Nathan Cullen

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, October 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I implore my colleague, who has spent a fair amount of time looking at trade agreements, to check with his consistent adoration of these side agreements being as purposeful as the agreement itself. If the meaning and support for rules around labour regulations and environmental regulations were so critical to the Government of Canada and the government of Colombia, then they would have been in the body and context of the official agreement, the one that is truly enforceable by both countries' courts and parliaments. Putting it to the side is in fact putting it to the side.

We have seen this with NAFTA in the side agreements around labour, environment and other important issues about which I have spoken very strongly. They were always put into these side agreements that had far less effect than the main body of these trade policies. This has been borne out in the fact of how the agreements come into force in the years that follow.

If he is so insistent, has he made the petition in the government to include these very important issues into the main text, the main body of the agreement, the one that gets all the attention, money and focus in the courts and in the parliaments?

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, October 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, my friend talked about the record of trade deals. There was a question from a Liberal suggesting that the trade deals that his party and the Conservatives have negotiated have somehow been of benefit to the environment. I am thinking about some of the pesticide laws that the U.S. enforced upon Canada, increasing our acceptable limit of pesticide use on fruits and vegetables that we produce in this country, never mind the ones that we accept from the U.S.

I am wondering if my friend could comment on that or any other aspects of trade deals that have since affected Canada's own sovereignty and ability to construct laws to protect the health and environment of our country, never mind the countries that we trade with.

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoy listening to the words of my colleague, who is always clear. In a sense she is interpreting what is going on in the House today for her constituents and for Canadians in general who are wondering why the Liberals have decided now to do this.

I have a question that is specific to the British Columbia context, although it has ramifications across the country.

The first issue is the so-called harmonized sales tax, which is anything but harmonized and will bring no harmony to anyone. It is a tax hike in many areas for consumers and a rip-off from those companies who are paying right now. The second issue is the so-called softwood lumber deal, or the rip-off of the Canadian softwood lumber industry.

On both of those fronts, bills are very likely going to come forward from the government.

Canada is going to have to slap a $70 million tariff on the softwood lumber industry, which it can little afford. Thousands of jobs have been lost in the industry. This is another tax self-imposed by the government, which will go into general revenue and by law will not be returned back to lumber producers. That has to come in the form of a bill to this place.

The Liberals supported the softwood lumber sell-out all the way through its stages. They first came up with the terrible idea and then the Conservatives followed. Members may remember David Emerson flipping sides by keeping that mandate and he pushed it all the way through.

The Liberals supported the softwood lumber deal, but now they say that when the bill to rip-off lumber companies comes forward, they will vote against the very thing in which they believed.

It is the same with respect to the HST, which I think the Liberals support. They have twisted themselves into a pretzel, saying they will vote against the HST. Perhaps the member for Wascana could make it clear because nobody can truly understand. However, they support the HST but will vote against it if the government brings it forward.

The Liberals have made no sense strategically and therefore cannot maintain a narrative at all in this—

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, my question is very specific and I would ask my colleagues to calm themselves.

It seems to me that there is a specific moment, which he addressed a few times in his speech. I would like a specific commitment or a decision from him, around the issue of climate change, which we can all agree has been and will be a most serious and important consideration for this House and this Parliament over a number of years.

He has admitted in the past to his own government's failings in being able to achieve the goals that his party set forward to meet Canada's international obligations.

As we strive toward Copenhagen and an international agreement at this critical juncture, we have presented a bill to his party. It is now sitting in committee but we have no cooperation whatsoever from his party to move the bill forward which would instruct the government finally in law, with no wiggle room and no ability to backtrack, on the targets. It is a moment for him to stand and commit to this House that Bill C-311, the Copenhagen bill, a bill of such grave importance as he himself in his speech declared it to be, requires the full and immediate support of his party to be expedited, so that Canada, when it presents itself in Copenhagen in whatever form, has something firm and committed to the world, showing our true commitment, with no more false promises, no more empty solutions, but real commitments and targets.

Will he at least commit today, on such a serious matter, his full support for such an effort?

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I have a comment and a question for my hon. colleague, the leader of the Liberal Party. I know he is going to have difficulty hearing with all the heckling surrounding him.

The question on this very serious day is a very serious question that he has chosen to put forward. I looked at the motion. It described non-confidence in the government but did not present a reason. I suppose the speech that we just heard was an attempt to present the reasons and the narrative for this, but it seems my colleague, who has written so many books, still struggles to describe the why and the why now in his narrative on why the country would go to an election now.

[Petitions, October 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize for presenting petitions twice.

The second petition contains signatures collected from virtually every resident of Queen Charlotte Islands, Haida Gwaii who are petitioning against the service cutbacks that Canada Post has since issued. We are seeing postal delivery times of three to four weeks to this collection of 5,000 people who live on the Islands. It is an incredible travesty and is hurting businesses and essential services throughout the region. It must be reversed. Canada Post works on behalf of all Canadians wherever they might live. It is unacceptable and the response from the Islands has been most extraordinary. I have never seen a set of petitions coming from Skeena of this size and magnitude.

[Petitions, October 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I present a petition today from hundreds, virtually all of the residents from the communities around the Williams Lake and Quesnel who are demanding that services be restored to their airports.

Rural airports across Canada are receiving cuts through Transport Canada and through NAV CANADA to essential services required for businesses and basic safety for these communities.

It is an impressive petition. I hope the government takes it up and forthwith reverses these decisions to cut services to rural airports right across this country.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, September 30th, 2009]

What is the total amount of government funding, since fiscal year 2004-2005 up to and including the current fiscal year, allocated within the constituency of Skeena—Bulkley Valley, listing each department of agency, initiative and amount?

[Committees of the House, September 29th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, as much as I hesitate to cut into the questioning by my friend from across the way, because I know it will be insightful, if not inflammatory, for my colleague from Winnipeg, the fundamental question we are dealing with today is the effect of chapter 11 on Canadian policy and policy-makers.

It seems to me that when a principle is broken whereby a foreign firm can challenge a sovereign provincial and federal government in their enactment of a health policy, which is to suggest that Canadians should be exposed to less commercial use of cosmetic pesticides than they were, a foreign firm, not even a foreign government, at this moment can sue a provincial government within Canada or the federal government and thereby expose Canadians to a known carcinogen and health risk. We saw this on the export of fruit and vegetables from the U.S., in which Canada relented on its own standards.

Therefore, I would ask my colleague, who deals with the consequences of health and health effects, what chilling, crippling effect it has when a foreign firm with no interest in Canadian health whatsoever can insert itself into the policy debate and break the sacred bond between voters and those they elect to protect them and their families.

[Committees of the House, September 29th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, in the past, in the member's different incarnations in one party and then another, there has been a consistency of support for these types of trade agreements.

My question is around the notion of anticipation. An international agreement contract is a signature of some sort of hope or desire for the future, no different than any other business contract, marriage agreement or international trade. It is the same thing. It is the coming together to agree on a more hopeful future.

Yet, did the member not, in endorsing this, campaigning for it and praising its glories to the Canadian people, anticipate that written into this agreement in chapter 11 was an element that would subject Canadian legislators to some sort of punitive action from foreign companies?

It is as black and white as can be and this was one of the concerns raised with the NAFTA at the time of its creation and its negotiation, that Canada would be subjected to this, in negotiating this piece in particular, aside from the ideological support of trade agreements, whatever it may be, by some in the House, and regardless of the conditions and terms that exist within the trade agreements. That is insane.

Did he and the folks that he worked with, on whatever side of the House he was working on at the time, not anticipate this very result? Provincial and federal governments would be subjected to foreign interests and affect the very laws that we hope to create, the very regulations we hope to promote, such as the pesticide one that we are talking about today, softwood lumber and others that have gone on, and Canadian interests would be, in fact, be hurt by agreements that he endorsed at the time and continues to endorse today.