Nathan Cullen

[The Economy, October 25th, 2010]

We are, Mr. Speaker. Second, the money borrowed for the HST is going to the Campbell government to bribe that government to raise taxes through the HST. Taxes will be higher for British Columbia residents. Perhaps the hon. member would like to counter that point. That somehow taxes will be lowered for British Columbians under the HST simply is not true. Taxes go up. It is an undeniable fact.

I know the government likes to portray itself as the slayer of taxes, but in this case, and in the case of EI premiums, it has in fact raised taxes on people. The government has raised taxes through the EI premiums on employers and employees. To suggest that is not true is a falsehood, and the minister knows that because he is a smart guy. When the government raises taxes on businesses, as the Conservatives have done, the effects are that businesses hire fewer people.

The ideology that we see underpinning everything else that the Conservatives do has been proven a falsehood. Canada just came through a generation of tax cuts which the Liberals made previously to the largest corporations. Companies only get to take advantage of these tax cuts if they are making profits. The companies that are actually suffering, the ones that are laying off employees, will tell us that a tax cut to a suffering company does nothing. If a company is writing off losses, it is not paying taxes, so an 18 point rate decreased to a 17 point rate means nothing. Real investment in education and infrastructure and all those other things that our competitors have done is really where the investments need to be for those struggling parts of our economy.

We have seen CEOs in the corporate banking sector take some of the largest windfall profits ever and at the same time also receive tax cuts from the government, as if that somehow would have made them more competitive.

I remind the Conservatives in the House that it was their party that fought for the mergers of banks, that fought to allow banks to sell insurance at the bank wicket. I can remember the current Prime Minister actually using the example of AIG in the United States, which is one of the largest banks in the world, saying that Canada needed an AIG.

We saw what happened to AIG. We saw what happens when we try to make things so big that they cannot fail. They become a destabilizing factor in the economy. Eventually, they start to fail, as they did in England and the United States. The secure Canadian banking sector, which was conservative in its planning, even though it wanted to merge, faced resistance in the House of Commons, particularly from New Democrats, who said the merger would make neither the Canadian banking economy nor the national economy more competitive. New Democrats resisted this.

At the time, the Conservatives favoured the merger. They wanted to let them get so big they could not fail. There is no such thing. These types of economic philosophies and policies have proven to be a failure.

If the corporate tax rate really triggered productivity, we would be more productive than our counterparts in the U.S. or the European Union. But we are not. Canada is not more productive than either of those places, even though we run far lower corporate tax regimes.

When one looks for evidence to support this lower-is-better philosophy, other than a knee-jerk response, it seems that we are asking the average citizen to pick up the tab that was previously paid for by corporations.

Good corporate citizens understand their role and do not mind paying for the benefits and services they receive: the road to their plant, the trained workers, the abundant energy resources, many of which came from public investment.

Many companies tell us they locate in B.C. to take advantage of the low energy rates, which resulted from public investment in the fifties, sixties, and seventies. They have better access to cheap renewable power. In Alberta, where energy was deregulated, it is a disincentive to investment. It pushes businesses away. When Alberta deregulated its energy sector, which was supposed to make it more competitive, better for business, power rates across the province went up $750 million.

What did the genius Alberta government do? It cut a cheque for $750 million and sent that around to individuals and businesses. They were happy to receive the money, because they were hard up. It was their own money. The government was cutting them cheques for their own money.

Mixing politics with economics leads to failure. It has proven to be a failure time and time again. A fair taxation rate requires corporations to pay their fair share.

The other day, I asked a corporate accountant how low a rate he wanted, and he told me zero. I asked him if he felt a duty to share responsibilities, to pay for all the great things we receive as Canadians, like health care and public education. He said he would be happy to leave that privilege to the employees. How generous of the corporate sector, to leave the privilege of paying taxes to the employees. That is wrong.

This way of thinking will do nothing to build this country, to give it a fabric we can be proud of. The way we manage our natural resources makes a difference. We see this in Skeena—Bulkley Valley in the northwest of B.C. We are deindustrializing right now, as we have been doing for the last 10 years. We lost 400,000 manufacturing jobs in the recession. The government claims a certain number of jobs are back. Most of them are not in the industrial sector, and most of them are not in the value-added sector. Most of them are not well-paying jobs that one can raise a family on. These are more temporary jobs, lower-paying jobs without benefits.

That is not a recovery, but the government is going to flash out the number, try to pull the wool over our eyes, and tell us we are just the same as we were before the recession started. We are not. We have fundamentally changed.

Motions meant to enshrine this type of ideology into government policy are idiotic. Members have to take a calm breath and realize that to build this nation we must gather together and make up our minds to impose fair taxation rates on both corporations and citizens, rates that will help restore this country to its previous glory.

[The Economy, October 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to join the debate this morning, in some small part to correct some of the government's statistics that we have been hearing.

It should be news to the Governor of the Bank of Canada, because earlier today a Conservative member rose in the House and tripled Canada's performance this year as compared to what the bank itself predicts for our growth, which is somewhere just north of 2%. The government believes it is somewhere north of 6%, which is remarkable news for the people on Bay Street. They should really get on this. The government must have access to new data that nobody else has, which puts it into some level of suspicion.

This motion is interesting to me and many of my New Democratic colleagues. It speaks not only to the current circumstances in this country in the midst of a recession, and the very serious threat of a double-dip recession, as the Canadian housing market has completely cooled off and is not pulling our economy back out of its flatline growth, but also, it is a great comment on the government's ideological underpinnings, its basic philosophy. The government continues to make decisions that seem to poorly fit with the ideas of Canadians and what this country actually needs, which is true investment and true development.

The government's philosophy speaks to a basic sentiment that we can cut our way to prosperity. As any sound businessperson would tell us, if a corporation is in any kind of trouble, one of the temptations is to cut its way to such a small, lean point that prosperity will return. However, the evidence in the corporate cycle shows us that is not true, that true investment is the way to attain, or re-attain in some cases, wealth generation prosperity.

The government has never met any kind of tax cut it does not like, except when it raises taxes, which is another fond, yet strange, element. I represent a riding in British Columbia, one of the hardest hit ridings in this country with respect to the economy. In the midst of our darkest days, this government working in cahoots with the Campbell government in Victoria, British Columbia, decided--and follow the logic if you can, Mr. Speaker, because it is a perverse one--to borrow money from future generations to bribe the province of British Columbia to raise taxes on those same taxpayers, to borrow money from taxpayers to bribe another level of government and then to raise taxes on the province. That is exactly what the harmonized sales tax does.

We are running the largest debt in Canadian history. I would like the Minister of Canadian Heritage to correct me on that one. Are we running the largest debt in Canadian history?

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, October 20th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the tragedy is that trade deals like NAFTA could have helped. There was an opportunity available to a previous Conservative government to put into the deal something that would result in a net benefit to both sides, to the working people of Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Instead, we saw the operation of the maquiladoras just across the border in Mexico continue at a rampant pace.

We should ask the Americans how the border is doing these days. One of the promises of NAFTA was that illegal immigration would go from a flood to a trickle after the signing of NAFTA. The Americans are building a massive fence along the border. The problems are maintained because, when we have bad trade deals, we do not actually affect the foundational problems of an economy. The foundations within the Mexican economy encourage people to leave, because they are exploited ruthlessly in some of these factories, and much of this exploitation is directed at women and children.

“Women and children first” was the old patriarchal slogan. It was not meant this way. It did not mean they could line up first for the exploitative jobs. But that is what happens, and it happens time and time again. Will it happen in Panama? Absolutely. We have seen it in NAFTA, and we saw it in the so-called softwood trade deal. It was supposed to be a benefit.

This week I will be in Bella Coola. They have virtually lost their entire forestry sector, in part because of the softwood lumber deal. Now they are also under floods and in a state of emergency, compounding the troubles the community is going through. But they are resilient. They are willing to work and they want to work. They want to work in the things that they know how to do, which is producing the resources the world wants. But they need a government that is a partner and a supporter of small resource communities across Canada. They built the country, for goodness' sake, and government after government has allowed them to erode and die slowly, town by town. That has to stop. These trade deals compound on one another. They do not achieve enough benefit for either us or our trading partners. They help only the few, the rich. It has to stop.

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, October 20th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to enter this debate today to talk about the proposed trade deal between Canada and Panama, our neighbour to the south. It is an interesting and engaging debate, because it brings up philosophical differences between the progressive politics of the New Democrats and the anti-progressive politics of the Conservatives, when it comes to approaching trade negotiations with other countries.

It is worthy of note that New Democrats have supported fair trade deals throughout our history. We have empowered governments to say that they must trade in the world. We are a trading nation, but we must trade on terms that are ethically and morally correct, in the eyes of contemporary and future Canadians. A trade relationship with another country is an opportunity to share values, to exchange the best of both countries in the way of products, ideas, management of markets, responsible extraction of resources, and protection of the rights of workers.

We have a government in office that is interested in any trade deal, as opposed to a good one. It crows over the number of deals it has made or has in progress. However, I would suggest that a bad deal is worse than no deal at all. This can be true for both sides.

All the government seems to be interested in doing is ticking another number off on the trade-deal front. It goes into negotiations with the notion that we will make a trade deal, regardless of the terms or the net benefits to Canadians, and ignoring the grievances that will be caused to people on the other side of the deal, in this case the Panamanians.

There is a philosophy underpinning this approach. It says that any trade deal will automatically bring greater democracy and accountability to the trading nation, particularly if it is a country like Panama, which has suffered for many years under various dictatorships and foreign influences. We saw the episode with Noriega. We saw the U.S. influence through its corporate lobby pressure, using the CIA and whatnot, and the ripple effect that occurred throughout Central America.

I have worked in Panama and in various surrounding countries, and one can see the erosion of democracy at a foundational level when outside countries exert irresponsible influence. Panama, having recovered somewhat from this, still struggles with some of the basic principles of transparency and accountability.

In that regard, it shares a lot of similarities with the current Conservative government. It agrees that accountability might be dangerous for the sitting regime, it does not call ministers to account, and it feels that allegations of corruption should remain allegations, without any actual investigation. Perhaps this is why it has been able to march in step to a trade deal that does not address some of the most fundamental values of Canadians. I will go into some of them.

It is important for members to keep in mind the real impacts on constituents and working people. As a trading nation, we should always seek the most favourable terms for ourselves and our trading partner.

We must also seek terms that align with our own values and beliefs, not just the belief in trade. That is a fine and noble principle, but it is also important to leave the planet a little better than we found it. If one is part of a labour union, one's life should not be on the line. Fair wages for an honest day's work should be a principle embedded in every government policy.

We have fought and struggled for these principles in this country. Sometimes these struggles have resulted in protests, violence, and great disruption to our national fabric, but we have come out the other end. We still have many struggles to go. Pay equity is a fantastic example: working women still earn only 78¢ for every dollar a man earns doing the same job. These are struggles we must face and counter. I would suggest the current government has not devoted enough time to issues like this.

First nations, mentioned earlier by my colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan, are still living in conditions of poverty that no Canadian, regardless of political background, should accept. We have much work to do together.

However, when we engage in trade, when we engage in the effort to deal with another country and export the best of ourselves, our ideas, our products, our innovations, and our industries, this benefits us and the country we are dealing with as well.

For the riding I represent in northwestern British Columbia, trade is inherent in who we are and what we do. From time immemorial, the first nations of our region have traded across the continent and in fact around the world. Just this past weekend I was at a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Tahltan Declaration at Telegraph Creek, British Columbia. One of the issues that came up and was celebrated was that the obsidian arrowheads the Tahltan people have made for thousands of years have been found in Africa, Europe, and South America, traded hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

It is a natural orientation for us in the northwest. We have things that other people want. But the principle was always that we would never degrade our own environment, our own quality of life, to enable that trade. We certainly would not want to export misery and enable other places to do harm to their people through our trade. Whether we were trading fish, arrowheads, or modern minerals, the companies and the communities that I represent seek to have a true net benefit, putting people to work in our region, putting food on the table and allowing good things to happen, while enabling other countries to receive the benefit of any technological improvements.

We have come to a strange and unusual moment in the international trading market. Prince Rupert, British Columbia, for example, has been the hub of fish processing for many decades. But now we are seeing job after job lost. Fish caught in British Columbia waters are put in freezer trucks, transported on highways to another port, put on freezer ships to China, processed there, then put back on a ship and sent back to us, to be sold at 15 or 20 times the original value. Somehow, the government says this is the rational market at work. It says this is the way things ought to be: a fish steak eaten in Prince Rupert and caught 50 kilometres away goes around the world to get back to our plate. It is a kind of insanity, and it leads us to a degraded, unsustainable world. The local impacts are significant and serious.

For the mining sector, which is now undergoing a renewal in my part of the world, exploration rates are through the roof, and companies are spending more and more money seeking out those minerals. We have seen an evolution from within the mining sector itself, brought about by companies that 50 years ago maybe did not do such a great job. They left behind mines that polluted, and they treated the local first nation population with disrespect, not hiring locally as much as they should have. These companies are now signing protocol agreements with first nations. They are co-operating in revenue-sharing streams, giving guarantees of local hiring, and adopting environmental standards that go far beyond the the weak and watered-down regulations that the government has provided. These companies have come to realize that the social licence to operate is critical.

In these trade deals, there is social licence to operate. There is a social test that we have to put these deals through. We must ask governments in this trade deal and the previous ones if they are willing to commit the deal to measurement. They say these deals will open up labour markets. They say they will improve working conditions and will not degrade the environment. If they are so confident, they ought to be able to specify environmental and labour standards in the agreement itself, rather than in side agreements, and measure compliance with those standards. We need to see the before and after. Show us the benefit. Are they willing to commit to that type of accountability, that type of transparency? Of course not. That is a shame and it brings great suspicion on the deal itself.

If it is so great for the labour community in Panama, if it is so great for the environment of Panama, if it is so certain that nothing bad will come out of this, then let us measure it. If we cannot measure something, we cannot manage it. Certainly, the government is not interested in abiding by any of these principles, which I believe are fundamental Canadian values. When a government operates outside the values of the country it represents, then that government is not capable of making good deals. This is certainly not a good deal.

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, October 20th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, my colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan packed a lot into a short amount of time and pointed out some of the ideological flaws that exist. I want to ask her about a specific one.

She talked about the tax havens. I would like her to bring this home to what the impact on average Canadians might be if this trade agreement were to go ahead, if Panama were to maintain these shell corporations that evade taxes here in Canada while making their profits here in Canada and other countries. What would be the implications for working Canadians, for governments and for our economy to sign a so-called deal with the devil, as they say, sign a deal with a party that is a known violator of international tax laws and the trade deal does little or nothing to correct that? What would be the impact on Canadian families if Canada were to go ahead with this flawed agreement?

[The Environment, October 20th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member would like to know where the toxins are coming from. They are coming from the tar sands.

What we realize today is that the negligence with respect to this project is only going to get worse. Today's report shows that greenhouse gas emissions from the tar sands are ballooning out of control. By the year 2050, emissions will be 40 times above the government's own pathetically weak targets. Under this nightmare scenario, using carbon capture and storage to make up the difference is going to cost between $60 billion and $70 billion.

When will the Conservatives realize that runaway growth in the tar sands will hurt Canada's economy and the environment? When are they going to start doing their jobs?

[The Environment, October 20th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, a report out today confirms what New Democrats have been telling the current government for years: the Conservatives are ignoring their responsibility to control pollution in the tar sands.

Under both the Liberal and Conservative governments, industry has been given billions of dollars to open up the tar sands, while legal responsibilities to regulate pollution and protect the environment and Canadians' health have been ignored.

Will the Conservatives finally admit that their “hear no evil, see no evil” attitude is bad for the economy and bad for our environment?

[Income Tax Act, September 27th, 2010]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-563, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (payment of individual's refund to registered charity).

This specific bill, presented by Emily McCosker-Hobley, is an excellent piece of legislation. It recognizes our great fortune to live in a prosperous country like Canada which affords us the responsibility to be generous.

The bill would amend the taxation act to allow Canadians to voluntarily donate some of their tax dollars directly to foreign aid through those international government agencies that exist within Canada. Canadians would respond to this.

All parties must consider this excellent piece of legislation seriously because in the trying times in which we live now it is the responsibility and duty of countries like Canada to step up to the plate fully.

I am so glad to have the guiding hand of these young people directing me rather than just me myself.

We can learn from the vision and hope of these young people. They present to us the right course for this country, remove the cynicism and dire vision that we sometimes incorporate in this place and reach for something more inspirational for the great country of Canada.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Excise Tax Act, September 27th, 2010]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-562, An Act to amend the Excise Tax Act (Head Smart ski and snowboard facilities).

Mr. Speaker, it is my great pleasure and honour to present this first piece of legislation that comes out of a contest that we run across northwestern B.C. called “Create Your Canada”, whereby we allow young people from grades 5 through 12 to write bills on any idea that would make Canada a better place. The students have joined us here on the Hill today to see their bills presented into law. We encourage members from all parties to look at this contest and consider taking it up in their own ridings.

This legislation was put forward by a young man named Justin Steenhof who, after watching a life-threatening accident on a ski hill in northwestern B.C., realized that helmets must not simply be a voluntary exercise in this country when people of any age are skiing and snowboarding.

He has also looked into this act which allows some tax incentive to ski hills that make it mandatory to have helmets on at all times when skiing. The Brain Injury Association of Canada and other groups have come onboard with this.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Radioactive Waste, September 27th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the current government is now considering a plan to allow the shipping of 1,600 tonnes of radioactive waste across the Great Lakes along the St. Lawrence Seaway. This dangerous plan will threaten our environment with the catastrophic nuclear contamination of our largest waterway. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission tried to get this through under the radar with no debate and no consultation. This plan will put more than 50 million people at risk. An accident under this plan could be Canada's Chernobyl.

Will the minister demand a full environmental assessment, including public hearings, into this reckless plan?