise to the Right Reverend Exarch Habib Kwaiter, who retired a few days ago after 60 years of priesthood with the Melkite Church.

Born in Damascus, Syria, Monsignor Kwaiter started his work in the Middle East and came to Canada in 1965. Four years later, he arrived in Ottawa and has been serving the Sts. Peter & Paul parish since.

Known for his moral strength, Monsignor Kwaiter is also an example of devotion to his community. Over the decades, he has been a true inspiration for many of his parishioners. In difficult circumstances his leadership is often and still sought after, something his community is very proud of. The church he built, Sts. Peter & Paul, is an architectural jewel in the constituency of Ottawa—Vanier and is known as a rallying force for its parishioners.

Bravo to Monsignor Kwaiter, an exemplary Canadian, for his dedication throughout the decades.

Thank you so much, Monsignor Kwaiter, for your dedication and all the work you have done for more than 60 years.

[Heavy Truck Traffic, March 13th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I have always been opposed to heavy truck traffic in established communities, such as exists in the heart of our nation's capital.

Redirecting this traffic is a necessity, as constantly argued by numerous community members, such as myself and numerous petitioners who have signed petitions, which I have tabled in the House over the last few months.

It is with great sadness that we learned of the death of Mrs. Samantha Wong, a member of our community. She was killed yesterday when a cement truck collided with her vehicle on King Edward Avenue. Allow me to offer my most sincere condolences to her family.

Unfortunately, these tragic accidents happen all too frequently. Lower town residents have endured this situation long enough. Residential areas and heavy truck traffic do not mix.

We need a ring road around the national capital region, which means two bridges, one in the east and one in the west, so we can move all of the heavy truck traffic out of the core of Canada's capital city.

For the well-being of our communities and of our citizens, let us get this job done.

[Petitions, March 9th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, you might recall that almost every day since the beginning of the 40th legislature, I have presented a petition concerning heavy-truck traffic in the downtown core of the nation's capital. I did so until February 13, when the National Capital Commission made a decision that was in line with what the petitioners were asking for. They were calling upon the government to instruct the National Capital Commission to proceed with a detailed assessment of an interprovincial bridge linking the Canotek industrial park to the Gatineau airport, that is, one variation of option 7 of the first phase of the interprovincial crossings environmental assessment.

Today, I would like to present 20 or so petitions signed by hundreds of citizens from the national capital region. These are essentially the last of the petitions signed and collected on this topic. I am very pleased to see that the citizens from our region have been listened to and that the NCC will be doing what these citizens were asking the government for.

[National Cemetery of Canada Act, March 6th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, today I am very pleased to speak in favour of passing this bill, which is very important to me and to many of my colleagues in this House. I would like to repeat what I said yesterday during a ceremony that took place following the government's introduction of this bill in the House.

The first thing I did yesterday, and I will do it again today, is to thank and salute the board and staff of the Beechwood Cemetery, some of whom I know are listening intently to the debate, and I will read the names.

It is appropriate that the people who have carried this project mostly so far be recognized: its chair, Grete Hale; Mr. Robert White, the treasurer; Margie Howsam the secretary; Mr. Richard Wagner; retired General Maurice Baril; Ian Guthrie; Stephen Gallagher; retired Brigadier General Gerry Peddle, Madame Ghyslaine Clément, who was assistant commissioner of the RCMP; Ms. Carol Beal; and the Deputy Commissioner of the RCMP, Tim Killam.

As I did yesterday, I saved the last gentlemen's name, David Roger, who has, at some point in the history of the cemetery been instrumental in preserving it and ensuring that, as an institution, its integrity was protected so that it could become what it is about the become, Canada's national cemetery.

I salute all these people for their constant, ceaseless volunteer work to make of this institutions what it is.

It does not go without some staff as well: Madame Sylvia Ceacero, Vera Yuzyk, and the predecessor to Sylvia, Tim Graham, I salute them for the work they have done over the years.

My second comments are to thank Parliament and the government.

A little over two years ago, on February 27, 2007, I introduced a bill in the House to make the Beechwood cemetery our national cemetery. At the time, I asked two of my colleagues for their support. One of them was to the right, literally or at least geographically: the member for Ottawa—Orléans. I did not have to ask twice; he agreed immediately and has always supported the idea. I also sought the support of my colleague to the left, geographically and perhaps otherwise: the member for Ottawa Centre, who also did not hesitate to support the bill.

My intention was to show that the initiative was completely non-partisan. That was true at the time and remains true today. I made it clear that if the government wanted to take over the bill and make it a government bill introduced in its name, I would have no problem with that. It has finally happened. And so I want to highlight the work and support of the Minister of the Environment, who brought the bill this far, and of his predecessor, the current Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, the member for Ottawa West—Nepean. This is an excellent example of collaboration.

I have also engaged in an ongoing dialogue on the subject with the member for Gatineau, because I do not want anyone in the House to feel injured or left out by this initiative. As the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons said at the beginning of the debate, this is an approach that Canadians are coming to appreciate and will certainly appreciate in this case.

I thought it was important it be done that way. If Beechwood Cemetery is to become a national one, as I said yesterday, I thought best that it be borne out of collaboration and not confrontation, out of harmony and not controversy, and that seems to have been achieved here.

After this debate, there will be two ultimate steps in the other chamber and royal sanction. I suspect and I hope the willingness of collaboration will manifest itself in these two last steps for this legislation to be fully enacted.

It brings me to the question of why we should have a national cemetery, and I think it has been touched upon. What is important is this institution be as close as possible a reflection of what Canada is, a pluralistic and an inclusive society.

Everyone has a place in our society.

We do not neglect the importance of our military history and the proof is in the pudding in that the military has chosen to have its national cemetery within the confines of Beechwood.

The same is true of the RCMP. This country operates under the rule of law, and that rule is fundamentally important to the very nature and fabric of our society. The RCMP has also chosen to make Beechwood its national cemetery. Thus, we have here two fundamental components of what makes up Canada and its history.

However, it goes way beyond that. As has been mentioned, in the Beechwood Cemetery are heads of state, elected officials, federal, provincial and municipal, scientists, industrialists, people from all walks of life beyond any partisanship. Sir Robert Borden is there as is Tommy Douglas, so it stands as the range of political persuasion in the country.

I am also one of those people who believe that linguistic duality is a fundamental and essential characteristic of Canada's future, of what it will become. In that regard, I must say, Beechwood has done an excellent job. That was an indispensable condition of my support for this institution's desire to become a national cemetery.

I commend Beechwood's efforts and achievements in this regard. Of course, by obtaining national cemetery status, the directors and managers of this institution understand that this must remain an enduring condition—in perpetuity—in order to continue to deserve this status of national cemetery.

Last year saw the pièce de résistance when the Governor General, our head of state, participated in the opening ceremony of the Beechwood National Memorial Centre at which its multi-dimensional, multi-ethnic and multi-denominational character was consecrated. Every religion is accepted at Beechwood and, indeed, they are all represented there harmoniously. Beechwood is, I think, what a Canadian national cemetery should be: a reflection of its society.

However, one element seemed to be lacking. Over the last two weeks, somehow this element is being solved. Two weeks ago, the Ottawa Citizen ran a story, written by Randy Boswell, about a gentleman by the name of James Creighton, who, according to our Prime Minister, is the closest thing Canada has to a founding father of hockey. This gentleman is buried in Beechwood Cemetery in an unmarked grave.

His is a long and interesting story. Essentially, the Society for International Hockey Research has determined that this gentleman had been at the forefront of defining the modern rules of hockey as it is practised today. This gentleman also was for 48 years the law clerk of the Senate. When he died, I believe 1930, within a week, his wife also died. As a consequence of that, he remained buried at Beechwood in an unmarked grave. The Society for International Hockey Research found this out and hoped to raise enough money to have a suitable headstone erected in his honour. That story was carried in the local newspaper two weeks ago.

I then called the Ottawa Senators, both the hockey club and the ones in the upper chamber, to see if the money could be raised so the headstone could be prepared and erected. I am happy to say that not only a number of people reacted positively, but Beechwood Cemetery itself has given us pledge money. The Ottawa Senator's owner has also. Our colleagues in the upper chamber are pondering it. I believe that some time in the spring this last element will be fulfilled. How could it not be any other way, that our national cemetery would also honour our national winter sport.

I am very proud to say that a headstone will indeed be arranged and erected for this man.

The final step for me is to hope that our colleagues in the other chamber, Senators Dallaire, Keon, Munsen and the Government Leader in the Senate, Madame LeBreton, who have all been involved with this, will ensure that this is carried out promptly and that we can all take some pride in this achievement of Parliament, as we are doing here today.