Nathan Cullen

[Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading System for North America, April 30th, 2009]

Focus, Mark. Focus.

[Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading System for North America, April 30th, 2009]

Are climate change, the carbon exchange and other things of this nature included in the Bloc Québécois request that would allow it to support the Conservative government?

[Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading System for North America, April 30th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I am sorry to interrupt my Bloc Québécois colleague but I have a specific and important question to ask my Bloc colleagues. The motion itself is very clear. It is very clear and very important for climate change.

This morning I heard that the leader of the Bloc Québécois was going to ask the government for something that would guarantee its support in future.

[Business of Supply, April 28th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I have a short question for my colleague. In his experience, are our country's first nations taken into account in any discussion on harmonizing the GST or coordinating the rates?

My riding is home to nearly 30 first nations peoples, and the federal government does not take that into consideration when setting the general rate. That idea comes only after all the discussions with the provinces have taken place.

I would like to know if such a consideration exists, because it is not mentioned in the motion. That is clear. I do not have a problem with that. I just want to know if first nations are generally taken into account in discussions between Ottawa and the provinces.

[Business of Supply, April 28th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about the potential harmonization, or not, of taxes and the transparency of how the government collects revenues and then dispenses them back to the provinces for needed programs. I think there is a growing lack of trust with the government's ability to do that very thing. In the region that I represent, a clear and decisive promise was made by the government to transfer $100 million to the province in order to counter the devastating effects of the pine beetle on the economies of northern British Columbia and the central interior. In the first year, very little of that money flowed out, something like $17 million in total. In the second year, it got even more grey; and now, we cannot find it in the budget that he refers to.

In the interest of having some sort of sense of transparency when debating issues of harmonization of tax or in any program that the government stands up in this House and congratulates itself for, it must answer the question, does the money actually flow? Does the money actually appear in the budget document? The $100 million a year that was committed over 10 years to the communities I represent seems to have evaporated, as Conservative promises so often do when they leave this place and attempt to hit the ground.

I wonder if the parliamentary secretary could clarify today, in very simple terms, is there $100 million for the pine beetle initiative in his 2009 budget, yes or no?

[Pine Beetle, April 2nd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, at a time when the government lectures the world for not spending enough to help its economies, the Prime Minister, at a minimum, should apologize to the forestry communities of British Columbia devastated by the pine beetle.

Pine beetle funding promised to the damaged and devastated communities more than two and a half years ago was worth less than the paper on which the press release was printed. My communities are desperate for this help to turn around their economies and save their towns. They have asked for accountability time and again from the government, and nothing.

Rather than pretend it is willing to help our communities devastated by the pine beetle, the government must own up to its commitments, show up with the money and give up this pattern of deception.

[Canada Grain Act, April 2nd, 2009]

Almost.

[Canada Grain Act, April 2nd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative members might think this debate is a joke. All they are able to do is to pretend again and again that they have all the answers and that the farmers, who have been writing us with grave and serious concerns about this bill, are completely out to lunch. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The government right now is praising the role of regulations and protecting the Canadian finances and banking sector, the same government which, on the environmental side of things, has brought forward a whole raft of bills and proposals. Now on the grain quality side of things, it is talking about ruining and taking back the regulations that protect the quality of Canadian grain.

Farmers in my region count on the grain that is supplied by the prairies and from across Manitoba, Ontario and such. They know that Canadian grain absolutely has the best reputation in the world, for a reason. It is not by some happenstance, not because the invisible hand of the market decided it, but because we have some rules in place that allow for the best quality grains to be produced in our country.

The government proposes a stripping away of those rules. It makes no sense to consumer safety, to the protection of producers, who need to have that reputation in hand when they sell their grains around the world, to have these rules taken away.

The government talks about how great regulations are in the banking sector. The Conservatives argued against this for decades, at every opportunity. Now it is born again to the idea that regulations on some things are important, but regulations for grain farmers are not. This seems wrong.

Could my hon. colleague comment on that?

[Canada Grain Act, April 2nd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague's passionate commitment to producers is second to none in this place.

The Prime Minister recently did a whirlwind circuit media tour in the United States, and now at the G20 in London. He talked about the need for good regulation and how proud he was of Canada's regulatory environment with respect to the financial circuit.

Now the government is doing what the Prime Minister actually believes. For years he was a critic of those regulations in the financial sector. For years he said that bank mergers should be allowed in Canada. This is all on the record. There is no casting aspersions here.

Now we see the aspect of regulations with respect to the quality of Canadian grains, which has been noted are the best in the world. Why, at a time when food security and food safety issues are of such strong importance to Canadians as well as protecting Canadian producers, would the government try a backdoor method of lowering the regulatory environment, putting that regulatory environment in the hands of the people buying the grain, which puts them in a deep conflict of interest, rather than in the hands of the producers, who have the highest interest in maintaining quality?

Why is the Prime Minister speaking one way when he talks to the American administration and the world body and another way at home with the legislation that the government is proposing?

[Energy Efficiency Act, April 2nd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, there is this notion of cradle to grave product stewardship. When a product is designed by the manufacturer, there is a certain sense of ownership through the product's entire life and then brought back. We have seen this in some small measures when we have looked at tires, or batteries or some of the more toxic products. We know there is a liability when a product is created.

There is an actual inherent and contained component that at some point someone will have to take care of, particularly when the components are toxic. We know that is true with electronics and the auto sector. When a computer is made, we know there are toxic elements contained it. Imagine all the computers that will eventually be released into the environment unless we plan otherwise.

We have seen the job creation potential in thinking about this and putting in rules that work this way, whether in electronics or otherwise. I have seen it in other countries with respect to the auto sector. Alongside assembly plants, which we all know well and are losing memory of because they are shutting down so fast as they flee to other jurisdictions, no thanks to the government, are de-manufacturing plants.

Electronics in automobiles are constructed in such a way that their deconstruction is imagined. Some of the resources contained in electronics within automobiles are precious resources. They are hard to find. They are often located in politically unstable parts of the world.

Why would we continue to design BlackBerries, washers, dryers and vehicles that require us to acquire more and more resources from a shrinking and limited world and in the process not create any jobs? Never mind the cost and burden to the municipalities, which are cash strapped now. They are dealing with landfills that are filling up with toxins and they can barely contain them. It is a huge challenge.

Our resources need to be considered in a comprehensive way. This bill goes some small steps toward something else, but until we have that comprehensive thinking in this place and show real leadership, Canadians will be on the hook for this stuff, because the liability transfers to them. The jobs that could be created are forsaken and that is wrong. It is simply wrong on all sorts of levels.

I thank my colleague for his leadership in the auto sector. If only the government had listened to some of his calls earlier on about the coming crisis and the types of things we are now seeing. It is a tragedy and a shame for families.