Nathan Cullen

[Jim Fulton, January 27th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it is a sincere honour for me to rise today and pay tribute to a great man and Parliamentarian, Jim Fulton. As his sister recently told me, Jim was larger than life and he lived a very large life.

As an MP for Skeena for 14 years, Jim was, at times, outrageous but always fearless. He was a big and early supporter of first nations rights and, as a natural extension, the protection of our planet.

In all the epic struggles, laughter was never far from Jim. After raging on some poor minister of the Crown he would cross the floor, share an inappropriate joke and soon be picking up the tab at the local pub.

For those touched by Jim's deep sense of humanity and respect for our planet, we will never know another. It was said that he loved life and, indeed, life loved Jim Fulton. We will miss you, buddy.

[Forest and Mining Industries, November 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the minister should visit the communities of Terrace, Burns Lake and Hazelton that have lost mills under his watch. The government has failed B.C.'s forestry communities. It forgets somehow that 62% of Canadians rejected their efforts on the economy, 62% of Canadians rejected the Conservatives' so-called vision for the future of this country.

Conservatives continue to pit the environment versus the natural resources sector. It is time for them to wake up, smell the coffee and get with the program. When will they invest in a green economy for green collar jobs?

[Forest and Mining Industries, November 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, instead of attacking the recession, the government's economic statement failed B.C.'s families who work in the forestry and mining sector.

Since January 2007, 34 mills in B.C. alone have closed and 10,000 jobs have disappeared. Our forestry families needed help, they needed economic stimulus, but all they got from the economic update was blatant partisanship: no new jobs, saving no mills and no offer of hope for the future.

Why did the government put its partisan interests ahead of B.C.'s working families?

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, November 27th, 2008]

Madam Speaker, I welcome my colleague back.

With respect to the economic update that will be presented this afternoon, the questions in front of us will be questions of potential confidence. We know the experience of the Liberal Party in the last session of Parliament on many questions of confidence. Because of political reasons, it was suggested that Liberal members were unable to express their own convictions in the votes. Forty-three times there were confidence measures brought forward on budgets, on the throne speech, on fiscal measures, and for reasons not associated with Parliament itself, other than political, they were unable to act on their convictions, .

I have a question for my colleague, whom I know as we have worked on various issues together. As we face these most dire and uncertain economic times, the choices before government are critical for working families in this country. These decisions will affect not only this current fiscal year, but perhaps years to come. The current Conservative government is wedded to some very deep ideologies that prevent it from applying other prescriptions, true stimulus packages, true investments in industry and communities.

What will the Liberal Party be doing as we face these confidence measures? Where will the line in the sand be drawn? Where will the conviction be on the choices that are before us as a minority Parliament to act in the best interests of Canadians everywhere?

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, November 27th, 2008]

Madam Speaker, I welcome my colleague back. I know certain issues around water and others will be front and centre in his mind again. We did good work on the environment committee together.

My question is around choices that the government is making in these uncertain times. We will see a series of the government's choices this afternoon. I would suggest that many of them will appear as policy but will be political in their nature. I hope not but the government has already indicated through a number of leaks to the media that it will be the case.

The choice revolves around how to actually stimulate an economy. I will speak about the northwest of British Columbia that has been in a recession for some number of years now. Some communities face upwards of 80% unemployment, while the government comes forward to say that there is not a problem it has not seen that a tax cut will not meet, and if one only has a hammer then every problem starts to look like a nail.

Companies in my region that had been suffering for a long time had not in fact been paying taxes because they had not been making profits. As the tax rate went down for corporations, they were not seeing any benefit coming back to them. Whereas when we were able to use part government and part private funding for a mill in Fort St. James for instance, 250 mill jobs are being saved and the workers are going back to work this week.

This is something that is about a choice, but the government seems so hooked to an ideology, that there is no other solution other than a tax rate measure rather than a true stimulus package and investment, which is being debated south of the border. I wonder what the member's thoughts are on the choices that are being made right now and have been made in previous budgets by the current ideological government.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, November 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome my colleague. She is the representative for my parents, so I hope she has good luck and works hard.

The member talked much about climate change. She is a new member, so she is not necessarily burdened with the legacy of her party on this particular topic. However, she must bear some responsibility for the policies and philosophies that have gone before her. I refer in particular to the hundreds of millions of dollars that left federal coffers for the support of automakers in Ontario, without any caveats or covenants whatsoever to require those automakers to produce green vehicles.

I can remember imploring the then minister of the environment, now her leader, to attach some strings to the money that was coming out of the federal government to encourage the automakers to make the cars of the future and not the cars of the past. His response to me was that he was unable and unwilling to do that.

Has the philosophy of the Liberal Party changed at all with respect to the economy and the environment? These two things need to be wedded together. They are the two things that are most critical in addressing this great problem of our generation. Any dollars, any encouragement, or any policies leaving Ottawa must require that both economic and environmental measures be buried within them, so that any conditions set forth are actually met and we do not end up in the enormous problem of a climate change disaster that was created by her party and previous governments as the record of this country.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, November 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome my colleague from Kamloops to the House.

The pine beetle action fund that she mentioned took the government 18 months to properly figure out the application process. The government called it a crisis, yet dealt with it like it was not. For a year and a half, communities had stacked up idea after idea of economic development concepts that the government could properly fund almost instantaneously.

When the minister was questioned about this at the Union of British Columbia Municipalities, he said that he had no idea that this had taken place. He asked why communities did not go back and think about something on which they could possibly work.

Is the government committed to making announcements that are followed by the actions described in those announcements in some kind of considerably less order of time than—

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, November 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the minister to the House and to the unenviable task that she has in trying to run the Department of Fisheries and Oceans as a minister. The tradition has been that ministers have taken over the top spot and have been told by the department what they will and will not do. I hope her steady hand is different.

On the north coast of British Columbia we have lost upwards of 80% of our commercial fishing fleet in the last seven years. We have watched the decimation of fish stocks and the mishandling of the entire industry by the department where decisions are made by the 1,850 bureaucrats here in Ottawa while on the ground officers are being cut. We lost 75 last year and more the year before.

My question is very simple. Is the minister willing to consider the fundamental reforms that are required for the fishing industry, relooking at the salmon quotas that have been shoved down fishermen's throats and looking at EI reform that would allow shore workers to actually access the program that they have paid into? Also, has the minister been to the north coast and, if not, is she willing to visit?

I have talked to the owners and operators on the coast. They told me that they had extended offers to the two previous department ministers but that they had refused to come and talk to the people who were actually affected by the decisions made in this place.

If the minister is really looking to do something different, showing up in the communities that are most affected by the decisions that she and her department will make, is she willing to visit the communities of Prince Rupert, Haida Gwaii and other coastal communities and actually talk to the people affected? I think that would go along way toward improving relations between the people affected--

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, November 25th, 2008]

Madam Speaker, I welcome my colleague to the House.

A curious option has been raised in all the choices the government has been making over these last several weeks and months. When asked what economic analysis had been made of the various choices the government made, the Prime Minister celebrated the cutting of the GST, while every economist in the country derided it. Did my colleague's government at any point take a step back and make choices based on an assessment of the best investment to shore up Canada's economy, or was it simply politics over policy?

Did the government choose to say that offering a corporate tax cut to companies that were already profitable was a better choice than investing in small businesses or in the green economy that we need? When cutting the GST, did the government rely on any assessments that it is willing to make public?

That is my question for my dear colleague. Did the Department of Finance or his department or any other department conduct any assessment before making these enormous choices involving billions of dollars to the Canadian people, any assessment that can be offered up in this place so that we can have a fair and clear understanding of why some of these horrendous and politically motivated choices were made?

[RESUMPTION OF DEBATE ON ADDRESS IN REPLY, November 24th, 2008]

Madam Speaker, my question for my colleague, and again I would welcome him back, is hopefully an issue that is near and dear to both of our hearts. The commercial fishing fleet on B.C.'s coast has gone through a decimating number of years, one after another, watching hundreds of fishermen choose not to return to the industry.

We have been attempting a small but significant measure with the government. It involves waiving some of the fees that fishing fleets have to pay to the federal government every year. They can add up to some hundreds if not thousands of dollars on boats that are not making any money. As a result, boats have not been kept up to all the safety requirements needed. We have watched the actual fatalities increase over the last number of years in the fishing fleet as fishermen no longer have the money to spend on the extra pieces.

The comments in the Speech from the Throne to the larger fishing community were very few and not even vague, just disappointing. Exactly what will he be looking for in the fiscal update that will give the fishing community some sense of hope for the future after so many years of near ruinous fishing seasons?