Nathan Cullen

[Youth Voluntary Service, February 25th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on the addition to his family.

I actually worked in the trenches, if you will, for the program he was talking about, Katimavik. When he was sitting on the board of directors in a position of some influence and power, I had discussions with him about how the program, even as it was operating then, was not well funded enough to not burn out the staff every year. The turnover rate in that program is exceptionally high.

This opportunity, this lottery draft and pick, was presented before him as a new member with great expectations, I am sure, from all places. He has moved a study of youth programs, something that can actually happen at the committee level. I am sure he well knows that any member of any committee can move a study. They are wonderful things. We study things, and that is dramatically important to the lives of Canadians.

However, there was an opportunity for the first private member's bill to be a bill and to move government policy and shift the way government treats our young people. It could have had so much more impact.

I wonder if he is reflecting at all on this opportunity to shift the debate and the way that we deal with young people in Canada, which would be well supported. Is this not a failed moment?

[Marine Liability Act, February 25th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the northwest, which I represent, is one of those areas most affected. I know the parliamentary secretary has visited there at times and knows the nature of the environment to some degree and how sensitive it is.

There are a couple of questions here as this is an extensive bill that we will have to look at. It has complexities to it.

The question has two parts. Up until this point, what powers did the government have prior to the bill on major oil spills in Canada? What powers does the government currently have without this being enacted into law to properly penalize the companies that do the spilling, or is it the Canadian taxpayer who is on the hook right now?

Under the limited liability section of this for passengers, we had the tragic sinking of the Queen of the North some months ago in the northwest, where two people died and many more were put at serious risk when a major passenger ferry from the B.C. Ferries sank after hitting an island. What availability would people have to compensation under the bill if such a tragedy occurred in the future?

These are two significant things. First, currently under the law, companies bringing oil into Canada or from Canada compensate Canadians if they spill, and second, what happens to the passengers who are affected by a tragedy on board a passenger ship?

[Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, February 25th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, in talking about the Arctic and the protection of the Arctic, it cannot be extricated from the notion of climate change. We have seen this time and again. In fact, studies that had been done in Canada's Arctic were one of the first and earliest warning signs of the effects of climate change and what they could possibly be.

Despite those warnings, despite the alarm bells sounding year after year, we have seen successive Canadian governments choose to look away. We have seen successive Canadian governments put the very fabric of the Arctic's ecosystem at risk by simply not making decisions that were required to wrestle to the ground this challenge around greenhouse gas emissions.

During the recent visit of the President of the United States to Canada, in the one public moment that the president and Prime Minister had, the Prime Minister alluded to the idea that a cap and trade system was equal if we were to measure greenhouse gas emissions both by intensity, which is being suggested here and only here in Canada by the government, and a hard cap, that those were somehow interchangeable and that the market could operate together, that the Canadian system, the Conservative system of intensity targets, which, frankly, nobody in the world uses that we have been able to find, were somehow interchangeable and we could now allow Canadian companies access to the market that will be established in the U.S.

In the real case of the legislation working its way through congress right now, it uses an entirely different system of measuring greenhouse gas emissions and proposes an entirely different system of actually dealing with investments around climate change. One is actually in sync with the European Union, with the Kyoto process and our partner countries.

I wonder if the member could comment on this strange dysfunction that our Prime Minister seems to have when trying to get the idea of how this thing will work and how we will deal with climate change.

[Chalk River Nuclear Facility, February 25th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday under oath the head of Canada's nuclear agency admitted that spills from Canadian facilities are radioactive even after treatment.

The December spill at the Chalk River facility dumped at least 28 kilograms of radioactive waste water, yet no less than five times has the minister stood in the House denying the reality that radioactive waste has already been dumped into the Ottawa River.

Will the minister finally do the right thing, stand in her place and apologize to Canadians for her reckless misrepresentation of the facts?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2009, February 11th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, that is a good question.

I cannot believe that the government would use the economic crisis as an excuse to trigger a crisis of rights. Under this government, women's rights have been completely dismantled and thrown in the trash.

I cannot believe that cabinet ministers would say that this is a good thing for women, a good thing for the country now. That is incredible. It is just politics.

I do not understand how we can have a government like this in 2009. It is incredible.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2009, February 11th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, prior to this budget being released I went on an economic tour across my region, northwest of British Columbia. That particular constituency is enormous. I spent a few weeks on the road going from town to town and putting the call out. This was not an invite only special guest public forum that was organized by the government. We saw some of those come through town and people laughed them off. At my meetings all were welcome.

What I heard from constituent after constituent, voter after voter, family after family and town after town was that they were simply looking for willing partners. In Fort St. James people had ideas about bioenergy that they need support with. In Burns Lake people were saying that they were ready to put their kids back to work. In Terrace, Prince Rupert and Kitimat they were all suggesting options in economic possibilities. They recognized the challenge within their industries. They recognized in the fishing villages up and down the coast that more processing must be made available and they were willing to play their part, but they had been dancing alone.

It seems to me that when a government is unwilling or unable to listen to the people on the ground, unwilling to listen to the people who have their finger on the pulse of what is happening next, people lose trust and a sense of hope. That is something that we cannot afford to lose no matter how dark the days get because the northwest of British Columbia has seen some dark days and challenging times.

Yet, people come together and find strength in new ways. However, they need the role of government to be certain and determined. They need to have an essence of trust and faith in their government not to break promises and appoint 18 buddies to the Senate, not to break promises time and time again because people will hold the government to account when it finds itself in some sort of cynical position.

A budget is being presented, supported somehow by a party that may find ideological alliances, and at the end of the day, after the effects of this budget are fully seen, my greatest worry is that more people will suffer and end up further down than they are right now. It is very difficult to get them out of that position once they are there.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2009, February 11th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, it is with some pleasure and yet frustration that I rise today to address this budget, the so-called stimulus budget, simply because on so many fundamental measures and so many fundamental points the government has missed the opportunity.

I think that in budgets, particularly those presented in times of crisis, there are a few fundamentals that we must address in order to judge the merit of the government's economic agenda.

One is around balance. One is around understanding the needs of the country and the needs of the economy in a given moment in time. Obviously we saw in the so-called fall economic update that the government continues to miss the moment and continues to miss the mark on what economists and Canadians have been asking for consistently.

Another question is around fairness. What ability does the government have to address issues of equity and issues of justice in the policies it ascribes to this country at this most critical time?

Finally, it boils down to a matter of choices. It is no different from a family putting together a budget or an individual deciding what to spend on and what not to spend on. Choices are made, choices that sometimes only have short-term, immediate consequences, but that often have very long-term consequences.

Over a succession of budgets and over various governments we have seen that the choices made have contributed to the overextension of the economy and to the underperformance and inefficiencies that our economy continues to see, including overpolluting and not respecting pay equity rules.

In some strange irony, the government has decided to bury within a budget document the disassembling of pay equity legislation in this country. Women in this country are receiving 70 cents for every dollar that a man makes for equal work. In this moment of economic crisis, the government decided to slide in some ideological opportunism.

It also seems to speak to the idea and the concepts of the role of government. There are moments of convergence in the House, moments when the parties can come to agreement, as was the case in the apology to first nations over the residential school travesties, but while there are those moments of convergence, moments when the House actually operates well, this is a moment of divergence in the role of government at this time.

We heard the President of the United States speaking last night to the American people about the role and capacity of government in times like these to aid and assist in the Keynesian economic model, for those who follow those different theories and treaties. As the Prime Minister, like the leader of the New Democratic Party, is a trained economist, he should understand that there are moments and times for governments to step in.

This goes against some of the fundamental, formerly reformist, currently Conservative ideologies related to the role of government. One can detect that. The government does not own this budget, does not love this budget, and does not understand how it can cause so much discussion and concern in the markets. On one day it presents a budget with a fictional surplus of some hundreds of millions of dollars. Then it describes the economy is recession-proof, as the Conservatives have described it.

In October 2008 the Prime Minister said that if Canada was going to have a recession, we would already have had one. Then we had a finance minister swing radically over to another side and describe this, within weeks, as potentially one of the greatest economic recessions, leading potentially to a depression. This does not build confidence in the Canadian system. It does not build confidence in the Conservative government.

British Columbia, and in some sense Skeena--Bulkley Valley, the place I represent, have unfortunately been on the leading edge of this recession for a number of years. I have communities like Hazelton, Fort St. James, Burns Lake and beyond that have suffered 50%, 60%, and 70% unemployment rates as the forestry sector has been virtually wiped out. Mill after mill has closed.

We have gone to the government and said that we need some structural change, even a plan, from the federal government for our manufacturing sector. Is there one available? This is not a recent phenomenon. For years and years we have seen this storm coming. A botched softwood lumber deal, an increase in the Canadian dollar, and an eventual slowdown and popping of the American housing market all led most economists and forestry experts to say that the forestry sector was in trouble and would need a plan, would need some sort of coherent strategy from government.

Instead we see a hodgepodge in a budget that lumps everything together. We are looking through this budget, trying to find the pine beetle money that has been promised to British Columbia. The best estimates from government are that 30 cents on the dollar of what has already been promised and committed in previous budgets has not gone out the door.

The government calls it a crisis. It acknowledges it as a crisis, sends out the press releases and makes the announcements, but does not spend the money.

This is a fundamental question of trust. Canadians, families who are suffering through days of uncertainty, through job losses and having to migrate out of their communities, turn to a government who says it promises them more. But a promise must be based on some mutual trust.

When we look at the infrastructure announcement from the government for British Columbia, when the dust settles, it is a year later. When we look at the budget numbers and see what actually was spent on the ground in the creation of real jobs, we see figures like 15¢ on the dollar, 20¢ on the dollar. This does not build up the confidence of Canadians in the government's ability to perform.

Much has been made of employment insurance, and this is an important factor. The government's small measures on employment insurance only affect those who actually qualify, ignoring the fact that the problem lies in those who cannot qualify. We see a majority of women in the work force, for example, who do not qualify, even though they are paying into this insurance program. We will soon have to call it a scheme because a program that people pay into but cannot collect on sounds like a scheme to me.

Over the years, government has used the employment insurance fund as a slush fund, simply to transfer money from workers and employers, collected for the purposes of employment insurance, and used it for other purposes. That is unconscionable, and now we see, in times of need, the government further says, “What we will do is extend out the other end. After you have been collecting for a number of weeks, we will toss a few more weeks your way”. It is putting on blinders, ignoring purposely, very cynically, the fact that most people do not even qualify.

We have lost 35,000 jobs in British Columbia in January alone. We all know, as members of Parliament, how difficult it is to work with a new employer, to bring a town council on side and bring new jobs into our constituencies. It takes a lot of effort, especially if we are hoping for good paying jobs, manufacturing jobs. This is no easy feat to even bring 1,000 in, and our province lost 35,000, gone like that.

We are looking to the place of where those will come back. We are looking for a government and industries that will start to promote the types of economies that Canadians can believe in, and the government refuses to respond to what is in front of it.

In the north there is a fantastic example of a community that struggled to survive and found innovative ways, as its forestry sector was going down. The community of Telkwa, with 3,500 people, got together with their farmers and their community and said, “Let us build a co-operative abattoir so we can get some people to work and support the farm industries because we do not want to ship to southern British Columbia. It is not good for the animals. It is not good for the planet. It is not good for anybody, certainly not for farmers, so let us build this abattoir together”.

This government and the one before it put roadblock after roadblock in the way, and when we have asked for some small assistance for this, that would help sustain jobs and create more in a sustainable conscious way, the government has been nowhere to be found.

The Tsimpsean connector outside of Prince Rupert would help connect the first nation village of nearly 1,000 people to the port of Prince Rupert and to the community, thereby cutting all sorts of expenses to government itself. We need the government to step up and to pay some attention.

We had the opportunity of having the new Minister of Natural Resources in front of committee and I had a very simple question for her. After I congratulated her on her appointment, I said that I would like the minister to please define what green energy, clean energy is under this government? Her response was to turn to one of her officials with a quizzical look on her face. There was no working definition, yet when we pick up the budget, page after page refers to green energy, clean energy. What exactly does the government mean by that? It is looking backward at technologies that Canadians have subsidized, such as the nuclear industry, to the tune of billions upon billions of dollars, with inherent risks and all sorts of ethical challenges.

Carbon capture and sequestration take up the vast majority, the lion share, of what the government is talking about as renewable. The last time I heard “coal was a renewable energy” was out of a Conservative minister's mouth. Nobody else in the world believes this.

It seems like fiction placed upon fiction, and when we look for trust, when we look for confidence, when we look for the balance of choices that every government must make, we find the government lacking. It is unsupportable and I think at the end, while the Liberals are choosing to support this budget for political expediency, philosophically this actually fits. This marriage, this convenience alliance and new coalition actually fits. They believe in these measures. The unfortunate thing is Canadians will suffer for it and our economy will become no more efficient, no more green, and no more looking to the future than it was before.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2009, February 11th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Sault Ste. Marie for raising issues that are important to a lot of people. I will ask him one specific question about post-secondary education.

When we gleaned through the budget we tried to find where it mentioned help for students. Students are leaving universities and colleges with mounting debt loads, which does not help their communities, the economy and certainly not themselves or their families. The budget has money for some bricks and mortar but there is nothing for students to alleviate the cost of going to school. This has been made clear by national student organizations at every prebudget consultation. The government has said that it was listening.

I would ask my hon. colleague. if the government had been listening to students across Canada and their representatives, how could it possibly have been so tone deaf to the one essential thing that was asked, which was lowering student debt loads.

[The Budget, January 28th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I was looking through the budget document and found that there is actually one small craft harbour in Atlantic Canada that is getting more funding than all of British Columbia combined by a stretch. I am wondering about the balance.

Prior to the break, the minister committed to me that she was willing to come up to the northwest coast of British Columbia. We are still waiting on her presence there so she can hear from workers involved in the fishery industry. Those workers have watched as the number of commercial boats has decreased from 750 down to 150. The employment insurance adjustments that they have been calling for within the fishery industry for years are absent from the budget. They are not there. This is the number one thing asked for consistently by fishing communities.

The hatchery program on the west coast has been decimated by this budget, the one before it, and the one before that. That is mostly volunteer work that the government has to seed with a small amount of money to allow for the restoration of the west coast stocks that have been so decimated.

Do we find any of these points in the budget? Not at all. If my dear friend from Atlantic Canada sitting on the Liberal benches is so upset with the budget and these measures, he has a clear option and choice ahead of him, which he will not take.

[The Budget, January 28th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday's budget is what happens when the government fails to invest in the green economy of tomorrow. Not only did the government do nothing to create green-collar jobs, it axed what little funding did exist.

U.S. President Obama gets it. There is more than $55 billion to transform their economy. There is cash for solar, wind and other renewables. From this government there is money for nukes and dirty coal. For those of us who realize that The Flintstones was not a documentary, this budget was an unmitigated disaster.

Why will the government not wake up and start to invest in the real economy of tomorrow?