Nathan Cullen

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, my friend from Churchill talked about the effects that the government's policies are having, not just on individuals in Canadian society who find themselves unemployed from time to time—and the government has shown its uncaring glance in their direction—but also on small businesses and industries. Many of them, in northern and rural parts of Canada, rely on seasonal employment. What the government has now proposed under this new draft of employment insurance is making a bad situation worse for those small business owners who need to have some sort of certainty that there is going to be a group of Canadians able and willing to work in their seasonal industries, the ones that do not consistently run 12 months of the year.

I wonder if my friend could talk about the realities for those communities and business owners she represents? I think they may be representative of communities right across Canada. Economies have taken huge hits to some parts of the natural resource sector, as is true in my friend's case in Manitoba, and are now relying on a diversified economy. What will be the effect of what the government is proposing for employment insurance on her and her constituents?

[Business of the House, September 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, last week on the Thursday question we asked the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons to respond to a sincere offer by the opposition to make Parliament work for Canadians by listing a number of bills on which the opposition was willing to work with the government. In response to that question, the government House leader spent a great deal of his time fabricating New Democratic Party policy rather than doing the job of House leaders, which is to formulate a strategy to make this place function for Canadians.

If the government spent at least 50% of its energy working with the opposition on such bills, it might acknowledge the progress on such bills as Bill C-42, Bill C-21, Bill C-44, Bill C-37, and Bill C-32. They are proof of the opposition's willingness to make this place function for Canadians. They also disprove the myth that the government had to use closure out of necessity rather than its own ideology and perspective of how a democracy ought to run.

The clear question in front of the government is twofold. When will we see the opposition days in the coming calendar for the official opposition? Also, a question which is on the minds of many Canadians with respect to a second budget implementation bill is, will we see a repeat of the one we saw in the spring? Many people called it a Trojan horse bill because it contained many measures that had absolutely nothing to do with the budget.

[Petitions, September 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I have petitions from coast to coast to coast, from Halifax, Toronto, Calgary, all the way through to the west coast and into the north. The petitioners are calling upon the Government of Canada to reverse the ill-timed and shortsighted decision to cut funding to the Katimavik youth program that had helped unite Canadian youth from right across the country in a spirit of great pride for Canada. The government's decision to cut this $11 million program seems more out of spite than out of reason, as the petitioners note.

[Petitions, September 26th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, with some coincidence, I have a petition from some of those very same places. The petition is signed by Canadians from across the country, including Kitchener, Waterloo, LaSalle, Québec, Windsor and Essex County.

The petitioners urge the government and all parliamentarians to vote against Motion No. 312 presented by the Conservatives, which would reopen the debate on abortion. They note that the Prime Minister made a promise and has since broken it with this issue now being debated on the floor of the House of Commons and being voted on this evening.

[Cable Public Affairs Channel, September 26th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pride that I rise to congratulate CPAC, the Cable Public Affairs Channel, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary today.

Twenty years ago, several Canadian broadcasters joined forces to provide Canadians with easy, direct access to the parliamentary debates of their democratically elected representatives.

From this humble start, CPAC has continued to expand its coverage and gives Canadians unprecedented access to a diversity of political and public affairs events. CPAC has also brought Canadians closer to what happens in their Parliament.

For the past 20 years, all CPAC staff have been doing a wonderful job providing a unique and much-appreciated perspective that is helping more and more Canadians become interested in politics.

On behalf of the official opposition and the New Democratic Party, I offer my sincere congratulations. May its next 20 years be as productive, informative and as invaluable to our democracy as the last two decades.

[Petitions, September 25th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I have a number of petitions from Canadians in Quebec, Saskatchewan and right through to British Columbia who are calling upon Parliament to reinstate the Katimavik program, a program that was critical in uniting Canadians, particularly young Canadians, from coast to coast to coast and what it is to be a Canadian.

The petitioners are calling upon the government to reverse its previous decision to cut the limited funding that it offered to this program and to reinstate it immediately.

[Foreign Investment, September 21st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, when the Conservatives first got elected I bet they believed they could actually change this place. I bet they told their voters that they were going to go to Ottawa to represent them, not just parrot the Prime Minister's Office's lines day after day. However, unless those same constituents are actually living in the Prime Minister's Office, these Conservatives are not doing their jobs.

Let us give this another try. Will anyone on that side of the House stand up and acknowledge that Canadians have real and legitimate concerns about the purchase of Nexen by CNOOC?

[Foreign Investment, September 21st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, not a single Conservative minister has stood up in the House to express any concerns whatsoever about this company's human rights record. Not a word about their human rights record, not a word about their environmental record, not a single word about a foreign state-owned company buying a huge stake in Canada's oil industry. Is this what Conservatives actually meant when they said “stand up for Canada”?

[Foreign Investment, September 21st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the deadline for the proposed takeover of Nexen by CNOOC is in 22 days. Time is running out. Canadians are concerned. They are concerned about the consequences and about the inaction of the Conservative ministers: no public consultation, no clear criteria. The Minister of Industry seems lost and overwhelmed by events.

Will the Conservatives do their job or will they simply rubber-stamp the project?

[Business of Supply, September 20th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I feel some regret that I did not get an invitation to a lot of those meetings so I did not get to see them first-hand.

One leader of Canada once quipped that Canada works well in practice but not in theory. I think what they were suggesting was that this is a diverse and complicated country with a very strong neighbour to the south, spread over a large territory, and it requires constant vigilance and work to keep us together. All parliamentarians and Canadians know that there have been tough times for the country. However, one of the best ways to stay together, be it a Confederation relationship or any kind of relationship, is by talking; it is by actually getting together and finding common cause.

I take great umbrage with the government, not in the fact that it is Conservative or that it has a particular line on how to handle taxes or certain issues. There is an ideology within the government that it actually wants to break government. It wants to break the very idea and contractual negotiation with the people it seeks to represent and lower expectations to the point that there is no government in their lives whatsoever. As Ronald Reagan once quipped, “...government is not a solution to our problem; government is the problem”.

The Prime Minister of our country could have said the exact same thing. That concerns me because whatever one's political ideological stripe, let us contribute to the health and welfare of our economy and country. Let us get together once in a while. Should it be so difficult for the Prime Minister to humbly accept the offer from the premiers?